In the current age, there are few people in the world who would be able to give a detailed explanation of the workings of each component on a modern car. However, driving a car is supremely intuitive for the vast majority of us, despite the fact we don't really know whats going on.
For me, the amount of control the average person, let along a F1 driver, has over their car is impressive and it comes down to interface of the car, the steering wheel, gear lever and 2 or three pedals. With these controls a person can control a lump of metal up to 2 or 3 tonnes in weight at speeds exceeding 100km/h. Not bad for a few thousand bucks. Not only can the interface control the car in a rudimentary way, the feel and weight of the controls are fine tuned so that the involvement is more exhilarating, deft and accurate.
Of course, cars haven't always been controlled this way, the model T ford had a completely different system which was apparently terrifying, you could either crawl along or hurtle down crappy roads with no real brakes at a locked speed like a tractor. The link below is from top gear, showing the development of the modern car interface.
But today all cars a pretty much identical in set up, even if the feel and weight of the instruments are fine tuned. The controls of the modern car have allowed every individual to operate a car safely (some barely) and brought personal transport into reality which is pretty neat.
Ed Hamer
We are traveling at 100+ km/h in a 2-3 ton hunk of metal filled with petrol around corners with other hunks of speeding metal less than half a metre away. Scary stuff really. It's amazing that we can feel so safe and be so in control of our cars, and to be able to react and then interact with them quickly enough to avoid accidents. I think the interface design plays a great role in this safety and control.
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