While driving it started raining and I attempted to turn the windshield wiper on. The control knob was unresponsive. Rear wiper control worked. Checked the front wiper again — unresponsive in all positionsl. Fortunately I was able to pull my vehicle to the side of the road while I still had visibility, turn the car off, turn the car on, and then the wiper control was functional again. If this had happened during a sudden downpour on the freeway it could have been much worse. For reference — I keep the automatic wiper setting on OFF. I did not troubleshoot enabling the automatic wiper setting during the incident.