Here’s a scenario: You’re driving down the road in your Tesla Model S, and it starts to rain. The wipers automatically come on and set the speed to whatever it deems necessarily thanks to the automatic rain sensors. However, this speed isn’t fast or slow enough, so you reach over and navigate through the menus on your big touchscreen infotainment system to make the adjustment. Suddenly, you end up off the road and embedded into the side of a rather large tree. Sounds bad enough, right? Well, what if using that touchscreen, even for a safety feature, can be considered distracted driving and can cause you to lose your license and pay a fine? Seems ridiculous, right? Well, accident aside, a German court has just ruled that using the touchscreen in a Tesla counts as distracted driving, setting a precedent that could, eventually, lead to legal trouble for anyone spotted touching their screens while driving.

Using a Touchscreen Infotainment Screen: As Bad As Looking at Your Phone?

Believe it or not, the story I just told you above is quite similar to something that happened over the course of the last year. In fact, the accident, which is a fairly accurate description of what happened, occurred last year. The most recent judgment was dished out on March 27, 2020 butonly came to light after being picked up by a German Legal blog.

Sometime after the accident happened, the local court in Karlsruhe concluded that the driver of a Tesla veered out of his lane while distracted by the infotainment system, and eventually drove into an embankment and some trees. Even thought the court acknowledged that the Tesla setup requires “significantly more attention from the driver,” it still claimed the driver has the responsibility to pay attention to the road first and foremost.

The law itself concludes that you can only use devices with touchscreens for a brief glance, and only when you take into account road conditions, traffic, visibility, and weather. Ultimately, the driver was banned from the road for one month and fined €200 (about $237 at current exchange rates). The driver appealed to a higher, regional court with the argument that it was a safety related feature he needed to access, but the higher court ended up backing the first judgement.

So, the point of the story is this: Now that a court has declared a touchscreen infotainment system as a decide, there is now precedent for legal action to be taken anytime you’re seen touching your device whether it’s built it and safety related or not. You can’t really say you didn’t see this coming.