Making it user adjustable is probably a bad idea at least easily user adjustable
Remember let us be honest. Most drivers are through and through morons. Blunt plain simple and dead honest.
Now beside that you can never ever blame the shifter direction for an accident. It tells you in very large print what gear its in. In fact its 1000% superior to a normal shifter no matter which way you do it because our shifter is binary. On or off zero ambiguity. A normal shifter gives you very little actual physical feedback. Ie you really need to be looking at the indicator to know what gear position your in.
Alas as I said. Most drivers are morons. Driver error not shifter error. Make sure your clear in understanding that fact.
As I said. When I got in the car my first instinct never having driven one or a prius was to push forward to go forward. I was actually surprised to see the R when I did this because not being a moron I did not release the brake without positive confirmation.
Backwards for forward is dumb. Period. The fact that its always been done that way is irrelevant. Its always been dumb from a design perspective. If you think otherwise its really simple. Your wrong.
Now from a mechanical perspective it makes sense. Which is why we have "always done it that way"
And why it might make sense to keep doing it that way. Again most drivers are morons.
Before you think I am calling you a moron. Stop it. The fact that you have the brains to even be on these forums puts you in an entirely different league from average joe.
Also consider a manual transmission car. In every (every one I have driven) forward is always forward backwards is always reverse.
So when "I" switch between the leaf and my ice car I always have to "reverse" the process
In my ice forward is fotward backward is reverse but in the leaf its backwards forward is reverse backwards is forwards.
Guess how much it bothers me? Not at all. Took about 5 seconds to adapt the very first time only.
But thus thred may get me to seitch it for no other reason that just because I can