Why do people use their phone in the car as if they were outside the car?

[EVer Hopeful]

I've seen this a few times - people driving a Tesla of one sort or another but using their phone at the same time. Well I suppose we all use our phone, but when I do it I use the bluetooth and use the mic and speaker in the car - I've seen people doing that weird hold-it-horizontally-in-front-of-your-mouth thing (and what's up with that anyway?)

I just wonder what the deal is - did they just never pair the phone to the vehicle?

Has anyone else seen this?

 

[Resist]

Because people are idiots. Everyone really needs to just stop using their phones while driving because even handsfree it's easy to get too distracted in a phone conversation. And nothing is so important that it can't wait until you can pull over. We have generations of people that don't remember a time driving without a phone next to them and that's kind of sad.

 

[OxBrew]

Yeah people are lazy, that's probably most of it.

Certain phone things can't be done through the phone, like call or text my son. I can use voice to call everyone else on my list, but not him.

When wife is with me, she connects her phone while I drive, so she can do the music/podcasts etc.

Sometimes I'll navigate on my phone as a backup to the car, with all the construction and traffic, I need both to really know what's going on. (neither is better, they are just different, I get a more complete view of traffic with 2).

 

[Resist]

Certain phone things can't be done through the phone, like call or text my son. I can use voice to call everyone else on my list, but not him.

You can't call or text through your phone? Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you are trying to say.

 

[Stirfry]

I just wonder what the deal is - did they just never pair the phone to the vehicle?

Has anyone else seen this?

I don't find the in-car mic very good so I use my phone on speaker.

As to why I hold the phone as you describe; when I hold it to my ear the side of my face often hits the hangup button.

 

[OxBrew]

You can't call or text through your phone? Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you are trying to say.

Tesla does not recognize his name, but gets all the others.

It even spells it out correctly but then says command not understood.

 

[zoomer0056]

Tesla does not recognize his name, but gets all the others.

It even spells it out correctly but then says command not understood.

My wife's name is not recognizable by my phone so she's listed as "wife". "Call wife" works every time in or outside my car. The mic and speaker work just fine in my Feb 2022 MSLR. Change your son's listed name to something recognizable.

Puzzled minds also wanna know why people stop one to two car lengths behind the stop line or car in front and spend the whole time waiting to go by inching up.

 

[Calliope]

Doing that will get you stopped by the cops, if they see you. The handsfree system works well enough, especially now that we can finally answer and hang up a call without using the touchscreen. I wish it would accept a voice command for a particular phone option for a person.....I can say "Call Jane" and it will call Jane, but if I have both a home and work number listed for Jane, I can't say "Call Jane work" and get it to call Jane's work number. Or, at least, it isn't working that way for me. Instead I get the various phone number options for Jane on screen, and I have to hit the one labelled "work".

 

[EVer Hopeful]

"Call wife" works every time in or outside my car.

Once they include AI into the system, then (hopefully) once you say "Call wife" it'll respond with "Do you really want to do that ... think very carefully"

. .. followed by "Please enter the safe word"

 

[DJ DizzR]

Once Tesla finally includes Apple Car Play and Android Auto, then you'll see a decrease in people using their phones. It still boggles my mind that a 2015 Honda CRV has had Apple car play and Tesla still doesn't.

 

[Calliope]

Once Tesla finally includes Apple Car Play and Android Auto, then you'll see a decrease in people using their phones.

It certainly isn't any safer than using the phone, and the last time I used it (several years ago, in a rental), it was clunky and ugly and not really worth much.

Am I the only person who sees no benefit to Apple Car Play?

 

[canasion35]

I don't find the in-car mic very good so I use my phone on speaker.

As to why I hold the phone as you describe; when I hold it to my ear the side of my face often hits the hangup button.

I find the same. Road noise at 70 mph on the freeway makes it so hard for people to hear me on the in car microphone.

 

[jjrandorin]

It certainly isn't any safer than using the phone, and the last time I used it (several years ago, in a rental), it was clunky and ugly and not really worth much.

Am I the only person who sees no benefit to Apple Car Play?

No, you arent. Tesla also is unlikely to add either one of them, either, unless they go out of business and are bought by another company, but we have been over and over and over (and over) that here in various threads on TMC over the years, in various threads, but people still think its going to happen.

 

[fholbert]

It certainly isn't any safer than using the phone, and the last time I used it (several years ago, in a rental), it was clunky and ugly and not really worth much.

Am I the only person who sees no benefit to Apple Car Play?

Before Tesla, I drove a call Apple Car Play auto 120k miles in 4 years. Not having Car Play in my MY was the biggest disappointment in my purchase. Car Play beats the Tesla system hands down.

 

[Resist]

Doing that will get you stopped by the cops, if they see you.

In some places it's not illegal to hold your phone while driving, which is crazy to me because the data is clear that people are distracted doing this and have cause many accidents, even deadly accidents, especially by teenagers. While smart phones have saved a lot of lives they have also caused a lot of deaths and caused people to be socially inept.

 

[alexgr]

I've seen this a few times - people driving a Tesla of one sort or another but using their phone at the same time. Well I suppose we all use our phone, but when I do it I use the bluetooth and use the mic and speaker in the car - I've seen people doing that weird hold-it-horizontally-in-front-of-your-mouth thing (and what's up with that anyway?)

I just wonder what the deal is - did they just never pair the phone to the vehicle?

Has anyone else seen this?

I should say, this behavior is not limited to Tesla drivers. Driving plenty of 50mph two-lane roads, I often see the cars crossing the center line driving over 50 mph with all their attention on their phones. On roads with more lanes, when I see phone users next to me starting to drift left or right, I even honk sometimes. AP and FSD may be not ideal, but human is the real problem.

 

[OxBrew]

Change your son's listed name to something recognizable

No thanks. I like his name. Not letting the car's shortcomings run my life. I just laugh at it and call him later or pull over if it's important.

 

[gtae07]

Tesla does not recognize his name, but gets all the others.

It even spells it out correctly but then says command not understood.

Happens to me most of the time. "Call Erin" I say.

call Erin (gaaah you had it!)

call Aaron

Contact not found

 

[Resist]

This is why I don't like using voice commands, it gets things wrong. But mostly because it's slower. Just like auto seat adjustments, I would rather manually adjust my seats without electric motors because it's way faster doing it manually. Tech for the sake of tech doesn't always make things better.

 

[EVer Hopeful]

Tech for the sake of tech doesn't always make things better.

Well I definitely agree with that, but I have to say I like seat memory, because even if I managed to get it back to the exact same position, I'd always be wriggling around thinking it wasn't quite the same as before