[Sutripta]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

The German court, rightly so, goes to the root cause and that is how it ruled!

'Root Cause' would have seen Tesla fined, and told to correct this before being allowed to sell its cars in Germany. And the regulator who passed the car as roadworthy being censured. But then again the German Big Three might get caught up in it also.

The US Navy, after a couple of very public, very embarrassing accidents is shifting away from touchscreens for navigation on the bridge.

Wonder who Musk is going to call a bonehead now, the driver or the judge? And guess he never read about the B17.

Sutripta

[McLaren Rulez]

I find this ruling deeply unfair to the driver. He should appeal it!

This judgement is every bit as stupid as Tesla's decision to put the wiper speed in a submenu on a touchscreen.

[GutsyGibbon]

Originally Posted by McLaren Rulez

I find this ruling deeply unfair to the driver. He should appeal it!
This judgement is every bit as stupid as Tesla's decision to put the wiper speed in a submenu on a touchscreen.

Just because an owner does not learn how to use his car, the law cannot go after the manufacturer. That would set a dangerous precedent. I have driven my Model3 though all sorts of fog, rain, mildew and what not. They are rain sensing wipers, that work very well. There is no need to adjust the speed while driving. When there is a need to override, the left stalk has a button that can be pushed once to wipe once. This can be done as many times as you like to override, without taking the eyes of the road.

Idiots in Tesla do stupid things all the time, and blame the car for their failings.

Originally Posted by spoth001

Tesla has very minimal functions around its steering wheel. Most of them are on the huge touch screen and it must be a nightmare to browse through the options.

No, it is not a nightmare. In fact none of those million options are shown to the user all the time, as things are context sensitive. All settings such as mirrors, seats, steering are saved in the user profile. If you use your phone to unlock, all the settings are set as per your profile. Your spouse can do the same. One should not mess with the profile while driving. I may have readjusted the mirrors once in the last 2.5 years. I did that while parked and while I was waiting for someone.

Things being context sensitive, makes the screen very simple. I can only see the buttons/options for boot, frunk, and such things while the car is parked. These buttons need not clutter the screen while driving. That is the advantage of touch screens.

Sure things like opening the passenger side glove box is under some menu, but one just gets used to such quirks. In my opinion they are not deal breakers, or ones that make the car unsafe. I do not see how Tesla should be liable if one were to be looking for that menu option while driving.

[McLaren Rulez]

Originally Posted by GutsyGibbon

Just because an owner does not learn how to use his car, the law cannot go after the manufacturer.

A driver is ultimately responsible for operating a vehicle safely but there's several other issues here.

The court observed that while the wiper could be turned on/off conventionally, changing the wiper speed required the driver to access a sub-menu on the touchscreen.

Perhaps his model is equipped differently to yours but changing wiper speeds should not require accessing a submenu on the screen.

But all of the above is minor compared to the big issue here - the judgement itself. The driver is being fined for "use of an electronic device" by the judge. That's the part I have a problem with because that's patently not what he was doing. If you touch your central screen to do anything at all while driving (regardless of whether you crash or not), you will be found guilty by this German judge's logic. That's just plain nonsense!

[bigron]

Originally Posted by GutsyGibbon

No, it is not a nightmare. I may have readjusted the mirrors once in the last 2.5 years. I did that while parked and while I was waiting for someone.

Things being context sensitive, makes the screen very simple. I can only see the buttons/options for boot, frunk, and such things while the car is parked. These buttons need not clutter the screen while driving. That is the advantage of touch screens.

Sure things like opening the passenger side glove box is under some menu, but one just gets used to such quirks. In my opinion they are not deal breakers, or ones that make the car unsafe. I do not see how Tesla should be liable if one were to be looking for that menu option while driving.

It is definitely a nightmare. I had access to the Model S for exactly 35 days. I had done everything to make it 'mine' as you said. It would know when I was in the driving seat and adjusted everything according to what I fed in it when I created my profile.

I hated every minute of driving it. It made no sense to look away from the road, figure out on the screen where the air con buttons are and then tap on screen at the precise location to increase decrease the airflow or the A/C temperature.

Fitts Law talks about the time for the finger to reach a target depends on the size of that target and the distance to the target. The lower buttons placement on the model S is at the bottom of a 17 inch screen. It is so far away from your typical driving position of 10/2 or 9/3 that it is a nightmare. The amount of time it take for your eyes to look away from the road to figure out that button placement is dangerous. I am not even going to talk about the problem of accidental touches that come with using a 17 inch screen. There are several other shortcomings of this interface but we will leave those.

The touch screen cannot replace solid buttons for essential functions. It is undisputed that touch screen require more hand to eye coordination than buttons. And that is a distraction when it comes to driving.

I know enough people who have moved to different vehicles simply because they could not deal with the touch screen interface of the Tesla. In-fact the person whose model S I was driving often struggled with it himself in day to day usage. The owner should not be struggling with his own car on a daily basis for simple tasks.

The screen has its advantages, but replacing traditon fucntion buttons is not one of them.

This is clearly one of those instances where a 'solution' is imposed to a problem that did not exist.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by Sutripta

'Root Cause' would have seen Tesla fined, and told to correct this before being allowed to sell its cars in Germany.

It is down to the driver responsibility on how to use the car. Cars and their system have it in them to do illegal things. E.g. speeding, hard braking when you should not. The driver should know how to operate his/her vehicle safely and within the limits of the law.

That most of us consider this a poor design, does not make it an illegal one. But it is stupid design, or at best an inconvenient design.

But as the driver you are expected to operate the your car safely. If you wipers stop working all together, you are supposed to adjust your speed, maybe even to the point of stopping your car all together.

There are many other examples where certain features or aspect of car are designed stupidly, but not necessarily illegally. E.g. it is impossible for a driver to change the light bulb on a VW beetle. It is illegal to drive at night with a blown bulb. So if that happens, the only proper responsible cause of action for the driver is to stop said Beetle safely at the side of the road and wait for the sun to rise. Stupid, inconvenient, but down to the driver, same applies here.

If you know it is illegal to operate your car under certain conditions, or features of your car, you should not do it. Talk to the manufacturer, but the cops and the court are judging you on exercising sound and responsible judgement, knowing and understanding the restrictions your vehicle might have.

Tesla's settings design wasn't considered responsible for the crash because it was the driver who should have understood that the system would take his attention off the road for too long.

The court held that under German regulations Tesla's built-in touchscreen counts as an electronic device, which the driver can only legally use if it's an important control for the vehicle. Drivers can only legally use the touchscreen, the electronic device, if its use is brief and doesn't distract them from the road for too long.

"The setting of the functions necessary for operating the motor vehicle via touchscreen (here: setting the wiping interval of the windshield wiper) is therefore only permitted if the view is only briefly adjusted to the screen based on road, traffic, visibility and weather conditions while at the same time looking away from the traffic situation," the decision reads.

There is a fine line between “consumer protection from a legal point of view” and consumers taking responsibility for their own actions.

Originally Posted by McLaren Rulez

I find this ruling deeply unfair to the driver. He should appeal it!

I am not quite sure how the German legal system works, but I believe this is already a first confirmation of an earlier ruling? I am no expert here, let alone on German law. But I am not so sure how successful such an appeal would be. On what grounds would you appeal. It is the driver’s responsibility. And yes, that would mean stopping the car. Hugely inconvenient, definitely a stupid design, but that is between the driver and Tesla.

Jeroen

[ds.raikkonen]

Originally Posted by Hayek

Am shocked that adjusting the wiper speed on a Tesla requires the touch screen. Clearly shows how the world’s most valuable auto maker is quite clueless about the ergonomics of driving cars

Apparently they did not even provide basic rain gutter channels in the boot in their models sometime back (so when you open it after a rain shower, all the water used to splosh inside). Goes on to show you can be a great battery tech company, but getting basic things right requires time and experience.

[mvadg]

https://electrek.co/2020/08/04/tesla...rmany-crashed/

This makes more sense, at least a higher court sees the real problem:

A local district court gave him a fine and a one-month driving ban and that’s where the problem started for Tesla. He decided to fight the punishment – bringing the case to the Higher Regional Court (OLG). The OLG judge ruled: “The touchscreen permanently installed in the vehicle of the Tesla brand is an electronic device within the meaning of Section 23 (1a) sentence 1 and 2 StVO, the operation of which the motor vehicle driver is only permitted under the conditions of this regulation It does not matter which purpose the driver pursues with the operation, and the setting of the functions required to operate the motor vehicle via the touchscreen (here: setting the wiper interval of the windshield wiper) is therefore only permitted if this is done with a short, Street, traffic, visibility and weather conditions adapted to the view of the screen while at the same time looking away from the traffic is connected “ The judgment sets a precedent for future Tesla drivers about the use of the touchscreen for “functions required to operate the motor vehicle.”

[Turbanator]

I sent a link of this thread to my Son whose daily drive is Model 3, our chat went like this

Me- Does the auto wiper doesn’t work as intended

My Son - they’re on automatic normally, And if you push a button on the left stalk you can turn it on. Pushing that button turns them on for 1 rotation to adjust speed or turn them off you need the touchscreen.

They made a big deal about using like 100 million images to train the neural network to detect rain and adjust the wipers properly automatically.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/electrek...eural-net/amp/

They get better with every update, but about 2 months after the neural network trained wipers went live they started working really really well. The only time I had to manually turn them off was when I was coming from Calgary and there were too many bugs on the windshield.

On the plus side, they work automatically in the snow as well, while other wipers don’t work automatically

This guy was probably on his phone

[Harshal.Bhosale]

There's many aspects to this here.

Originally Posted by neo_narender

When one can turn on/off the wipers using a stalk provided, why not integrate the speed in that too? I can imagine the scenarios where one needs to select the speed of the wipers as per the intensity of the rainfall.
Neo

First, yes, I've always felt that the wiper speed adjustment is something that should be allowed via hard buttons - right now the only solution is to press on the wiper stalk button and quickly tap on the relevant speed on the screen. Bummer. What I think should be implemented by Tesla (and I think it will soon given the huge media attention this issue has generated), is to have it such that the context-sensitive scroll wheels on the steering wheel switch to a wiper speed adjustment mode, i.e. the left scroll wheel on the steering which normally controls media volume should temporarily switch to wiper speed adjustment mode when the wiper stalk button is pressed. (Side note: That's the beauty of having a vast touchscreen that incorporates ALL the controls - and not just multimedia touchscreen. Because the Tesla screen is multimedia + main control display, features like this can be added after the fact, and that makes it infinitely adjustable.)

Right now the fastest way is to press the button on the wiper stalk, and this comes up on the screen. Although I must say - it hardly takes half a second to glance at the screen and change the speed manually, and in my 16 months of ownership I have changed from auto to a manual speed fewer than 5 times (I mostly resorted to that only because I got annoyed at the Auto setting behaving too fast for light rain, so I started turning off the wipers completely and just pressing the wiper stalk button as many times as needed if the rain was intermittent. Nowadays I set the wipers to Auto with a quick screen tap/voice command only if the rain intensity increases; otherwise my wipers are completely off with manual button presses as needed). Based on my overall experience, I still agree with a majority of the folks here that wipers are something that you should be able to control with zero visual interruption from the road.


Secondly, if you understand and have experienced the above, you'll know that the guy in the news is full of crap, trying to shift the blame of his accident on Tesla's wiper control system design. He could have just as easily pressed the right scroll wheel on the steering wheel to activate the voice command feature and said "wiper speed 3/2/1/Auto", and achieved the same result. Fact is, he had an accident, and for whatever reason, he or his lawyer thought that shifting the blame to Tesla's design would get them out of this one. Well, the judges (at apparently two levels of the legal system) saw right through their game plan, and punished him by digging up an obscure technicality which I don't expect them to further enforce (all manufacturers are going towards touchscreen, even the big Germans - Porsche Taycan has 4 huge screens, new Mercedes Benz S Class interior reveal showed all the touchscreens, etc). It just makes sense from a UI/UX perspective to have touchscreens with context-sensitive content, not buttons that remain there whether you want them or not. Believe it or not, it can be done with some good ergonomic thought processes. For those still ruing the advent of touchscreens in cars, I'd like to hark back to January 2007, the launch of the first iPhone. Many were divided on the absence of buttons, but the entire world moved to touchscreens after that, and I expect that even in the automotive industry, all manufacturers will adopt some combination of hard buttons + larger touchscreens now.


Lastly, the whole debate of touchscreens or not - having studied a little bit of ergonomics (especially in the automotive domain) as part of my Automotive master's, I've come to appreciate the thought process and multitudes of trials that go behind UI/UX design. The Tesla interface works, but decidedly more so in the Model 3/Y's horizontal screen than the S/X's vertical one. I've driven a Model S twice for a week each time, and found the vertical touchscreen to be quite a crappy experience - there's no datum rest position for your hand/arm, your hand is just stupidly hanging up in the air in front of the screen as you try to control one of the important features like AC. In that regard, I agree with bigron above when he says that the Model S display is less ergonomic. However I posit here that the Model 3 / Y and upcoming Cybertruck displays are well thought out in terms of functionality. Seems like they learnt their lesson from S/X.

Originally Posted by bigron

Fitts Law talks about the time for the finger to reach a target depends on the size of that target and the distance to the target. The lower buttons placement on the model S is at the bottom of a 17 inch screen. It is so far away from your typical driving position of 10/2 or 9/3 that it is a nightmare. The amount of time it take for your eyes to look away from the road to figure out that button placement is dangerous. I am not even going to talk about the problem of accidental touches that come with using a 17 inch screen. There are several other shortcomings of this interface but we will leave those.

In the Model 3, your forearm rests nicely on the much longer center armrest, allowing your fingers to easily reach the lower portion of the touchscreen where the AC controls are located. Sliding your finger horizontally across is very easy at that point, and having the bottom edge of the screen as a datum reference point for your middle finger can work out really well to roughly position your finger without looking much at the screen. Wish I had a photo / video to show this aspect but I don't at the moment. This even works for the top left / top right corners of the screen where some other useful buttons are located (Bluetooth, Wifi, Dashcam recording on/off, Homelink, etc). You grab onto the corner edge of the screen and with that acting as your datum resting surface, you tap on whatever you want with your thumb. Works every time.

Originally Posted by bigron

The touch screen cannot replace solid buttons for essential functions. It is undisputed that touch screen require more hand to eye coordination than buttons. And that is a distraction when it comes to driving.

I know enough people who have moved to different vehicles simply because they could not deal with the touch screen interface of the Tesla. In-fact the person whose model S I was driving often struggled with it himself in day to day usage. The owner should not be struggling with his own car on a daily basis for simple tasks.

True. Essential functions should remain hardcoded. Voice commands + minimal touchscreen interactions for moderately important functions should take care of the rest.

Originally Posted by neo_narender

1. The glove box can only be opened by the touch screen itself. I mean why? Why can't they integrate a concealed button on the lid of the glovebox itself? How old will that look?

The glovebox thing actually works quite well, because in "Valet" mode, it actually locks up the glovebox (and the frunk, I might add) and the button to open both of these storage spaces disappears from the screen. Can't be done with hardwired buttons now can it? Although I do share your frustration with the possibility of these kinds of software controlled things causing issues in the future - eg. what if the car gets hacked? etc

Originally Posted by neo_narender

1. The flow of aircon, usually a stalk that can be moved left/right/up/down in all vehicles is replaced by a button buried in some setting on the touch screen itself. While the accuracy is spot on, one needs to dig in to the touch screen to change the direction of air flow.
2. ORVMs too? I am not sure on this.

Aircon - I'll give you this one, it takes a longer glance to set the aircon. They have attempted to make it controllable via voice commands ("set passenger airflow to the right" and so on), but its not as exhaustive as manually setting the airflow to the precise location we want.

ORVM - actually works really well, either use voice command or press one of the seat adjustment buttons on the seat to bring up the little mirror adjustment menu on the screen, then use the scroll wheels to change. I like that, and since it gets saved to your driver profile as GutsyGibbon mentioned above, you don't have to worry about it ever.

[neo_narender]

Originally Posted by Harshal.Bhosale

There's many aspects to this here.

Thank you so much for detailed information about it. It is always nice to get the owner's perspective with the car in question.

I would like to share my experience related to wipers:
I was driving a 2016 Hyundai Sonata rental car & was new to the United States. By this time, I was used to American/European cars with wiper stalk on the right. So, while driving on a two-lane road (one each for both directions), there was a huge dip in the road including heavy amounts of water, right before a curve. By the time I approached the water, another car passed me with a good amount of speed. Resulting in a lot of water splashing on the front windshield. And then I hit the dip with water in it, with more muddy water on the windshield.

For a 5-second period I panicked. Although I was not confused as to which stalk to use to activate wipers, but I was pulling the stalk towards me (for that 5 second period) rather pushing it down. I controlled my speed and turned the steering towards the curve & avoided falling off the road into a ditch.

It may not look like much, but for me that was scary as the location was middle of nowhere with very less traffic, after sunset & to add to my misery, low fuel with no fuel station on maps anywhere close.

I understand auto wipers would engage immediately when there is water on the windshield, but I can totally understand the Tesla driver's situation, particularly if he were new to that vehicle.

Neo

[Lowflyer23]

This are the initial signs of what is going to happen if car manufacturers start building tablets on wheels. This should come as a wake up call and I hope at least buttons for basic functions should return.

The location of the buttons simply gets registered in your memory and touchscreens however advanced they maybe simply cannot do that.

I have myself faced a heart in mouth situation adjusting the Air conditioner of a Honda City on a state highway

[McLaren Rulez]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

On what grounds would you appeal?

No expert on the German system either and maybe I misunderstood the ruling but given that the central screen controls nearly everything on the car, I would think it's fair to say that using the touchscreen is quite different to, say, using a phone while driving.

As you pointed out in your earlier post, this ruling seems to imply that adjusting the navigation or a radio station via a car's touchscreen can only be done with the car stationary.

[GrandTourer]

Good judgement, although I believe the manufacturer should have been held liable instead of the driver, since the driver was not given any other option to change wiper speed.

It's such a bad trend in the industry right now. Land Rover, Audi and a few others are also moving aircon and media controls to touchscreens. That just a disaster waiting to happen.

Look at the computer industry. There is a reason laptops and desktops do not have touchscreen keyboards like they show in those sci-fi movies. I typed this entire post without looking at the keyboard for more than 2 seconds combined.

Simple and proven tech should not change. Period.

[GutsyGibbon]

Originally Posted by GrandTourer

Simple and proven tech should not change. Period.

It is one thing to say something should not change as a matter of personal preference. I feel, it is going overboard when something is deemed illegal, or unusable. There will always be one group of people who prefer simple elegant designs. And another who prefer a button khichdi like that of an airplane. I am sure there will be cars for both camps. I drove a 2018 Q7, and I was certainly not impressed. To navigate, I had to literally write the entire address on the touch pad, and it got the handwriting wrong way too many times. IMHO, this image below looks like a button khichidi. Other 2020 model German cars seem worse.
https://media.whatcar.com/wc-image/2...di-q7-4471.jpg

Should button khichidi be illegal? No, I am sure there will be people who really love button khichidi. They should not buy a Tesla, and complain about the lack of khichdi.

Khichdi talk aside, this user could have pressed the wiper button on the left stalk (behind the steering), and pressed on the wiper speed once on the screen. It is not like it is a game where the wiper speed button appears mysteriously that needs to be hunted down. The user screwed up, and wants to shift the blame on the car. Like hundreds of users who failed to brake and blamed Toyota for unintended acceleration.