Why Digital Speedometers Are Evil

My brother has a Honda Civic Coupe, and I absolutely hate driving his car. I don't normally end up driving it, but every time I do it drives me crazy. The civic has a digital speedometer that's raised above the dashboard so you can constantly see it. Here's a view of what it looks like (image from Ben Golub's flickr):

There are a couple of annoyances I have with this speedometer. First, I don't like having my speed in my direct line of sight. That's not to say I don't check my speed frequently, but I don't want to be forced to check my speed frequently. If I'm sitting through bumper to bumper traffic, I really don't care (or want to know for that matter) how fast I'm going.

Second, I don't want to know my exact speed 99% of the time. Maybe if I were to get pulled over by a policeman for speeding, I would want to know exactly how fast I was going when it happened. Although, even in that instance I'm not sure I'd really want to know. There's something somewhat unsettling for me knowing that I'm driving 43 mph or 52 mph or 31 mph. I find myself really wanting to drive on round numbers (like 45 mph or 50 mph or 30 mph). Perhaps that's my slightly unjustifiable OCD, but really, it's just unnecessary.

Third, and the most important, I don't like how visually distracting it is to see the digital speedometer change numbers. To illustrate this, I've created some little animations for your viewing pleasure of a fairly common speed change on the freeway.

On a digital speedometer, the difference between 3 different speeds (such as 69, 70, and 71) is rather drastic.

On an analog speedometer, however, the difference is only a few degrees different between the same 3 speeds at the exact same intervals.

I guess you could argue that the digital speedometer looks more modern, but I'll take the analog speedometer any day.