[hallidave]

On commercial aircraft, which have more of a safety culture than cars, they go so far as to have different knobs and buttons with different shapes so that a pilot can tell by feel that they have right one. For example, the knob to change speed is a different shape than the knob to change heading.

Here's the autopilot panel of an Airbus A320:

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/overhead-panel-airb...

[karmelapple]

Exactly the kind of systems I worked on. The human factors engineering that goes into these is typically fantastic, with most aspects of interaction very thoughtfully crafted.