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US Agency Blocked Cellphone / Driving Safety Study
By now you've probably seen the NY Times's long piece on distracted driving — about how most drivers and most legislators willfully ignore the evidence of the dangers of talking on a cellphone, texting, and other electronic distractions while behind the wheel. According to this article, cellphone use while driving causes over 1,000 fatalities a year in the US. Another shoe has now dropped: it seems that the US National Highway Safety Administration blocked a proposed definitive study of the risks. The NHSA now cites concerns about angering Congress. Two consumer safety groups had filed a FOIA request for documents about the aborted study, and the Times has now made the documents public — including the research behind the request for a study of 10,000 drivers.
*SCREEEECH* *KABOOM*
The highway safety researchers estimated that cellphone use by drivers caused around 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents over all in 2002.
The scary thing about this is that those numbers were from 2002. Think about how many more cellphones there are out there today than there were in 2002.
This guy's the limit!
How can we expect to remain the most powerful country in the world if we turn into a bunch of big pussies, trying to stop anyone from taking any type of risk? I am much more productive if I can talk on my cellphone and respond to e-mails during my commute. Sometimes there is an accident; such is life. Eggs must be broken to make omelets. What happened to the can-do, damn-the-torpedoes attitude that got us to the moon?
Meanwhile, every public pool has a policy of emptying everyone if thunder is heard. "Oh, you might get struck by lightening!" Yeah, well, you know what the chances of that are? A hell of a lot less than the risk that one of these brats is going to run out into the street and get run over by a car (perhaps while the driver is calling to see if the pool is open).
It's like people take all these precautions against the least likely dangers, while the more likely risks are ignored.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Two words for most of congress. "FUCK YOU"
Just cause that's what they do to America everyday.
Who cares if we "anger congress" , we should have more things that anger congress. A government should be afraid of it's people and not the other way around. Fuck why can't I live like a normal free person in antarctica.... less booze for me...out
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
I am honestly completely stunned by this article. I had thought the majority of countries had passed laws about the use of cell phones while driving, I did not know the US was so far behind. Many studies in other countries have shown use of cell phone (even hands free) is the equivalent to driving with a mid range blood alcohol level or worse and has been banned in most western countries with hefty fines for using your cell phone while driving.
Lets say you block cell phone usage. Does your technology exclude calls to emergency services? If not that's going to lead to deaths. Does your technology differentiate between the driver and a passenger? (I don't know how you'd even try to do that).
For starters we could enforce the existing laws. Caught talking on your cellphone twice, hand over your license.
Better would be to teach drivers to better cope with distractions including cell phone usage. If a pilot be required to be communicating on a radio while they land and take off - in a fast moving vehicle that falls out of the sky if not kept within parameters, at the edge of those parameters - I think drivers can be taught to drive safely on a cell phone. Not just left to their own devices to work out how, but taught. Where are the studies on how effective it is to teach drivers to drive while distracted by cell phones and other modern devices?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Ban cell phone conversations in cars? That'd be the only way - the "hands free" laws are as good as no laws at all, its the division of attention that causes the accidents, not the holding of the phone. The only thing the hands free law is good for is for keeping the other drivers from knowing that the reason that a person is driving like a drunk is that they're blabbing on the phone. And banning phones in cars will cause some people to turn in their phones and cancel the service, because the car is about the only place they use and need them (like me.) So, I want to see the study that pits the consequences of fewer cell phones in society vs. the death rate, since it may take longer to get an accident called in to 911, or for help for a lot of other things to be summoned, etc. It's always a 2-edged sword if you ban something, since you have to consider the effects of its absence as well as the effects of its presence.
Heh, I can drink an iced coffee, roll a cigarette,
and smoke pot at the same time whilst driving. Would that count as multi tasking?
The NYT article is pretty specific that the study of 10,000 drivers was needed because all of the current estimates of the impact of cel use on driver accidents are based on unproven assumptions and (one might suggest) speculation.
The problem as always is that so much traffic safety "data" is founded on police reports of the "speed was a factor" variety. These are subjective guesswork, not scientific evidence
Certainly any distraction raises the likelihood of driver error, but that includes a multitude of things including loud music, scantily clad women on street corners, animated electronic billboards, and kids fighting in the backseat
You can't eliminate all distractions, so how can we teach drivers to filter out non-essential stimulation, or create auto technology that will protect drivers in moments of distraction?
Three Squirrels
How about tin foil hats?
"I can drink an iced coffee, roll a cigarette, and smoke pot at the same time whilst driving."
Tobacco is bad for you.
Look: I've heard the statistics, and I don't drive while on the cell phone anymore simply because it's illegal... but, I don't see how talking to someone causes this kind of distraction. Texting? Sure, I'm on board with that one. When you have to take your eyes away from the road, that's fine. But calling someone and talking to them? How is that any worse than talking to someone next to you? I'm all for making laws that make everyone safer, and I don't think the current law in my state (CA) is particularly unjust, but I do think that pursuing this further is a waste of time and money.
Or limit one child per family...
Driving while distracted is (and always has been) dangerous, there's no questioning that. But my question is if cell phone usage is as huge a deal as everyone makes it out to be. There hasn't been a huge increase in car crashes since cell phone came into common usage. In fact, the number of deaths from auto accidents has actually gone down as a percentage of the population according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year). So the number of deaths from car accidents hasn't increased with the introduction of this huge danger.
I think the issue is that cell phones are something easy and visible for people to blame. Where before an accident was caused by someone playing with the radio, or changing the CD, or eating or whatever, that was easily ignored or missed, now everyone sees that the person was on their cell phone and they KNOW that was the cause. Even when someone cuts them off in traffic, it must be the cell phone, when it is probably the person is either just an asshole or a bad driver. But because they were on the phone, it must be the phone.
If they want to do studies, why not do them on cell phones as well as other common things people do while driving? What effect does playing the radio, changing the CD, programming and following your GPS, eating and drinking, or anything else have on your driving?
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
in the year 2009 the majority of earths then human population began the struggle to implement true multithreading.
Quack, quack.
I was shocked and dismayed as I read this article on my iPhone while headed into work on the turnpike this morning.
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
Driving while arguing with a woman is also dangerous. I ran 2 stop-signs because of such. Are they going to ban that too?
Table-ized A.I.
It called Maintaining Control of Your Vehicle.
Good drivers don't really need any other law in order to comply with the above.
They observe what's going on around them, and adapt accordingly - whether it's slowing down, stopping for a nap, adding following distance, or refraining from phone use.
What we actually need is enforcement of the above.
Involved in an accident?
The burden is on you to prove you did everything a reasonable person would to prevent it.
Currently, I can pull out from an intersection and deliberately t-bone someone and suffer no serious repercussions, unless I'm proven impaired, or some other gross act.
"Oops - I didn't seem him" gets people out of what should have been criminal charges all the time.
I blame mandatory insurance for some of this.
Everyone looks at accidents like "you were insured? no harm - no foul.
I see people every day who should be locked up for the lack of common care they put into their driving.
"Maybe some people can handle it. Maybe they can't."
It isn't terribly different from drinking and driving - both affect judgement. Drinking is outlawed for drivers, so cellphones should be too. Saying that "I can handle it" is one of the macho things men said 40 years ago, before they ran a kid over on the way home from the bar.
Anyone who claims that the cell phone doesn't impair their driving is being dishonest with himself, not to mention being dishonest with the rest of us.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It seems every day now I end up stopped behind some idiot who's too busy texting on the phone to realize he's sitting at a damn green light. Or I watch some soccer mom weaving around in her SUV with the telltale hand to the head posture.
It used to be that here in the south that when you saw a car weaving around it was from good old fashioned drunk driving! WTF happened?!
PM
Troll? It's obvious that f**king around with your mobile phone while driving is going to take your attention off the road and probably cause you to crash. If NHSA is too scared of upsetting congressmen who dick around with their phones while driving, then I think the attitude towards mobile phone use in cars is pretty clear: they'll never give their phones up, and they'd never let them down.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
The insurance companies have the whip hand here. If they refused road accident claims for drivers on the phone/texting at the moment of an accident the problem would instantly go away. . . . . . . . If you also added large fines for bosses who demand that their employees answer when driving, then that would also go a long way to help reduce accidents.
It's a bit of a side-issue, but take a look at that photo that accompanies the article. The one captioned: "At 60 miles an hour on a Missouri highway, a 16-year-old driver texts with a friend as a 17-year-old takes the wheel."
There is *no way* that photo isn't staged. The Times runs staged photos on a semi-regular basis, even though it's really a violation of journalistic ethics, but it's rarely quite so blatant.
It's a great inconsistency and hypocrisy (not that that's surprising) that we crack down so hard on "drunk driving" yet allow cell phone use while driving.
Drivers showing a detectable amount of BAC are guilty regardless of their ability to drive or coordination relative to other drivers who may be sober.
Studies show that cell phones impair ability at least as much as mild drunkenness
Cell phone use isn't otherwise restricted among under-21 year olds.
Basically, all arguments against drunk driving apply equally to cell phone use while driving, except "alcohol use is optional (unlike cell phone use~) and is inherently evil and thus garners no sympathy".
Really, now. There was no reason to call him a faggot. Dickhead.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Someone mod him up, for crying out loud.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
The general conclusion on page 3 says it all. No difference between hands-free and non-hands-free from a "cognitive distraction" standpoint. It says nothing about visual distraction of having to look at the phone. It just points out the obvious conclusion that talking on a phone is a "cognitive distraction". Well duh! Read a little further "it is not possible to make a direct connection to crash risk". Okay, so we have the same old problem of correlation doesn't equal causation.
This paper only cites old, semi-questionable, existing research. No quality new data was collected or presented. This was supposed to be a fresh study. Instead this thing looks like a grade-C high-school student spent a few hours on the internet digging up some previous papers, and then summarizing the conflicting data.
Another very valid reason for trashing this crappy study (aside from shoddy research) is that the "independent research paper" was written as though it were intended to put forth suggested policies and laws. Really, go read the freaking thing. The bit about pissing off Congress, is because Congress knows full well that the Fed Govt (much less the lowly NHSTA) can not dictate how the States or Corporations write their laws. Of course nothing saying they can't bribe the states with highway funds like they did with the 55mph thing.
In a plane when you land or take off, other people for which it is the job to survey the sky made sure no plane come right and left. So the amount of attention you have to give to your 3D environment is far lower, actually you mostly have to pay attention to your instrument and what they read. In a car you have far less instrument , but you have a whole 3D environment to pay attention, with car coming left, right, ahead and behind, people on foot crossing streets left and right, bikes, motorbikes, speed limit and other signs and NOBODY to steer that traffic for you. I was only in simulator for plane, but comparing the amount of attention car win hand down on how much is needed to drive as opposed to fly. I seriously doubt you can train people to be "distracted", especially that a lot of people won't be trainable at all. Far far easier and far far safer is just to enforce a "no cell phone" policy in car.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
What we need are portable MRIs for driving, to determine if people are paying attention. Once a baseline for people is established, it should be easy to determine if they're drunk, too tired, zoned out, or otherwise impaired.
If this was already in use, I know some people who would never be given a license. Some people suck at driving, even without distractions.
On the plus side, some people are going to be better at driving with impairments than others. So, if somebody can truely handle smoking, drinking, eating or talking while driving, then they could go right ahead.
everything up. Whose business is it if I talk on the phone (or to the passenger) while I'm driving? It's mine, thank you. If you want to hold someone accountable for these deaths, then those who own the streets should be held accountable. If streets and highways were completely privatized, then you would hold the owners accountable. See where I'm going with this?
This isn't who it would be if it wasn't who it is...
You must have also said "meh whatever" when you learned about natural selection. It doesn't work like that, read up on punctuated equalibrium. Species are generally where natural selection happens, not individual organisms. In this case, bad driving habits are something you often grow out of, has nothing to do with inherited traits. The only way natural selection would really be likely to work is if we as a species are too dumb to handle this, and somehow cellphone-talking drivers drive us to extinction.
See where I'm going with this?
No
The trouble is that everyone seems to be combining a huge spread of risks as if they were all the same. I don't see how anybody sane could try to text whilst driving, it just takes too much attention off the road. Talking on a hands-free isn't in the same league, and although it does represent some degree of distraction from the road I reckon it's not so much of a distraction as a cute girl in her summer clothes on the sidewalk. But maybe I shouldn't mention that, or the safety lobby will try to get them banned too :-(
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
However what's interesting is that I recall a study (don't remember credibility or source) showing that a hands-free cellphone was just as dangerous as a regular cell phone. This implies that the distraction is not from the cell phone itself, but processing a conversation while you are driving (which divides your attention). If this hypothesis is true, then talking to a passenger in the car is just as dangerous as using a cell phone. Imagine if you were driving one day and a passenger, your wife, said "I want a divorce," or your boss said "you're fired." So perhaps because of this great risk to other drivers and pedestrians everywhere we should ban all talking in cars. Of course, that will be hard to enforce, so we should ban passengers in cars instead.
Where does it end? Doesn't this become kind of draconian at some point?
While we're playing the "prescribe a cure for society's ills" game, I'll throw out a suggestion: federal legislation reducing speed limits across the board by 20-30mph and mandating that all cars sold in the U.S. are electric and meet certain crash safety parameters. That would save more lives and money than any of this "no talking in cars" business.
Why bother conducting your own study when you could use one of the many already done in other countries?
Use of a mobile phone while driving is forbidden with good reason in most of Europe.
Your head a splode
But that is exactly the trouble. I know people who can and do text blind, with one hand. They could text while being only very slightly distracted. Then there are people who drive into stuff while looking at the landscape, or talking to someone on the other seat. And I know a lot of people who would not be distracted by your cute girl :) I see no other reasonable legislative route than "though shall not engage in overly distracting behavior while driving.", and letting the police & judges handle the rest.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
I was wondering who the US National Highway Safety Administration was, but when I RTFA, I realized that the agency the did the work was the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, better known as NHTSA. I'd actually heard of them :-)
Your "fair share" is NOT in my wallet.
Enough of this nonsense!
While we're in the business of banning cell phones while driving, why don't we remove car sound systems? People are constantly fiddling with them. Has anyone studied how many accidents are due to that? How about passengers? How many accidents have been caused by a pair of kids fighting in the back seat or a heated argument with a spouse? How about drinking coffee while driving? How about trying to read directions while driving? How about being tired while driving?
All these things amount to one thing: Personal Responsibility . We can't legislate everything. What's the point? Keep track of a person's driving record and when they've had too many accidents due to inattention of some sort, restrict their license, or confiscate it!
The notion that by making a law we can improve people's behavior is stupid. Awareness is more important than the law. If people haven't already figured out that driving while texting is dangerous, then it's time for some chlorine for the gene pool.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
And I know a lot of people who would not be distracted by your cute girl :)
True enough. Did I mention the hunky guy on the other side?
I see no other reasonable legislative route than "though shall not engage in overly distracting behavior while driving.", and letting the police & judges handle the rest.
I'm sort of with that, except it means that you don't know what you can and can't do. The police and judges can't actually determine how much attention you were paying to what, and the person who is actually the safety driver on the road could end up in court because the authorities can't tell. I think there's a lot to be said for the sharp steel spike from the steering wheel to the driver's chest...
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
In most European countries it already IS illegal to drive and use the cell phone at the same time.
The cellphone lobby must be really strong in the United States.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
If they blocked the study for fear of angering congress, boy are the mythbusters in trouble! They've proven that distracted cell phone driving is as driving hampering as drunk driving years ago.
Seems that was the way of the previous administration, climate change, cellphone use and who knows what else. Corporations 1 public 0. There is a related post at http://iamsoannoyed.com/?page_id=588
So bad you'd have to be stoned on pot in order to think of smoking it.
I am officially gone from
The one thing that is always amazing to me is how few people seem to be using any built-in hands-free kits in their cars. And I'm not talking about the over-the-ear kind of stuff.
I mean, if you're driving a car that you paid $30k and upwards, how hard can it be to fork over another couple hundred bucks and get a nice and relatively stylish kit like the one from parrot.com? And not to even mention, that a lot of the cars have these things now built in by default.
The only thing you have to do is pair your phone, make sure the contacts get transferred to the kit (takes you about 5 minutes max) and then every time you get in the car you can talk on car speakers with great sound quality and see who calls you easily before you pick up the call. And all of this without having to fumble after your phone in your pants when attempting to answer the call.
I've got the kit about 5 years ago and it was probably the best car-related investment I made.
Police drivers do about a month of intensive driver training. Yes they do end up doing a lot of high speed driving and learning to do handbrake turns at speed etc, but it's not just about driving quickly, it's about making maximum safe progress. I learned a lot in one week, I can only imagine what I would be like after 4 weeks. There's a lot more to it than just learning how the car handles at high speed, there's plenty of stuff to take on board even before you go over the limit (and which means that you will be more effective at observation than most once it does come to breaking the speed limit). I was initially taught to drive by my dad who used to be in the Police anyway, so I already had nice smooth steering, and I've played plenty of computer games and done a bit of reading on the subject, as well as hundreds of hours of 'spirited' driving on my own part so I already have decent awareness of car handling and dynamics, but I still learned a couple of things about country driving - how to judge the severity of unknown corners for example. As well as that there's a lot of observation involved so that you actually know when it's safe to drive quickly and when it isn't - being aware of possible entrances on country roads when there are buildings nearby, simple stuff like that, and just things too numerous to mention when driving around town, most of it quite basic but added together it just helps to make you a very safe, alert and efficient* driver.
* ie not just slow - it's easy to feel "safe" when you're only doing 5mph, but unreasonably slow drivers can be a menace too even if it's simply because they frustrate other drivers
which is totally what she said
Society lets people do what they, and business, _really_ want to do -- particularly in the area of driving. Observed it during 25 years of walking/jogging/running to work and back and dodging cars. Whenever somebody runs over a pedestrian in the U.S. the news reports "whether alcohol was involved." Apparently, and paradoxically, if alcohol was _not_ involved it was a clean kill, and there will be no legal consequences.
The way I see it, society has decided that a few people have to die. If everybody had to sit in their driveway every morning and contemplate that today could be the day they get charged with murder or manslaughter because they fucked up, how many would leave their houses? But it _does_ mean people die.
How did you set the threshold? Your argument seems to be that because "drivers conversing with fellow passengers do not present the same danger" it should be exempt from regulation similar to cellphones. So, how did you come to this conclusion that cellphones = bad, passengers = okay? Is there a danger metric you used? Where do other driving distractions fall on your list?
Actually, like many things, it depends entirely on the individual.... and honestly.... 1000 fatalities a year in a country of 300 million people is barely statistically significant. I recently went to look up the number of murders by serial killers in the US in a year, and some numbers put that in the same range.
Given the numbers of people who drive... I think we can call those relatively similar risks.
I have texted while driving. I have seen people do it well, I have seen people do it poorly (I rate myself as somewhere in the middle, but I do try to compensate by trading off taking a lot longer to type in the text by taking my eyes off the screen and back onto the road with every letter.
I hear some people can txt without looking at all... I am not that good.
The same is true for driving while talking... some people are nearly as good at is as they drive normally, others are total retards and will sit for 5 minutes on the inside of a rotary letting traffic entering pass while they yap away (yes, I have seen this)
Frankly, I think that our government has far better things to worry about. This is such a non-issue.
They would help more people if they directed their attention elsewhere.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Most states already have an inattentive driving charge, but we (Law enforcement officers) cannot get a judge or even a district attorney to take the charges unless the person causes a wreck! Even if the person is all over the road. I still pull them over and and make them do a SFST (drunk test) but, what we need is for the judicial system to allow enforcement of the current law! If we can enforce it, then the ones who are all over the road can get nailed, the ones who can do 2 things at one time are still allowed the freedom to do so. Makes sense to me.
My opinion has always been that people claiming that a phone conversation doesn't affect their attention to driving probably aren't paying attention to driving in the first place. The phone is just replacing whatever else they were using to split their attention before.
Therefore, anyone making this claim should just have their license revoked for all of our sakes.
Buridan's principle describes a type of race condition intrinsic to all decision-making systems. Lamport's paper is on the short list of documents that everybody in the slashdot community should read.
In a nutshell, macroscopic real world systems are continuous. Thus the mean value theorem applies. For every go/no-go decision, there is one threshold before which decision A is clearly valid and another threshold after which decision B is valid. By the MVT, somewhere between those two thresholds is a point where the decision crosses the axis between A and B.
Driving requires a sequence of decisions. It isn't too much to say that driving is a sequence of life-and-death decisions. Anything that distracts us moves the decision-making thresholds - e.g., the 3 second rule for following cars should lengthen for distracted drivers. Buridan, for instance, is a likely culprit in railroad crossing accidents. The driver could stop and be safe. The driver could cross expeditiously and be safe. The driver vacillates. Kaboom!
Cell phones aren't just a distraction - cars and roads are full of distractions. Cell phones are an unnecessary distraction.
bong, joint, or bowl ?
I think the people most likely to cause an accident are the ones most likely to talk on their mobile phones whilst driving. These people would be more likely to cause an accident even whilst not on their mobiles because they don't take driving seriously.
You're right about item #1, but the car stereo has always been a cause of accidents when people looked down at it to change a station or otherwise manipulate it, and crashed into someone else. I don't know if anyone bothered to study it, but I'll bet if they did, they'd find the aftermarket stereos are statistically even more likely to cause accidents than the original factory ones, since they almost always have smaller buttons, more options, and more complex displays.
Still, we seem to generally agree that having some music or talk radio to listen to in the background while driving relaxes us and makes a trip much more tolerable -- so we accept it as a "good" thing, regardless of the statistics.
As for item #2, it's a good theory -- but I don't think many passengers really do any of this as often as you give them credit for. In my experience, a passenger in the middle of some discussion they think is important will keep on talking, without paying any attention to the situation around them, assuming "the driver has that under control". Passengers only tend to interrupt their speech when a driver actually scares them (by running a red light, for example, or missing an exit). When passengers DO take a cue to pause their speech for a few seconds, it's more often because the driver is making some sort of verbal noise (perhaps an "Ummm...." as they try to read a road sign, or they actually say "Uhh.... do you see a sign for around here?" They're likely to utter similar statements while talking on the phone. (Might not ask the person if they SEE a particular item, but they're likely to mutter something about trying to find it.)
I think the issue is a lot more complex. True, if you hold a phone to your ear, other drivers can see you're on the phone and take that into account. But there are additional "risks" involved with people holding phones to their ear while driving. For example, what about people who accidentally drop the phone while driving? Not only will they feel strongly compelled to reach around for it to pick it back up as quickly as possible (creating a very high risk of having an accident in the process), but what about those "freak accident" cases where said phone goes right under the brake or accelerator pedal and blocks it? I've actually had something similar happen once. It's no fun when you try to ignore something you just dropped, only to realize it's preventing you from operating the vehicle properly so you HAVE to try to reach down or kick it out of the way.....
What a bunch of BS...
How productive will you be if you die due to an accident you caused by using a cellphone while driving!
Forty times more frequent 2000 comes from thsi informal study.
It seems as if you would be willing to make that trade, but I'm not willing. I suspect that you would not be willing too if you knew for certain that you would be one of the 1000.
With my previous phone, I could just feel the buttons
Careful throwing around all that "logic" and "sensibility" or you might rouse the ire of an Apple fanboi or two.
'Cause, like, buttons are soooo 20th century, dude.
I see no other reasonable legislative route than "though shall not engage in overly distracting behavior while driving.", and letting the police & judges handle the rest.
I was personally hoping that some day they could introduce legislation more along the lines of "pay attention to the fucking road, dipshit". Unfortunately that's somewhat hard to enforce as yet, and would be a major civil rights issue if it were possible. Doesn't stop me wanting to impose it on the guy in the next lane who's off in la la land.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
The trouble is that everyone seems to be combining a huge spread of risks as if they were all the same. I don't see how anybody sane could try to text whilst driving, it just takes too much attention off the road. Talking on a hands-free isn't in the same league, and although it does represent some degree of distraction from the road I reckon it's not so much of a distraction as a cute girl in her summer clothes on the sidewalk. But maybe I shouldn't mention that, or the safety lobby will try to get them banned too :-(
A colleague told me about how his knockout girlfriend once lifted her skirt a bit and caused a couple of patrolling campus police to crash! I was on the floor laughing at that one.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Get people to focus on paying attention to the road and their driving, and the cellphone distraction issue will take care of itself.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
That doesn't justify making a law against it.
I know it is stupid to talk on the phone while driving, so I don't do it. There are exceptions to the rule:
I have a preset text "Heading Home" that I send to my wife once I get out of traffic.
I can't find my destination and need the person on the other side to guide me to the destination.
Meeting people at a yet to be determined destination, i.e. I'm driving south they are driving north and we want to meet at the exit where we would cross. Depending on driving conditions that could be any number of exits so you call while on the interstate to verify each others location and then modify what exit to meet at.
Wife calls and needs me to pick something up at the store. I find out she needs me to stop, then I call her back for the details when I reach my destination.
In any case these conversations are pertinent to the moment at hand, usually have to do with driving and are short and to the point. I don't answer while in traffic, but I'll call back as soon as I get to a cruising speed on the interstate. Making a law against talking on the cell phone or texting is impractical since there are cases where it is perfectly safe where people would be fined.
Just like you can drink one beer and still drive home, there are calls/texts you can do while driving that are still safe and it shouldn't be made illegal. Having a full texting conversation while driving is as insane as driving drunk, but relaying a 1-2 word status once during a trip shouldn't be dangerous. Also talking to your boy/girl friend from the time you get in the car till you get out is as bad as being drunk as well.
Its kinda like seat belts, you should wear it, but there shouldn't be a law against not wearing it. You're just setting yourself up for a Darwin award if you don't.
The killing of this 2002 study was part of the quid pro quo (in addition to the monetary fees for tapping) that brought forth the warrentless wiretapping program in (oddly enough) 2002. Appeal to patriotism, my ass...
That is all.
For example from the German traffic law: "whoever wishes to turn must make their intention clearly and in a timely manner, using the vehicle indicators".
In Southern California it's more like "whoever wishes to turn must do so without warning and in a surprising manner. Vehicle indicators may be on or off throughout the duration of the trip, depending on the driver's mood. Using turn signals before turning indicates a non-LA driver or a non-hip, uncool one. Pussy!"
I watched a woman in slow-moving traffic talk on her cell as she ran into the SUV in front of her, then continue her cell phone conversation. Talk about misplaced priorities...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
It's not just about fatalities, though. How many billions of dollars are wasted every year due to traffic accidents? How many people hospitalized for months at a time? How many man-hours are lost by companies? The total impact on society is much greater than just 1,000 deaths.
The highway safety researchers estimated that cellphone use by drivers caused around 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents over all in 2002. That's less than 0.5% of all the accidents. Why is so much attention being given to cell phone usage when there are bigger issues like DUI? It appears to me that either banning or limiting cell phone usage leads to no tangible benefits.
Because I hate writing laws for everything from wiping your butt, to picking your nose in public, to how you can speak to your child, I tend to agree with your attitude. However, I was one of the first to agree when Florida became the first state to pass meaningful drunk driving laws. True, the laws have been carried to far in many cases, and "zero tolerance" becomes just idiocy by elected officials who have to "posture" to stay in office. Yes, most adult men CAN drive safely after consuming a drink or two, but today's laws don't recognize that fact.
All the same, it begins to seem to me that cell phone (among other distracting activities) needs to be addressed. How, exactly? A law? How about technologically? Some contact with the outside world is reasonable, as you try to point out. Number one, all phone usage should be Voice Activated - no driver should EVER be fumbling for buttons. Even at cruise speed on the interstate, it only takes a heartbeat to find yourself in a situation that you CANNOT get out of, so you should be able to say "PHONE wife" or "TEXT boss", and the phone does all the work. That is a huge start - but even that doesn't address the "emotional involvement". I got involved in a phone call, years ago, when my boss called me. I couldn't put him off, I couldn't find a place to park, and his demands took more and more of my attention. Suddenly, I realized that I was in the neighboring state, and that I couldn't recall anything from the last ten minutes of driving. A busload of kids could have rolled over in front of me, and I'd probably have plowed into them.
Phones and driving are just as bad a combination as alcohol and driving, believe me. They can be mixed in moderation, but few people have any idea what their real limits are.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Sure, I am down with those arguments. Those are all possibilities. Yet, I think it does a real disservice to the people to go around throwing out numbers without context. A raw number or two may make a nice news reel, but it doesn't make a case.
I think we need to bring to political discourse the same standard that we bring to legal discourse in criminal proceedings.... if you know of cases that support your claim you cite them.... if you know of cases that tend to argue against your claim... you are required to cite them too.
This is about letting people make informed decisions based on real risk, not just random numbers that happen to be the ones that "sound good". As far as I can see A) The case hasn't been adequetly made, and B) the insurance companies have a vested interest in argueing for MORE minor traffic infractions since they benefit directly in the form of surcharges.
And yes, this is primarily being pushed by the Insurance lobby. They had a rally here in Boston on this issue recently... even the police announced, it was sponsored by an insurance company.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I'm sort of with that, except it means that you don't know what you can and can't do.
Actually, I would be amazed if there isn't such a clause in your laws in whatever country you live in already.
The police and judges can't actually determine how much attention you were paying to what, and the person who is actually the safety driver on the road could end up in court because the authorities can't tell. I think there's a lot to be said for the sharp steel spike from the steering wheel to the driver's chest...
That is the price we pay for "innocent until found guilty--- lots of people gets off the hook until they actually cause some damage. Or learns how to drive with whatever distraction the world offers.
As for the spike--- I doubt it would have much effect after a short while. I know what terrifies me into driving 30km/h in my neighborhood (the limit is 40): The thought of a kid jumping out behind a car or bush or something.
To the best of my knowledge, the legislation is fine. Perhaps parts needs to be enforced better, and maybe some adjustments are necessary, but overall, I think it is about as good as it gets until we get fully automated cars.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
I'm sort of with that, except it means that you don't know what you can and can't do.
Actually, I would be amazed if there isn't such a clause in your laws in whatever country you live in already.
The offence here (UK) seems to be based on something going wrong with the actual driving -- an example given is "someone missing a traffic light turning green because they are singing along to their favourite tune a little too excitedly"; just "singing along to their favourite tune a little too excitedly" doesn't look as if it will do it.
The police and judges can't actually determine how much attention you were paying to what, and the person who is actually the safety driver on the road could end up in court because the authorities can't tell. I think there's a lot to be said for the sharp steel spike from the steering wheel to the driver's chest...
That is the price we pay for "innocent until found guilty--- lots of people gets off the hook until they actually cause some damage. Or learns how to drive with whatever distraction the world offers.
I'm more concerned with people failing to get off the hook when there was really nothing wrong with their driving.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Pipe actually- a bong is just a little too difficult
and a bit unhealthy. (-:
The charge is "driving without due care and attention", and it's as old as the hills. I wouldn't be surprised if it actually predates the internal combustion engine, because there are enough people who've been killed or injured by horse and cart. Or just horse alone. Case in point of which you should have heard : Pierre Curie. IIRC he got a coal cart that made his ears burn.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I'm man enough to admit that I'm a horrible driver. Hell, in the morning I'm not really awake enough to have any business on the road, and during the day I'm usually thinking about anything but driving. I mitigate this by arranging my life so I don't have to drive very much, and when i do have to drive its mostly clean driving on fairly empty highways. I frequently use my cell when I drive, (typically on the aforementioned highways), and actually it probably makes me safer . . . I will call someone if I think I'm too tired to stay awake properly and have a fairly inane conversation Killing the study? Others have posted plenty of studies that are, honestly more than sufficient to demonstrate the risks. I don't actually think cell phones are necessarily more dangerous than many other things (such as eating in the car, fixing one's hair etc.) There's really only one solution: Where possible, let the damned cars drive themselves. Its scary and dangerous people say, but is it really more dangerous than what we've got now, or just scarier? (And, of course, a much bigger liability problem for those involved in the technology)
I ran across your comment while metamoderating, and had to just say this:
[rhetorical question]
How did your post not get modded +5 insightful, interesting, or something positive??!?!?
WTF?!?!?!?
Moderators on crack, racing down the road texting their dealer to meet up for another $20-rock?[/rhetorical question]
I like, approve, and endorse your suggestions, good sir!
I give your post 'two thumbs up!' in lieu of mod points, sadly. :-)
A 'tip of the hat' and a hearty 'Well Done' is also in order.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti