>No it isn't.
Touchscreens demand I look away from my surroundings, because I will never know where anything is nor if I did whatever I wanted to do correctly. That is fundamentally terrible as regards safe driving.
Touchscreens demand I look away from my surroundings, because I will never know where anything is nor if I did whatever I wanted to do correctly. That is fundamentally terrible as regards safe driving.
Additionally the lane keeping and adaptive cruise control on the highway are rock solid, so even if you would look briefly - for example at the navigation system, just like in any other car - not much can happen.
Regarding looking away - in Europe we are taught in driving school to look over our left shoulder when changing lanes. So we take the eyes of the road ahead FAR longer than a brief peak at a touchscreen. Yet this is deemed to be acceptable and safer even in a car that does not keep the lane and does not automatically break if there is an obstacle in front.
I suppose I should clarify I am speaking generally, I don't own nor have I ever driven a Tesla. I have, however, had to deal with touchscreen controls in recent years.
>even if you would look briefly
>a brief peak at a touchscreen.
The thing about touchscreens is they demand more than just a "brief" "peak". I need to look at it, obviously, and also devote considerable attention and mental processing to comprehending what's on the screen and then moving my hand and finger as necessary.
I can't rely on muscle memory or peripheral sensory feedback, because nothing is ever in the same, consistent place on a touchscreen nor is there any useful tactile or auditory feedback. I must decipher the touchscreen every time and hope to dear god the shitsilicon running the thing can process my input in a timely and reliable manner (spoiler: it won't).
One time, the touchscreen controls for the AC locked up and stayed broken until I turned the entire car off and back on when I was done with that leg of driving.
Touchscreen controls in a car are a driving hazard, I would argue worse than "text and drive" smartphones.
Additionally, as I said, the steering wheel buttons handle everything that matters, so there is no need to even interact with the touchscreen at all during driving.
Let's look at the interactions in detail:
- Most controls of the car are done using physical controls. This includes left and right blinking, reversing, steering, lights, wipers, honking, the acceleration and break pedals, windows, seats, doors, opening compartments, audio and media controls, autopilot and lane keeping, camera controls.
- The only things where interaction with the touchscreen is preferable are (a) setting a destination in the navigation system - for going home or to work this is literally a swipe gesture on the main screen, usually done before the car is started and (b) adjusting the heating or temperature. For this there are two buttons at the bottom of the screen, always in the same location. However I always have them on auto and there is simply no need to fiddle with this, ever. If it's important to you it can be configured to be on the steering wheel as well.
- I think people who think that constant adjustment of the temperature settings is necessary are used to driving cars where this is not sufficiently automated. I have seat and wheel heating set to auto and that works just fine. I have set my temperature to 20 °C and it feels comfortable in summer and winter. Why would I want to change this while driving?
- Setting a new destination in the navigation system can be done using voice. This is not great but will certainly be improved. A modern system like Whisper should handle this easily. In any case, why would anyone want to do this while driving? And in any case it will be the same issue in any other car, because this simply requires typing out letters which is difficult.
> I would argue worse than "text and drive" smartphones.
Obviously holding a phone and typing out text on a tiny keyboard that certainly has to be looked at takes far more focus than touching a pre-defined spot on a huge fixed screen. But as I said this is never needed.