The real question, as I found yesterday, is can you switch on high-speed wipers, rear fog lights, hazard lights, and max-demist, in a few seconds, while you're devoting 99% of your brainpower to not crashing into an unseen vehicle slowing in front, not veering out of the lane that you can't really see, and glancing repeatedly in the mirror in case you're about to be rear-ended.

The question is not whether you can operate the controls under normal circumstances. It's whether you can do it when task-saturated with more important tasks. Under such circumstances, I simply wouldn't have had any attention left for glancing at a touchscreen, but I did know and could hit all the manual controls rapidly without looking.

The answer is you focus on dealing with what's in front of you, so turn on wipers and demist. If all the drivers do that, then no one needs to worry about what's happening behind them. After you take care of being able to see and control the car, then you worry about rear fogs and hazards.

And if it's really, really bad, pull over. Don't be like those idiots who decide to stop in the middle of a highway with 75mph traffic around them, under an overpass to protect themselves from a hailstorm.

This is like the arguments that C programmers just need to be more careful about errors. We know that people make mistakes, get distracted, and get older. Real engineering is about designing systems which work well in actual conditions, not some unrealistic ideal case assuming perfect conditions.

It’s also simply wrong: in California, I had to show use of turn signals – not anything else – and no other place I’ve driven since has ever made me pass a test again. Assuming that everyone reads the manual and practices with every new vehicle is unrealistic, so you’re looking at potentially half-century lags between what’s tested and what people are driving.

I always wondered if Californians know what turn signals are.

About as well as the rest of the country, with the possible exception of Maryland, where they’re used to decoy people by indicating the turn required by the lane you’re in as opposed to the turn three lanes over you’re actually going to make.

I actually wonder whether google maps / Waze integration would be a worthwhile improvement: self-driving cars are a good ways off but simply signaling the direction which the driver was just told to turn would be nice, and a majority of drivers seem to be using mapping apps these days.

It is by far the worst state (or province) I've lived in for lack of turn signal usage. I want to get a bumper sticker that says, "Your Turn Signal is Broken".

How about a bumper sticker that says, "I slow down for stop signs".

This depends on the state/region. There's no universal standard in the US, and some states definitely don't require the operation of all of these controls before the test.

Hmm, this doesn't seem to be a response to what I said. Maybe you accidentally replied to the wrong comment?

> you have to demonstrate your ability to know where all those functions are before you even pull away to start your test

if only s/he had to pass the same threshold to post on HN!

Even if that were true everywhere, people drive vehicles other than the one they used for their drivers test in their lifetime.

And just like when they learn to use the shifter, they need to learn what that thing on the other side of the steering wheel does too before driving off whether it's tested or not.

I commend you on your attention to detail under every circumstance, but not everyone masters the windshield defogger (to the point where they don’t have to look at it) the moment they sit down in a rental car.

This was not my experience in New York. You don’t have to demonstrate anything other than knowledge of where the turn signal, ignition, brake and gas pedal are.

I took a driver's test 3 years ago and this was not included.