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Legislators Ponder BlackBerry Pileups
WSJdpatton writes to mention that legislators are taking a look at a new driving offense, DWT — Driving While Texting. Sparked by an increase in accidents related to the use of an electronic devices, this is just the latest in a string of "distracted driving" laws that are being entertained. "Some wireless industry supporters argue that statutes barring texting while driving are too specific. What is needed, they say, is not narrowly focused legislation, but a campaign to educate the public about all driver distractions. In Washington, D.C., an industry lobby group called CTIA -- The Wireless Association has begun tracking legislation, including Ms. McDonald's bill, and scratching out a strategy to counter it."
Oh, Oh, Oh, I know the answer!
"some common freaking sense or a chauffeur!"
There are only two steps in the gathering of ultimate knowledge. Open your eyes and, RTFM!
I-94 sucks every single day, and I see people staring at their phone while driving on this deathtrap of an interstate all the time...
I got nothin'
Why do we need all of these new laws? Isn't driving carelessly already illegal? And how are we going to enforce all of these new laws anyway? Force auto makers to equip cars with built-in spy cams with wireless transmissions to the police?
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Can we just outlaw driving already and be done with it?
That doesn't really get to the root of the problem. We need to start punishing stupidity more harshly.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
This morning I was stuck behind a vapid looking blond in a Mercedes. She was driving erratically, speeding up and slowing down, veering outside her lane, and cutting people off. Then I noticed that she had her rear-view mirror tilted so she could see herself, and she appeared to be doing her hair and makeup while driving.
That is unsafe driving. Unsafe driving is currently against the law, and it covers more than just cell phones and crackberries. It is no more enforced than any new law against one specific type of unsafe driving would be. Why don't we just enforce the laws we have instead of making new ones that will also only be conditionally enforced?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Some wireless industry supporters argue that statutes barring texting while driving are too specific. What is needed, they say, is not narrowly focused legislation, but a campaign to educate the public about all driver distractions
Close, but not quite.
There's an infinite variety of shit you can distract yourself with when you're driving. Trying to craft legislation to address every single one of those things would be a great jobs program for would-be legislators, but it's likely to be ineffectual.
Like so many other problems with cars, this is one that's directly the responsibility of the idiot behind the wheel. Competent drivers don't distract themselves while they're driving, and the source of the problem is that we insist on giving drivers' licenses to people who are not only not competent, but whose only qualification for driving is the ability to fog a mirror.
If drivers' licenses actually signified some level of competence, rather than simply the ability to pay a registration fee, then the problem of drivers playing with their Blackberries or their cellphones or their makeup or a road map while they're supposed to be driving would tend to disappear, because those people would be either on a bus, or in the back seat of a carpool.
Unfucking believable. I was tempted to put her in the ditch on principle.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
is enforcing the laws as they exist. And not making new ones to be seen as "doing something"
There are already laws on the books for negligent driving.
There are already laws on the books for distracted driving.
Between those two, you cover the vast swath of "being a danger to others".
You don't need laws for "driving while texting", "driving while putting on makeup", "driving while reading the NYT", "driving while eating", "driving while thinking about that really hot chick at the club", "driving while changing clothes", "driving while being outsmarted by the radio/CD player", "driving while tired, because I was an idiot and stayed up all night playing WoW", etc.
If any of those (or thousands of other examples) result in the person driving in a distracted or negligent manner, they are ALREADY illegal. If not, then why should anyone care?
So that politicians can look like they're doing something about this grave new threat to everyone's safety.
Seriously, aside from the fact that driving carelessly is already against the law, exactly how many "Blackberry pile-ups" have their been? I'm guessing it's a miniscule number caused by either flukes or by people who drive so stupidly that they would have had an accident whatever they were doing.
Do we really need a law to prevent, what, a dozen or so at the most accidents a year? Would those dozen or so people who cause those accident really not send text messages while driving because of it?
why should i be given fines and increased insurance because other people cant handle it.
Because you're wrong - you can't handle it. You've handled it _so far_ but you're increasing your risk while driving distracted. Period. You may never get into/cause an accident, but your risk of doing so is higher than mine.
Build a sensor into the airbag system that looks for wireless devices within 2 ft of the steering wheel.
If found, do not activate airbag.
Problem solved.
I can drive perfectly well while using a phone or eating because i know how to read the early signs of stupid people
What is your licence plate number so I know to avoid you? Whenver someone says they drive fine with distractions and the problem is with stupid people on the road. Then that means they are a bad driver and don't want to admit it. I know I am not the best driver in the world realizing that has made me a little bit safer and calmer on the road. Knowing and admiting to yourself when you make a mistake allows you to fix it in the future to improve your driving. As well it makes you less fustrated when someone else does a mistake because you can remember when you did the same thing. But the people who think they are good drivers usually act like jerks on the road cutting people off tailgating them and may other bad driving things just because they think they can handle it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I can't think of anyone likely to call/text me that is so important that I risk my life, and the lives of others. to answer the fucking phone! They can wait till I get where I'm going.
We need stupid people. Stupid people do what they are told to do by their society. Most of the time, this is what has worked for their ancestors and will still work for them. This provides a surplus upon which all innovation and excellence is based. Without stupid people, you'd have everyone innovating all the time and not doing what works. The problem with innovation is that, much of the time, it fails.
Einstein, alone in the jungle without a bunch of "stupid" people around to take up the slack and focus on the environment, would likely be too distracted thinking abstract thoughts to notice the lion creeping up on him. It takes all kinds to make our world work. Remember that the next time you want to off a group of people that evolution has, so far, kept around in the gene pool in relatively large numbers.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Maybe it's sarcasm that went over my head, but I think you're serious, so I'll bite...
I can drive perfectly well while using a phone or eating because i know how to read the early signs of stupid people and PUT DOWN THE PHONE OR FOOD when i see them.
For me, the early signs of stupid people are people who are on the phone or eating.
I'm clear of at fault accidents for over 5 years, and i've only been driving for 8.
I've been driving for 20 years. No accidents of any kind. Only 5 years since your last at-fault accident makes you worse than average.
Just pull over if you're too busy to drive.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Electronic gadgets are not as big of a distraction as driving with children.
You can turn off gadgets, but you cannot turn off your children. (Well, you can, but they tend to not come back on and it voids the warrenty.)
Until they outlaw children in cars these accidents will continue to happen.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Wow, that almost rivals the "if we can put a man on the moon" non-sequitur for "huh?"-factor.
... gee, you might as well ban driving!"
"Oh, so let me see, I can't be drunk while driving, I can't be dropping acid, I can't use a cell phone, I can't camp the passing lane, I can't watch TV, I can't put on lipstick, I can't fire automatic weapons
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
They don't need a new law to deal with this. Reckless driving is already on the books in every jurisdiction. All they need is a law, regulation or ruling saying that failure to pay attention to the road, regardless of why you're not paying attention, is indeed reckless driving. Then it doesn't matter whether the guy's texting on his Blackberry, gabbing on his cel phone, has his head down fiddling with his overly-complicated stereo system or is turned around yelling at his kid in the back seat, he can get pulled over and ticketed. In California this is already the case, see California Vehicle Code sections 23103 and 23104. Besides the fine and possible jail time, it's also a 2-point violation and 4 points in 12 months or 6 points in 24 months is a suspended license which will really put a crimp in these people's lives.
This is already covered by UK law - either driving without due care and attention, or causing death by dangerous driving.
. stm.
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In fact someone who caused a fatal accident while texting has been sentenced to jail for 2 years, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6357425.stm and another to a young offenders institution, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/6448887
But it's common to other EU countries too, here is another example from France; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3673632.s
...is to switch to ubiquitous public transportation. The problem is that people at large are stupid. Driving is a dangerous activity and people get hurt or killed every day. And yet it's the only choice most of us have.
Lawmakers have to get out of this mindset of making laws for things to say what we can't do, and maybe work on rethinking the problem a bit.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
I can drive perfectly well while using a phone or eating because i know how to read the early signs of stupid people.
So can my mother. I'm clear of at fault accidents for over 5 years, and i've only been driving for 8.
A poor driver avoids "at fault accidents"
A good driver avoids accidents.
The defense of "the other guy came from nowhere and hit me" is only useful for determining who pays. In reality, it's bullshit. The "other guy" came from somewhere. Just because the law doesn't fault you for not avoiding the accident doesn't mean you had no options at the time. Maybe if you hung up the phone, stopped shoving food in your hole, and drove with a little more attention than the absolute legally required minimum, you wouldn't be involved in as many accidents. Unfortunately, that won't happen until you adopt a more mature and responsible attitude towards wielding a lethal weapon.
Actually this could be a counterexample. Studies have shown that people with a big spike in front of them instead of an airbag drive *far* more carefully...
The only ultimate solution is cars that drive themselves. Technology is on the rise, and people will be finding more and more ways to distract themselves behind the wheel. Furthermore, days are getting more and more busy in this fast paced society of ours, and we all have plenty of crap to think about whilst in transit to work or school.
Automated highways are the solution for the future, and really the only solution IMHO. Until they are implemented, we will continue to lose 17,000 people to drunk driving deaths per year alone, and once we tack on all the "blackberry pileups" and other "accidental" accidents, where do we end up?
Is there a statistician in the house?
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I'm a self-modifying sig virus
Hey, it's not the mods fault that you lack the insight to figure out why your behavior is selfish and unsafe, regardless of your inflated opinions.
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
The exact same argument could be used to pass a law making it illegal to build a campfire in the passenger seat of your car while driving. It's impractical to make laws to prevent every stupid thing a person may do while driving. At some point, you have to say, "You know what? We're going to trust you to use a little bit of common sense. If we find that you've got a bit of a lapse of it, though, and you do something dangerous, we're going to pull you over and give you a ticket."
Yes, some people will still do stupid things. They always will. It's impossible to outlaw them all.
What you can do is make a judgment about which are particularly dangerous. Drunk driving fits into that category, evidenced by the enormous number of accidents and fatalities caused by drunk drivers. Driving while drunk is also a special case in my mind because drinking specifically causes your judgment to be impaired. Texting on a Blackberry, to my knowledge, doesn't make one more stupid than they already are.
That why I was wonder exactly how many "Blackberry pile-ups" there are. If the answer is thousands, then yeah, passing a law against it would probably be a Good Thing®. If it's a few fluke fender-benders, then it's no big deal, and should be well-covered by existing laws regarding paying attention (or in this case, not) while on the road.
Aviation cockpit designers think hard about this stuff. They refer to it as "head-down time", the time the pilot is looking at something else in the cockpit and not out the windscreen. In combat, this is fatal. Hence the military emphasis on heads-up displays and HOTAS (Hands On Throttle and Stick) input devices. In civilian aircraft, cockpits are designed to minimize head-down time at least during takeoff, approach, and landing.
Much automotive and civilian gear is terrible by these standards. Cockpit designers insist on big knobs you can set by feel and interfaces that minimize head-down time. They try hard to avoid interfaces with unneeded state, and ones where you have to look to see what state you're in. BMW's iDrive was terrible in this regard. BMW's answer was to include a disclaimer that it was unsafe to operate iDrive while driving. Really.
One design feature that can kill - an interface which times out. The pilot/driver must be able to stop dealing with some cockpit gadget without losing any work. Phones/keyboards/dashboard devices that time out during data entry are dangerous, because they train the user to give them undivided attention. Some phones have this problem, and some don't. Texting has this problem.
"Nothing to watch but the road" - early Oldsmobile slogan.
Actually, I would be willing to bet money that more accidents are caused from blow jobs while driving. I mean seriously... that's something that everybody does, and an orgasm is a hell of a lot more distracting than any text message I could possibly think of. But I agree... it's already covered; we don't need any more ridiculous laws like this. Stuff like this makes me wish that more people would wake up and vote Libertarian.
I don't respond to AC's.
one accident in the past 5 years thank you.. i was hit while sitting at a light behind someone else, next to someone on the right, and next to a ditch in the median on the left.. i was hit by a drunk.
Did you put down your phone before he hit you due to your uncanny ability to detect the stupid in advance?
And you were still in at least one at-fault accident before that, which is one more than me in the entire time you've been driving. Why should I be impressed with your amazing driving abilities again?
by a freaking troll who cant accept what someone else tells them, and decides to make insinuations about HIS life, and also cannot accept the fact that not everyone with a phone is incapable of driving.
Nobody is incapable of driving while talking on the phone. If they were incapable, there wouldn't be a problem because they wouldn't be on the road. No, the problem is idiots like you who think you can be distracted by a phone, but because of your magic ability to identify stupid people in advance -- an ability apparently not hampered by being on the phone -- you know to put the phone down before an accident happens, so you're not any less safe. You are dangerously wrong.
The problem is people like you who think that because they are capable of driving while on the phone, that ergo they are no less safe driving while on the phone. People like you are the problem. People like you cause accidents. Just because you may not have caused one yet means very little, just like you're not having been killed yet doesn't mean you are immortal. So no, I'm not going to just accept someone who says they have magical driving abilities that makes using the phone no less safe for them.
I've heard it too many times before. Someone who thinks that they are a great driver, and all problems are caused by other idiots. Someone who thinks that they are such a great driver, that what is for everyone else a bad driving habit is not any more dangerous for them. If you were such a great driver, you would not have the bad habit to begin with. But you're not. You're another idiot who thinks you're smarter than everyone else and can drive like a jacktard without putting anyone at risk. Just like every other idiot on the phone while driving.
Here's a fact: No actual good driver thinks that they themselves are not a possible source of error while driving. No actual good driver thinks they can engage in unsafe driving practices safetly. Being a good driver means knowing what is safe and unsafe, not that the rules of safety magically change. Anyone who claims that is, in fact, an unsafe driver.
This ain't a troll, this is a flame from an irate driver sick of retards who think their self-proclaimed super-driving means they can be unsafe on the road. You are no different than those you deride, and you're equally delusional. I'll wrap this up by saying to you what I say to them:
TELL THEM YOU'LL CALL THEM BACK, THEN HANG UP AND FUCKING DRIVE.
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