That's the whole point, critical safety systems should be designed for robustness, not flexibility. From an engineering standpoint, these two parameters are in contradiction, and in times of emergency, mistakes and confusion are inevitable.

The seat belt release in my car sometime fails to operate, not because it is poorly constructed, but because it is not intuitive, it does not guide the hand to the right places. I use it every day, I'm used to it, so it never gives me any problems. But when I first got the car I sometimes had trouble fastening (which discourages its use) and unfastening it (which makes it difficult to exit the vehicle in a hurry). Now imagine if the driver is injured, the vehicle is on fire, or filling up with water and sinking and it is completely dark. The driver is disoriented, maybe upside down, perhaps in pain, and perhaps it is not his car and he is unfamiliar with it. The seat belt has turned the car into a death trap.

Now look at the control panel of a modern jet. Sure, it HAS to be complicated, and the crew MUST be trained in its use. Both go without saying. But in my opinion, modern design philosophy very often is inadequate because engineers don't properly consider the conditions under which the controls may have to be used.

The possibility of operational failure (this includes the possible responses of the operator as well as the mechanical performance of a system) goes up as the square or cube of the number of interacting components. Not linearly. Increasing flexibility (=complexity) inevitably leads to potential unanticipated failure. There is no reason why I should have to hit four separate buttons to turn on my TV set.