Why do aircraft cockpits have so many buttons and switches? What do all those actually control and are they all used?
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If your car is having trouble, you can pull over, pop the hood, and take a look at the engine.
If your plane is having trouble, you can only work from inside the plane (until you land it, which might be hours away). So the cockpit must have additional troubleshooting/diagnostic tools to allow the pilots to either fix the problem or to accurately determine what the problem is in order to find a safe solution (temporary fix then fly to original destination, call nearby airport for emergency landing, or attempt a crash-landing). The cockpit instruments are therefore made to provide a lot of information readily at hand to the pilots so that they can troubleshoot the plane quickly mid-flight.
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