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New System Detects Calls While Driving
Gary writes "Talking on your cellphone while driving isn't a crime in most states, but it should be. Studies have shown that people who drive and talk are many times more likely to have an accident. A new company is releasing a device to automatically detect drivers talking on their cell phones. Instead of police officers needing to observe a cellphone in use, the system automatically detects a cell phone call and records which car was making the call." The article is fairly light on details, but it would be interesting to see how the system differentiates from a driver talking on a cell phone versus a mere passenger.
For goodness sake stop making stupid laws against doing something simply because people are a danger doing it when they haven't been taught properly.
Pilots are REQUIRED to make radio calls and communicate with Air Traffic Control. We'd need one hell of a sophisticated system to elliminate the need to communicate with ATC. Yet they're able to fly vehicles much more challenging to operate than cars, trucks and other road vehicles, remaining more safe statistically speaking, all while constantly making radio calls that are just as distracting as mobile calls are to drivers.
Why? Because pilots are taught how to monitor more than one thing at a time. They must keep speed, altitude and direction all within certain parameters while communicating. Critically they are tested on these skills before they are granted a license. What we need to be doing is including talking on a mobile phone while staying safe on driving tests. Then you'd see people more able to do this than you currently do. Of course it's much easier for authorities to instead make talking on a mobile illegal then collect revenue from law breakers while the lot of us mindlessly talk about the dangers of mobile phones while driving.
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So what's next, forbidding the driver from talking to the passengers ?
Because, in case you are using a hands-free set while talking on the phone, it's not any different from talking to somebody else in the car.
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