> By design this driver may be looking down frequently at their controls

Actually not, for hand controls. No more than you look at the pedals. It goes into muscle memory just as much.

I have been a passenger with two different hand-control drivers. Both were as smooth as a driver using foot pedals. I once moved their car for one of them —- in a tiny town on a quiet street, for about 5 blocks at low speed. It was difficult for me — zero muscle memory and zero “feel” for the car. It does take some practice, I will give you that, but you never have to look at the lever, even as a noob.

Besides, I don't think there's any more comfort or lessened stakes to be had knowing that the driver that t-boned your kid was looking down at their prosthetic leg or custom controls instead of a smartphone. Or in the middle of an autistic break or epileptic fit or attention deficit fugue or narcoleptic episode.

Fine, the software's enum value of "EYES_DOWN" doesn't quite capture the domain of nuance of all the reasons eyes might be down. But it doesn't necessarily matter.

Since you have both now misspelled the name of the neurological disorder, I feel obliged to point out that it’s spelled Tourette's syndrome.

My apologies - I did not spell check the cut&paste as I should have done, my bad. No slight meant.

While I agree with the concern, I think there's almost zero chance that a neural net trained on people looking at phones would classify a driver looking at hand controls as that same thing. The neural net would more likely have another classification of "unknown attention", being unable to conclusively classify the driver's attention.