I was standing in a grocery store parking lot in Orlando last August when I saw a guy in flip-flops and a sweat-soaked t-shirt having a full conversation with his car. He was waving his phone at the door handle, tapping the little flush panel, walking away and walking back. The handle wasn’t presenting. The car—a sleek, expensive electric SUV from a brand that should know better—had decided that 103-degree heat and 80 percent humidity were the perfect time to take a nap. I walked over, pulled out a bottle of water, and watched him finally get it open after seven minutes of swearing. He looked at me and said “I miss my old Tahoe.” I didn’t even respond. I just nodded. Because that man had just learned the hard way what I’ve been yelling about for years: hidden door handles are the stupidest, most dangerous piece of automotive fashion I’ve seen since the fake wood paneling of the 1980s.

I don’t care if they improve aerodynamic drag by 0.2 percent. I don’t care if they look “clean” or “futuristic” or whatever word the marketing team used to justify eliminating a mechanical part that worked perfectly for a hundred years. A door handle is not a fashion accessory. It is a tool. It is the thing you grab when you need to get in quickly, and more importantly, it is the thing you grab when you need to get out in a hurry. And the current generation of flush, motorized, pop-out handles is a mechanical failure waiting to happen at exactly the moment you can’t afford one.

I’ve tested enough cars to know the sensory difference. A real door handle—a Toyota Tacoma’s chunky lever, a Honda Civic’s solid pull, even the weird paddle on a Ford Mustang—has a mechanical certainty. You feel the latch release. You hear the click. It works when the battery is dead, when the computer is crashed, when the car has been sitting in the sun for so long the interior is hot enough to fry an egg on the dashboard. A flush handle? You’re relying on a tiny electric motor, a position sensor, and a software module that was probably written by an intern. And when that system fails, you’re not just inconvenienced. You’re locked out. Or worse, you’re locked in.

Now let’s talk about the other half of this technology nightmare: the touchscreen takeover. I drove a new Volkswagen ID.4 last month, and to adjust the air conditioning, I had to swipe down from the top of a 12-inch screen, tap a temperature zone, then slide a digital slider that had no tactile feedback. While driving. In stop-and-go traffic. In a car that beeped at me every time I looked away for two seconds. Compare that to a Mazda CX-5. Mazda still gives you a physical knob for volume, physical buttons for climate, and a rotary controller for the infotainment. You can operate it without looking. You can reach down, feel the knob, and turn the temperature down while keeping your eyes on the minivan that just cut you off. That’s not old-fashioned. That’s safe.

The hidden handle and the touchscreen obsession come from the same sickness: the belief that everything mechanical must be replaced with software. And software fails. I’ve seen a Tesla Model 3 where the door handle wouldn’t present after a software update. The owner had to crawl in through the trunk. I’ve seen a Ford Mustang Mach-E where the touchscreen froze completely, locking out climate control, audio, and defrost, in February, with frost on the windshield. Ford is better than Tesla in terms of physical redundancy—they at least put a mechanical release in the front doors—but the rear passengers? They get a cable hidden under the carpet that nobody remembers exists until they’re panicking.

Here’s the scenario that keeps me up at night. You’re in a minor accident. The airbags deploy. The 12-volt battery disconnects, or the wiring harness gets pinched. The car goes dark. Now you’re sitting there, dazed, the smell of airbag propellant burning your throat, and you reach for the door handle. On a traditional car, you pull the lever, the mechanical cable actuates the latch, and you walk out. On a modern car with flush handles and electronic releases? You press a button that does nothing. You search for the mechanical override while the car is telling you nothing. You find a tiny lever hidden behind the armrest that nobody ever showed you. Seconds pass. In a real emergency, seconds are everything.

I’m not saying every car with a flush handle is a death trap. The Porsche Taycan has a clever system where the handle extends mechanically but still offers a physical backup. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 has chunky, almost retro handles that pop out but also have a physical lever underneath. Those engineers thought about failure. But the ones who put a smooth, flush panel on a car and said “the app will open it”? They should be forced to use their own design during a power outage in a parking garage with a dead phone battery.

My advice is simple. When you shop for a car, ignore the sleek marketing photos. Walk up to it. Grab the door handle. Does it feel like a tool or does it feel like a gadget? Sit in the driver’s seat. Can you turn the fan speed up without taking your eyes off the road? If the answer to either question is no, walk away. The car is not designed for you. It’s designed for a photoshoot. And when you’re standing in a Florida parking lot in August, sweating through your shirt while your $70,000 car decides it’s too hot to let you in, you’ll wish you had bought the one with the real handles.

Disclaimer: Mention of any brand or trademark is for identification purposes only and does not indicate any partnership or endorsement.