Well ok, I've finally seen a GOOD argument in favor of the electric parking brake. I still prefer the old fashioned one, but now I can at least appreciate something about the newfangled gimmick.
Your faith in humanity is miscalibrated...but either way, here in the real world the road is chock full of drivers who shouldn't be driving, and almost every one of them drives an automatic.As for rotary shifters: They aren't a problem if you're at all competent and focusing on operating a vehicle as you should be. If someone can't handle it, chances are good they shouldn't be driving anyway.
Indeed, that can help mitigate the wrong knob issue.The only issues with rotary shifters are placement and tactile feedback. They work best if isolated from other controls and when they are clearly a different feel than other knobs.
So now not only is it a gratuitously nonstandard interface, but it's also disobedient (because it thinks it's smarter than me)? No thanks. I'd rather it make its best attempt to execute my command even when I've given a seemingly nonsensical command. That kind of crap is one of my biggest irritants in gratuitously electronic interfaces. Sometimes I need to do something crazy. Sometimes I need to pay for my mistakes. Sometimes I just want to know I could.Since they're electric, they don't allow for stupidity shifts, which does help as well. The car won't attempt to shift in to reverse when it knows it's already moving forward too fast for it to be safe.
I have used excellently crisp, intuitive ones and super sloppy, vague ones.They're also far superior to column mounted shifters. Ive never once experienced a column shifter with decent feedback. Most are sloppy and easily let you end up between gears.
The column shifted TH350 slushbox that came in my 1980 Buick was supremely excellent, and it was my only regret about converting. It guided you directly to whichever selection you wanted, as if it could read your mind, and felt superbly wonderful while it did so. I've rarely, if ever, felt any kind of interface for any machine that has such perfection in its tactile feedback. The only thing I can think of that comes close is my parents' Onkyo stereo from the 1970s, which has super-silky super-heavy friction-free knobs and the most perfect latching button switches ever.