Ideas for Safety - For Those Who Drive Poorly

When I drive my Model S. I try to not touch the middle panel as much as possible, because frankly even though most things are in easy to touch spots, it still takes my attention off the road. Some examples could be searching for music via my voice. It pops up with different artists, etc which I inevitably read, I am unsure if there is a way to avoid this but I digress.

What I am getting at, is can we think of ways where one does not need to use the center console while driving even more? Below are some ideas I had to ensure those crazy enough to search the web while driving would think twice. By the way, in my honest opinion I think web searching should be disabled after going a certain speed (15 MPH or so). Quite frankly I don't trust other people NOT to use that feature while driving on the highway.

1) When you search for an artist/song, the search function show a list not only on the center console, but on your left or right side of your speedometer display as well. This way you don't need to take your hand off the wheel, you simply glance down and scroll with the steering wheel toggle then select. This would avoid you needing to take your hands AND eyes off the task at hand, driving.

2) This is more of a creature comfort as by the time you approach a place to open the garage you are going very slow. But it would be cool if not only did it drop down from the middle console, but it dropped down from the center display and you simply press in to accept it on the left or right toggle button on the wheel. This is less a safety thing then a nice feature.

Can anyone think of anything else to help in not needing to mess with the center console? Is there an option already to do the things I mentioned? I am thinking about safety and knowing that I am a safe driver, doesn't help the general masses when they are not safe. We can certainly discuss more then these aspects, such as the right and wrong of having a web browser while traveling 60 MPH on the highway. In my opinion, we have phones and if the passenger wants to look up movie times they can. But the driver should be focused on driving.

Amped_up said:

I like the garage door opener idea. I always seem to hit the homelink main button when trying to open or close the garage door.

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I've done this more then a few times. And its honestly a natural progression. While the screen/buttons are huge, it still has to be LOOKED at and I feel that takes much more, albeit still small, attention off of the road. To hit the homelink button for your garage for example, you have to look and not feel for the garage button. So anything we can make more button based whilst driving will help. If all you have to do is look at the dash quickly much like you're looking at the speed, its much better then glancing at the screen and then looking again and take a hand off the wheel.

Its the little things I feel that matters.

EDIT: Let me be clear that I DONT think we need manual buttons for a dash and that I think a screen is superior due to the updates. But I think there are things we can do in spite of not having perfect voice commands to stop us from staring at that huge screen.

I may get flack for this, but maybe there are some things that just don't work well when talking about the center console and a completely digital setup. David, you have a very good point and honestly the only way to fix it would to be to modify the dash speedometer area. This is why I am very, very against the Model X having LCD's on the steering wheel. I think it should be a mix specifically for safety. More screens does not equal better.

Here is another idea for cooling/heating.

1) Setup so the speedometer wheel has a setting to where you can put the cooling/heating on the dash permanently so all you have to do is scroll up to increase temperature, scroll down to decrease or depress to turn off. Very simple fix and more intuitive, I know I would have it on there all the time.

Basically for the consistent things we use day in and day out I feel need physical buttons AND can be used on the middle 17 inch screen. For example, locks should have a physical button (unless I missed it I don't think the doors have a physical lock button). I don't really feel like going into a menu to unlock my doors for my wife when she walks up. Also, cooling/heating needs to be a button or dial for the very reason David brought up. This doesn't mean decrease the screen, it does mean perhaps to put the buttons below or to the side of the screen for that muscle memory factor. For music, we already have a button setup on the steering wheel, very happy with this, but my search function idea would be awesome and I think safer on quite a few levels.

All of these are fixable with software updates, except for the buttons/dials of course. Thing is I don't think Tesla will do buttons dials in order to seem edgy or futuristic, just my initial assessment.

rlang59 said:

You can set the right hand scroll wheel to do this now. I'm assuming that is what you mean by "speedometer wheel".

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But can you make it a permanent thing, such as music or navigation. Because you have to click, go through the menus, then select climate. I am just talking about a permanent stationary option like the distance or music for instance. Maybe I missed it if so.