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Utah Law Punishes Texters As Much As Drunks In Driving Fatalities
The NY Times reports on legislation in Utah which harshly penalizes people who cause fatal car accidents while texting. Instead of merely facing a fine, offenders may now get up to 15 years in jail — the same as drunk drivers.
"In effect, a crash caused by such a multitasking motorist is no longer considered an 'accident' like one caused by a driver who, say, runs into another car because he nodded off at the wheel. Instead, such a crash would now be considered inherently reckless. 'It's a willful act,' said Lyle Hillyard, a Republican state senator and a big supporter of the new measure. 'If you choose to drink and drive or if you choose to text and drive, you're assuming the same risk.' The Utah law represents a concrete new response in an evolving debate among legislators around the country about how to reduce the widespread practice of multitasking behind the wheel — a topic to be discussed at a national conference about the dangers of distracted driving that is being organized by the Transportation Department for this fall."
This appears to be the correct legislative response, for once.
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Weather you're texting while driving or drunk driving, either way you're an asshole with no regard for the safety of yourself or those around you. Have fun serving your fifteen year sentence, you deserve every second of it.
Does anyone know if traffic accident rates have gone up in recent years?
I haven't heard that they have. But if talking on a cell phone, or texting, while driving is really as dangerous as it seems, I would have expected accident rates to rise significantly.
Good! Driving while drunk and driving while texting are both negligent choices. If that choice leads to someone's death, they certainly should be treated equally. If anything driving while texting is worse since your decision making abilities are not hindered by an altered state of mind.
Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?
The NY Times reports on legislation in Utah which harshly penalizes people who cause fatal car accidents while texting. Instead of merely facing a fine, offenders may now get up to 15 years in jail -- the same as drunk drivers.
Good.
So what's the point of this story?
Driving is a responsibility, and if you are irresponsible because you are texting - not merely talking handsfree, not talking hand-to-ear, but typing on a fiddly keyboard, you are going to be distracted. Kill someone doing this, and it isn't an accident, what's accidental about taking your mind off the road.
If you need to text on the road (and also if you need to talk), then pull over somewhere safe and do it there. Or don't answer the phone, and give yourself some "me time" in your own car.
Why shouldn't malicious and willful ignorance be punished harshly?
You know better than to get behind the wheel after ten or twelve beers, but some people do it anyway. Driving drunk, driving while texting, driving while playing a gameboy.... frankly, I don't see much of a difference.
Beyond the fact you can turn off the phone or the gameboy in a snap, whereas sobering up takes time. Given that, I'd figure the penalty would be harsher!
...as it has worked in Canada. The punishment for this kind of crime in Ontario (Canada) is so severe that only fools even dare.
On a side note, the punishment for street racing (going 31 miles above the limit), includes the following done on the spot:
Your car being confiscated, getting fined about US$ 8,000 and having your license suspended for at least 60 days.
Bottom line: It works. I hope those in Utah will see similar results.
Missouri just passed a law banning texting while driving ONLY FOR DRIVERS UNDER 21!!!
How stupid is that? As if it's OK to willfully distract your attention while driving as long as you're of a certain age.
Being in control of a two-ton projectile in public is a responsibility to be taken seriously. Far too few people do.
What can they be thinking?!! - next thing you know they're going to make rolling through stop signs, running red lights, and tailgating ticketable offenses. Where will it end?!!
best dept name evar /.
thx
I agree with Utah.
Wow, that felt dirty.
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
I've got superhuman reflexes, godlike judgement, and 99.99th-percentile driving skills, so those rules constitute an unconstitutional burden! I can easily thread through cross-traffic in an intersection or use the two-millisecond rule for following, with perfect safety -- as long as all the other drivers refrain from their usual rank idiocy.
Oh, sorry, I though this was a speed-limit thread.
Seriously, if you want to text while traveling, take a bus/train! I don't know why people in the US are so deadset against public transportation. I can be much more productive while riding the train/bus than I can(and should!) be while driving.
Monstar L
I'm with others on this... Distracted driving like this is responsible for a lot of severe and fatal "accidents". As someone else said- it is willful misconduct that should be punished. Driving a car is dangerous, period. If you are driving a car- that should be ALL you are doing is driving. If you aren't focused on what you are doing- you are putting your life, and those of everyone around you, in danger. Why is that so hard for some people to understand? I have a 32-mile long commute to work every day, and EVERY DAY I see people swerving out of their lane and driving erratically while gabbing or texting on a cell phone. I almost get hit at least once a week by one of these winners.
Let's pass a new law for every single type of driving distraction that comes along instead of writing one law that covers the general case of distracted driving. That way we can make it look like we are responding to every new problem that comes along so we get reelected more easily.
"In effect, a crash caused by such a multitasking motorist is no longer considered an 'accident' like one caused by a driver who, say, runs into another car because he nodded off at the wheel. Instead, such a crash would now be considered inherently reckless."
Nodding off while driving is not an accident. If you are tired, stop the car and sleep it of. It is just as bad driving tired as driving intoxicated!
It should not matter why you are unable to concentrate on what's going on in front of your car if you're responsible for the distraction. Whether it's drinking or texting, in both cases you made the decision that you want to drink/text instead of concentrate on traffic, you're responsible for the outcome.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"We found a mobile phone in your car, you must have been texting"? Maybe you started texting before driving and paused in the middle because you had to drive. There's no way to prove this.
to received a lot of attention (here in salt lake) happened a few blocks from my home. I saw it driving to work. A young kid blew the light and t-boned a girl, killing her. The intersection had just been closed when I got to it. It was horrific. I asked my wife if she saw the accident on her way to work. She left 15min before me and, as it turns out, drove through that intersection minutes before the accident. Just by chance neither of us were there when it happened. The poor girl who was killed was just 19 - the stepsister of one of my wife's good friends. There was a PS campaign afterward. Her picture was on billboards all over the city. Whenever I saw one I thought of the kid who killed her, and how he would see them wherever he went.
46 & 2
In effect, a crash caused by such a multitasking motorist is no longer considered an 'accident' like one caused by a driver who, say, runs into another car because he nodded off at the wheel.
Except nodding off or passing out at the wheel is not an accident. It has a cause (medical or just simply not getting enough sleep.) It's one thing if you have a random stroke nobody saw coming. It's another if the doctor has said "you're at high risk for _______. You should not be driving."
If it's a case where you were simply too tired- well, we're not children and it's not rocket science why you "microsleep" or completely fall asleep at the wheel. It happened to me ONCE- woke up in a different lane than I remembered being in. Scared the crap out of me, and I've since learned to get my ass off the road to a rest-stop for a 20-30 minute nap if I feel any of the signs of being too tired, which are pretty damn hard to miss. And to make sure I get enough sleep if I'm doing a bunch of driving!
I see this all the time with bicyclists who are killed by drivers completely let off the hook. A woman local to Boston was killed in Seattle by an older guy driving his van. On a wide-open highway, in clear weather, in the middle of the day. He was charged with nothing- they said it was due to "inattentiveness." In other words, the fucker wasn't looking where he was going, killed someone, and he gets a free pass? How is that justice? How does that hold people responsible for paying attention to where they pilot a 2-ton hunk of metal at 70 MPH?
Methinks the thought of spending the rest of your life in jail for killing someone with your car would make people pay a little more attention than getting an occasional speeding ticket for doing 5mph more than everyone else, which is only a randomly collected road tax.
Please help metamoderate.
but how do you prove someone was texting or that it was at fault?
What if your phone was just on your seat and in the wreckage it flies out of the car and they find it lying there- "TEXTING! JAIL!"
Or look at the call logs from about when the accident happened, and you'd texted, safely, a minute or two before, and then some jackass cuts you off, forcing you to swerve into the divider?
Or cut it closer- what if you were texting when someone cuts you off, forcing you to swerve into the divider- the same action you'd have taken anyway since you have the ability to drop the phone and keep scanning the road like a few good drivers out there (who probably don't text often anyway).
But how do you prove they were texting? Does the law include just talking? If witnesses say they thought they saw them on the phone, does that count?
Yes, i'd like to see them punish the dead! That is a marvellous idea!
Now those suicide bombers certainly have something to fear as well.
72 Virgins? Yeah, more like they will lose their virginity 72 times in after-prison to Bubba.
Driving is a responsibility. You are operating a motor vehicle and there is ALWAYS the potential
for 'accidents'. Anything you do that interferes with your maximum concentration while operating the vehicle, is something you should not be doing.
Messing with the radio, adjusting your mirrors(something you should have done before starting the car), putting make-up on, the list can be endless, all interfere with your job. Your job is to operate the vehicle to the best of your ability. If you cannot understand these simple things, you should not be driving a motor vehicle.
I would welcome such laws nationally. But make them mandatory time, not discretionary time. 15
years hard labor repairing the roads you did the violation upon. I would remove the word fatal from the legislation. Any such stupidity should not be rewarded. You wreck my car, you pay the price.
In actuality, more of these types of drivers Cause Others to have accidents. They should not get away.
All the way from Europe! (warning, graphic scenes!)
This was all over the news this week. I love that video. Every driver's ed class should show it. In full.
15 years isn't enough. If it resulted in a fatality, the texting driver should get life (and so should a drunk driver).
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
As someone who doesn't drive and has almost been runover several times when legally crossing the street by some damn idiot on his or her cell phone or texting I have no problem with this...
Considering the research suppressed at the behest of the TelCo's proving cell use while driving is tantamount to driving drunk, it's great to see a state taking the lead in this.
I can always tell the cellphone using drivers on our freeways, and I wish my state would do the same thing that Utah has done.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
If they truly wanted to stop multitasking behind the wheel there would be a lot more support for removing the human from the equation. We aren't that far off from cars that can accurately and safely drive themselves. Why aren't we funding efforts like the DARPA road challenge more? Lets get that wrapped up and out there. I mean I think its good that people who end up doing bad things, because of their poor behavior choices are being penalized for those choices, but if safety is truly the goal we'd recognize that in one way or another multitasking occurs for most drivers at some point and the only way to truly get rid of it and the risks they represent is to minimize the human role in controlling the vehicle.
Mod parent up.
Go watch it.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
tesing while driving. I can already see the state troopers coming to an accident with one person killed and saying, "Look! She had an iphone in her pocket! I'm going to arrest herfor for murder while texting! HA! I caught me a killer! I'm going to get promoted and buy that extra large dilydo my wife always wanted!" At least in drunk driving the blood test proves one was above the limit (though not drunk, there is big difference). How can you prove one was texting? You can't. Another dumb law to throw more Americans in jail, raise the taxes and make policians look like they are doing something. Well, I least we beat China in having the most percent of the population in prison.
Man, I'm glad this specifically legislates texting, otherwise it could interfere with my playing Sudoku on my blackberry while driving. Or reading slashdot.org. Or watching YouTube videos. Or reading an ebook. Or any of the million other distracting things I can do on any mobile device that is not texting.
Better known as 318230.
Why does it matter if the negligent choice results in a death or not ? That's purely a thing of chance. They should try and stop negligence altogether rather than negligence_on_bad_days.
While i agree that drunken driving and texting at the wheel should be punished I'd rather it be just as an extra offense rather than as an aggravating one.
I makes no sense to punish someone more for being drunk than reckless as the only reason for him being drunk at the wheel is that he is reckless! In case of an accident one should get charged with both offenses, that might carry the same impact on the sentence but seems more like the proper way to write laws.
This style of writing laws makes people think "it's alright , what are the chances of me killing someone while texting ?". It's more a matter of perception but it does impact how drivers behave.
If you get caught DUI then there are "reliable" tests that can determine your blood alcohol content, which is then used determine legal liability.
How do you prove that a person was 'texting, webbing, reading, etc'?
A (busted?) phone that may or may not show an active message screen x minutes after an accident for the police to look at?
Eye-Witness reports? (looking down at radio vs looking down to text)
These lawmakers are chasing smoke. They want to look like they are trying to make a difference but ANY half competent lawyer could likely get those charges thrown out.
Laws already exist that cover crap like this:
Undue care and attention while operating a motor vehicle.
Unsafe operation of a motor vehicle.
Dangerous driving.
Dangerous driving resulting in bodily harm.
Manslaughter.
Most crashes caused by idiot drivers can get 1-3 of those charges applied, do we _really_ need to add more?
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Maybe - just maybe - enough media attention and (sadly) a few high profile cases will change that.
You should consider the possibility of killing someone while driving, period. The moment you realize that (but don't let it turn to paranoia and make you hesitant to get behind the wheel at all), you start wondering if you -really- need to be looking at that map on the seemingly empty stretch of road in front of you... whether you -really- need to answer that call right now in busy traffic... whether you -really- need to reach under the passenger seat for that bottle of water that got away from you; and so forth, and so on.
That said.. I don't think most of these should carry the same penalty as when DUI; being on the phone may be arguable, but they all rather fall under the idea that you're just not paying (enough) attention to the road. When you're DUI (be that alcohol or drugs, OTC, prescription or otherwise as applicable), you're intoxicated - completely different state of mind often resulting in sluggishness. Being on the phone may have you distracted and less likely to notice something -to- react to, but I don't think I've seen any studies that claim that your reaction time itself is decreased once you -do- notice something to react to.
You still have your eyes on the road and one firm hand on the steering wheel, which is the norm. most people often dont have both hands on the steering wheel. whether tuning the radio or drinking a soda or just tuning the ac.
Because of course you single dudes never had to argue with screaming kids/spouse/SO and then suddenly some dumbass on a bicycle weaves out into traffic....that never happens. *sarcasm*
I see bicyclists all the time weave in front of traffic, even a good driver will have a bad day. A traffic fatality in the absence of reckless behavior is not a criminal act.
Great video. But at least one of the cars was driving on the wrong side of the road.
The girls and the first car they hit were both driving on the left, but the third car was driving on the right hand side of the road. Also, he had to be at least a few hundred metres out when the crash first occurred. That driver must have been texting too.
01110000 01010111 01101110 00110011 01100100
"Great video. But at least one of the cars was driving on the wrong side of the road. "
Had she not been texting, the girl might have caught this and either corrected herself or avoided the other driver.
Also, European road perspective. Additionally, someone might have reversed that portion of the video for a better angle, not realizing it screws up logical viewers.
A couple times a month I see some idiot clearly not paying attention on the road and making dangerous decisions. The only clear pattern I've ever observed is that 9 times out of 10 it's someone on a cell-phone. Just yesterday some moron in a mini-van came close to merging right into me, and sure enough there was a cell phone next to his head. I've never noticed a pattern in car, gender, race, or bumper-stickers... but the person holding a cell phone up to their ear is a very clear pattern. I've never seen someone texting, so I have to believe it's rather rare.
Unfortunately there's still no law in Minnesota against using a cell phone while driving. For some reason there's a ban on kids using a cell phone while driving, but apparently when you get older you gain a magical ability to drive and hold your cell phone at the same time. I believe most states are the same way.
So if you ask me the big problem is just plain old cell phone use, not texting. Texting while driving is idiotic and should be illegal, but concentrating on it and increasing penalties to ridiculous 15 year jail terms while ignoring the obvious problem of people using cell phones while driving is equally foolish. According to http://www.ghsa.org/html/stateinfo/laws/cellphone_laws.html Cell phone usage while driving is not illegal in Utah.
AccountKiller
...and I think quite many are, but there's sane and insane ways of doing it.
Sane:
1. If it beeps, pick it out of your pocket or whatever without looking. This is no more dangerous than finding a breath mint or whatever.
2. Bring it up to wheel height. Don't keep it in your lap so you really have to look down, it's too dangerous for more than a glance.
3. If something happens, grab the wheel with your phone hand too. You can hold both, or in a real emergency let the phone drop.
4. Glance-read like if you were looking at the GPS screen. You are able to do that right, or should we ban those too?
5. When you reply, reply only with one hand. It's really useful for lots of things to be able to do that anyway.
6. Reply only in brief. My three favorite responses are "k", "yes", "no" or any of the text shorthands like "lol", "ttyl".
From my observations I'm a way safer driver than say anyone with kids in the back seat. But I guess I'm pretty screwed if I end up in one of those really inavoidable accidents, like the guy in the other lane doing a front-on-front collision with me or whatever. And I do understand why it's forbidden. I've noticed so many people that are writing a text message down in their lap, with both hands and apparently composing a novel while they're at it. But the only reason it's punished so hard on that fact that you sent a text at all is because that can verify that. "Your phone company records show that at 3:42 PM you send a text" unlike "At 3.42 PM you were busy fiddling with the radio or gps or kids or finding a mint". Then tough shit for you even if you did do it in a way that's perfectly reasonable.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I predict a run on software for hands-free texting in Texas. Even though I consider it as bad as using a cell phone, and I'm shocked at the number of people on the cell phone while driving these days: I spent a recent harrowing hour on a journey to a partner site, riding with a VIP in his very nice venture-capital funded BMW, wanting to leap out the window and run screaming for a much safer cab as he spent the hour chatting on his Bluetooth phone instead of paying attention to the road.
It led me to understand how he'd gotten to be a VP: blinding focus on what he wanted, whenever he wanted it, and complete obliviousness to the lives or progress of anyone else. And I always arranged to work with people below his level from his department, because they'd learned to work around his obliviousness. He tried to take credit for all the work, too: I made sure my peers and supervisor knew exactly whom to work with to actually get anything done properly in the future.
Why did the car the hit them go all the way across their lane before the collision? Were they texting also? Or was it just terrible editing and directing?
I am glad to see someone is cracking down on this foolishness. Whenever I drive, I see people in their cars paying attention to anything BUT the road. Inattentive drivers don't go promptly when the light is green, and create traffic backups. They go 45mph on the fast lane of interstates.
Driving is dangerous. It demands ALL of your attention. Texting and phoning while driving is risks everyone's lives. You don't ever want to see me on a civil jury in a "texting while driving" case. Insurers, quake now. Texters and yakkers, up your liability limits and buy an umbrella policy.
These malefactors endanger everyone for a little convenience and entertainment while driving. How typically thoughtless.
I was up late last night and caught some episodes of 1000 Ways to Die, for the first time.
Harsh show to watch but it is rather educational.
Among the various ways people die was this:
A young male idiot was driving his vehicle around whilst texting his girlfriend who
was walking about someplace.
According to the story they were 'texting' where he was to meet her.
Eventually the primary idiot in the story arrived in some parking lot and continued to text his
girly.
She was texting him back and was much to busy to be bothered with looking side to side while doing so.
Driving down one of the parking lot aisles primary idiot one runs right over his
girly, apparently killing her quite dead.
He never saw her and she apparently didn't' ever see him.
Pretty sad huh? Hard to believe really but I can see it happening.
I can recall in my own experience seeing IDIOTS walking about parking lots yammering on their phones.
As a driver one always has to watch out for such. It appears from my observation of people
they hardly ever turn their heads to watch for traffic whether talking on the hand set or texting.
Talking about pedestrians here.
It is a pity Darwin's law does not take these people out sooner and more thoroughly before they
have a chance to breed.
This 53 year old grump would love to see harsher penalties for drivers doing such. Go Utah , Go.
Something between the lines jumps out and bites your arm off. Soltan Gris / London
Previously, the Mythbusters (and other scientific studies) has shown that talking on a cell phone while driving is worse than driving while legally drunk. Texting is far more distracting than talking on a cell phone, so this legislation seems more than appropriate.
What could possibly be so vitally important that it has to be texted right now, yet not so important that you can't pull over to do it?
A sinner? So you're comparing an action with potentially fatal consequences to yourself and others to a sin like having sex out of wedlock while Christian? This goes beyond what constitutes a sin.
Your self-deception is just classic. Yes, I'm sure you're one of "the safe texters", and it's everyone else that's the problem.
AccountKiller
So, how are they going to prove that an accident is caused by texting? The last time you were in an accident, did you look to see what the exact time was? Was your watch / clock accurate? How do you know?
For example, let's say you pull over to the side of the road, look up an address using Google, pull back into the stream of traffic and one to two minutes later get in an accident. The phone records will be used to show that you were texting while driving -- not that you were parked on the side of the road, in a driveway or parking lot.
Let's say that you looked up an address (again on the side of the road) and then a few minutes later were in an accident this time caused by your adjusting the radio. Of course, the phone records will show that at the approximate time of the radio, you did a Google search and this time, a witness says that they saw you looking down at the time of the accident. How do you prove otherwise?
The local news station (here in Utah) did a whole segment on the times when someone looks down and looks like they are texting but were not. For their segment, they drove around Salt Lake City and filmed people who looked like they were texting from a distance but upon closer inspection, they were dealing with other things (such as maps in their lap). Over 80% of the time, people were dealing with other things -- not texting. The interviewed a number of police officers that said that it is almost impossible to determine that someone is texting v.s. not.
Quite a few people's clocks are off by a few minutes either direction -- with all the confusion that surrounds an accident, it is quite likely a large number of people will be accused and quite possibly successfully prosecuted when they in fact had done the responsible thing and were parked at the side of the road, in a drive way, or had waited until a red-light.
Mod parent up.
Go watch it.
Won't work. I watched worse than this in drivers ed years ago, and the dead people I saw weren't actors. I still drove foolishly, because I was a young foolish man. The prospect of prison will influence some, I think. Actual, substantial punishment for reckless driving will influence more.
A problem with scare videos, and this one is a perfect example, is that they will influence the wrong people- like some girl who will be so afraid to drive after seeing one that she instead will ride with her young, foolish boyfriend, who will drive like a fool and get her killed.
Drunk driving is different and far worse, in my opinion, because it means you are in a persistent state of inability to properly operate a motor vehicle. From the instant you start driving until you park, you are a danger to yourself and others, and that cannot simply be remedied by you at any point by deciding "not to be drunk". However, sending a text message while driving is a specific reckless act which results in a specific interval of danger... its more like running a red light.
Put in other words... if you are drunk you should not be driving. If you are driving you should not be texting. The transposition in these statements is not trivial.
Ok, so if a person is dialing a phone number when they get in an accident, everyone will say they were texting, but technically, they aren't. So, why not just outlaw *manipulating* telephones while driving. What if a person has a voice-recognition device in their car (like the MS/Ford "Sync" that lets them 'dictate' text messages (not sure if Sync actually has such a feature yet, but it *could*).
If you were 'texting', using voice recognition, would you still be in violation of this law?
The drunk's judgment is impaired when the drunk gets behind the wheel. The texter makes an intentional, volitional, free decision to put other people at risk by texting while driving.
Stupid bastards forget that their cars are killing machines unless properly handled.
It's not a large-scale study or anything, but it's still worth considering: Mythbusters did a test on this once. They had two people take a driving test (a) while intoxicated (b) while having a discussion on the phone, using a hands-free set, which is perfectly legal.
Both of them failed both tests, although they did a lot better drunk than they did talking on the phone.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
You should consider the possibility of killing someone while driving, period.
I think too few people actually do this. It's one of the reasons I don't drive, actually.
I have ADD, cognitive problems, and no depth perception. (The depth perception problem is caused by strabismus.) Around 20 years ago, I made the decision that I didn't want the responsibility of one of my problems being the cause of someone else being maimed or killed.
Frankly, it pisses me off when I hear about people being so casual about driving that they do this shit. As far as I'm concerned, it's intentional homicide, and should be treated as such.
There should be nothing illegal about any form or expression of multitasking. It should only be illegal when you're BAD at it.
This progression toward presumptive justice is what the movie Minority Report was trying to advise against. For decades now we have been progressively criminalizing behaviors which are themselves not criminal, merely because they MIGHT lead to a criminal or anti-social act. We have and already had laws criminalizing the actual bad acts.
This progression needs to stop. Thomas Jefferson would be having a jurisprudential nervous breakdown if he were resurrected today.
Why have a law about it when a technical solution is pretty feasible?
In the US, all cellphones have GPS units in them so that when dialing 911, the operators will know right where you are.
Just have the cellphone refuse to work if you're moving at > 5pmh. No more problem with cellphone-distracted driving OR driving while texting.
Exceptions: allow calls to 911 and drunk driving reporting #'s AT ALL TIMES.
Have a unit in buses/trains/public transit/taxis which broadcasts a short-range signal allowing the phone to ignore the 5mph limit.
And it'll just be too bad about car passengers who can't talk on the phone: that's an acceptable price to pay, they can just have the driver stop if it's THAT important.
Anonymous Coward (because I moderated this story)
I don't think that I said anything which would indicate that I don't think that vigilantism isn't a crime or should be appeased, but one of the reasons that we have the luxury of thinking this way is that, in fact, our government is supposed to (and, often enough, does) punish people so we don't have to do it ourselves. This "disinterested third party" is supposed to mete out justice proportional to the crime in a less personal way than the victim might, but don't for a minute think that society would stand for the punishment being solely related to the action and completely disconnected from the outcome. Drunken driving is a punishable offense, but the punishment for killing somebody while driving drunk is always worse than if you didn't kill somebody. That is how it is and how it needs to be, at least until we evolve, and that is how it needs to be for texting as well.
Asshole
Just call! Remember voice calls? I know you kiddies are shy, but get over it! With a Bluetooth headset and a voice activated phone, you never need to take your eyes off the road.
Wow. That's one effective video. Thanks for the link.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
i don't get it. if i write a text and don't kill anybody or drive drunk and don't kill anybody, society may see fit to revoke privileges (for example my driving license) but it shouldn't be able to throw me in prison or fine me because i haven't actually caused anybody any harm.
if however i do hit someone and hurt them, then the law can punish me for it.
Don't fucking text message while driving, you dumb shit.
Sorry, didn't read the last line of the parent comment. Mod my comment above down please. How I long for a delete button.....
Here's another, this is the true story of a Utah teenager that killed two people while texting & driving:
http://ut.zerofatalities.com/#texting
Disclaimer: I work for the company that put this together.
So will this apply to GPS devices on the dashboard? What about those LCD displays that Taxi drivers use, will it apply to them?
You'd be happy with somebody getting 2 years in jail for killing your wife/girlfriend/mother (etc)?
"How do you prove that a person was 'texting, webbing, reading, etc'?"
I'm not sure how it works in the USA but here in the UK phone providers hold logs of calls - I guess you must have the same or how else does the phone provider bill you for your phone calls at the end of the month? So if an accident happens and there's any suspicion that use of a phone was involved, the police can ask for the phone records. They check the logs.
"then why not just leave it to vigilante committees?"
Are you crazy or just haven't taken your medications today?
There are several reasons why civilized society abandoned long ago.
1. If the vigilante mob gets it wrong, there would be hell to pay from their victims family and supporters. Would they then be justified in going after members of the original mob?
2. Mobs have a nasty habit of not dispersing when their business is over.
3. The justice meted out by a vigilante mob is very highly variable and often is far in excess of what the punishment should be.
There are too many objections to list them all. Perhaps others could come up with a more complete list.
I love you, Utah law-making people things. Have my babies. Please. A law like this should have been in my state so long ago that it's disturbing. I mean it. Maybe we'll copy you down here in America's dangly-bits.
A slap on the wrist for holding any sort of a conversation on the phone when you should be DRIVING has always hacked me off. Should be a baby seal club on the wrist.
I have a cellphone. I strictly refuse to hold a conversation while driving. If I have a family member in a vehicle with me when I'm driving, I hand them the phone and ask them if they recognize the caller (since it's usually family calling). If they do, I tell them to have the conversation. Otherwise, if it's just me, they go to voicemail or send a text.
If they send a text, I check it at the next place I stop at, like a store. If they leave voicemail, it's the same thing: Next time I make a substantial, vehicle-leaving stop, I'll check it.
My family hates it, but I tell them the same thing every time: "My attention is best served in avoiding all the other jackasses driving with BlackBerrys coming out of their ears and iPhones in their asses."
One of these days, I am going to flip out. When I flip out, I'll be back in five minutes.
Instead we can attach a device to each person's brain which will immediately kill them upon sensing murderous thinking.
What are we going to do about politicians, then, since you insist that the device be attached to a brain?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
is that like driving in the bicycle lane?
In my city I routinely did that because I was in the bicycle lane,
wasn't actually passing anyone, just driving in bicycle lane.
Things get tricky when I had to make a left turn because some drivers just didn't understand that I wasn't a pedestrian -- it was always safer to walk the bicycle as a pedestrian, than changing lanes with proper hand signals (which aren't recognized 90% of the time IMHO).
Mod parent up. Pretty gals from the age of 6 to 35 always get published in newspapers - and always on the front page of taboids. At least here where I live.
I think you've hit on something here.
We all read the story just a little while ago about how so-called "multitaskers" are in fact incompetent idiots. And NOW they're dangerous incompetent idiots! The psychological connection is easily made without our realizing it was made for us.
But you're right! There's a problem. While popular opinions agrees that texting while driving is bad, (it kills! It affects everybody who ever needs to cross the street), unlike drunk driving, there's no blood test for blackberry use.
But wait!
--If you had some sort of. . , I don't know. . , say, black-box in the car which recorded everything the car does and when it does it, then you could compare that information with the phone records of the driver's blackberry account, and you could 'prove' that texting was taking place when an accident occurred!
Now, Slashdot is usually a strong holdout for privacy rights, and geeks and engineers are one of the most important driving forces for how societal infrastructure is designed. --If you want to build a prison nation, you first have to convince the engineer geeks that we need such a thing, otherwise there will be all kinds of problems in achieving it. So the question is raised, "how do you convert a bunch of entrenched privacy proponents to accept black boxes in cars? --No, to DEMAND black boxes in cars?"
Why you run a couple of stories with the exact angles as we have seen here, and then you've just manipulated a bunch of geeks into accepting that which they would normally reject on principle.
Simple and effective.
And don't think it doesn't work that way. Slashdot editors are just as prone to mind-control as anybody else. Laugh if you want, but part of you knows you can't write me off entirely. Others know just how close I really am.
-FL
As a motorcyclist (15k a year), I hope every state will enact this. Or, allow me to just toss an old sparkplug through their windshield as I ride by.
A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
"I stand on my record. Fifteen crashes and not a single fatality."
I am not a crackpot.
If texting is a crime due to choices made(like drunk driving) then many parents at work are doing the same every as they drive their kids to work then recount stories of their behavior and the parents attempt to control it.
The second a parent looks back at their kids, should they get 15 years?
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
As long as the message is not addressed to "the person's telephone number", and it's also not an "electronic mail", it's legal. Instant messages seem OK, unless "electronic mail" is defined elsewhere to include them. Regardless, there's enough room in this law to devise an application for smartphones that allows you to communicate via typing without breaking the law.
(b) "Text messaging" means a communication in the form of electronic text or one or more electronic images sent by the actor from a telephone or computer to another person's telephone or computer by addressing the communication to the person's telephone number.
http://le.utah.gov/~2009/bills/hbillint/hb0290s01.htm
(c) except as provided in Subsection (3), uses a handheld wireless communication
55 device for text messaging or electronic mail communication while operating a moving motor
56 vehicle upon a highway in this state.
Lyle Hillyard represents my own senate legislative district (Cache Valley) in the State of Utah. I'm sure he'd get a kick out of making it to Slashdot, although I think I'd have to explain to him what /. is in the first place. The guy is an otherwise full-time lawyer (I've used his law firm) and rocks the boat enough to get the ire of his own party from time to time. Republican because Democrats don't have a chance in local elections, and most locals consider the primaries to be the "real" elections around here.
It should be pointed out that this is also due to a high profile situation that happened in Logan where somebody texting while driving killed two researchers who worked for ATK System. The rocket they had been working on, BTW, was the solid rocket core of the Ares I rocket, being developed for future manned NASA missions. The kid who was behind the wheel was arrested and the county prosecutor complained to the state senator that there was a distinct lack of legal options available to prosecute with. Ultimately I think he was charged with automotive manslaughter and the judge gave the kid a sentence to travel around the state to various high schools explaining his story and what dreadful consequences can happen if you text and drive at the same time. This was also ultimately videotaped and sent to all of the Utah high schools on DVD. The "200 hours of community service" mentioned in the original article was this trip around the various high schools.
I think this video is also on You Tube, but I don't know the link. The excerpts I've seen of it are pretty sobering as well.
While I generally like what Senator Hillyard has been doing for Cache Valley, it is nice to see him doing things like this as well. I'd agree it was an appropriate legislative response to a bad situation.
No offence, but I find it incredible you would even be eligible for a license.
No offence, but I find it incredible you would even be eligible for a license.
No offense taken. I took driving lessons ~ 20 years ago. Back then (I don't know what the rules are now in NJ) the issues were:
1) Can you pass the written test?
2) Can you pass the driving test?
At the time, my ADD was undiagnosed. I had some obvious attention issues, but I was borderline, and I had learned how to compensate, mostly. The cognitive problems were completely undiagnosed. (Again, I compensate well.) The depth perception was more of an obvious issue (because the strabismus was documented), but the odds of me being able to drive (according to the rehab center I was learning at) were put at ~ 50%. (And there was no way to guarantee I wouldn't pass the test and still be a consistently safe driver.) It was that 50% that convinced me not to drive. A 50% chance of failure is simply too high when "failure" can mean death to me or someone else.
Well, the drivers are so bad over here that we need every advantage we can get.
Thank God I own the patent on the world's only Textalizer (TM).
I'm gonna be rich, bitch!
Yes, texting while driving seems like a superfluous activity.
What about entering data into your GPS?
What about looking at the GPS screen?
What about changing a station on the car radio?
What about looking up a phone number and then using voice dialing?
What about fiddling with your BMW car's control joystick?
Those aren't illegal under the current Utah law; should they be? Which level and kind of distraction is reasonable and which isn't?
heh, it's not even illegal to text and driver where I live.
If the cell phone towers detect a phone in motion could it not be shut off? Just a thought. I do remember surviving when one had to actually to stop at a phone.
Get up!
This should be pretty straight forward: Whoever calls shotgun automatically gets phone-bitch duty - no excuses, and the driver hands them his or her cell. If there's something important, the passenger should be able to do the talking and summarize a message without distracting the driver from their main job of operating a vehicle. (Of course this only works if the person driving is ok at conversing with passengers without getting too distracted, so there are still some exceptions. In which case, follow the rule for driving alone.)
If driving alone, then no matter what - whatever the call is about must wait until the vehicle is parked. If it's important enough, the person calling will bother to leave a voice mail. (And obviously a text can be read later anyways, so it's not much different than getting a voice mail by default.)
im jst fne drvng nd txtng no prblm can kp hnds on whl nd typ no dngr 2 nebdy
Treating texters like drunks is a good idea.
M.A.D.D. and groups like that promote the idea of drunks _causing_ accidents, but that is not the truth. A legally drunk person has a 2-5% more likelihood of _having_ an accident (probably due to inattentiveness). Insurance companies know this.
People who read Reader's Digest and the M.A.D.D. literature will not be able to reconcile the fact that driving while legally drunk is exactly as dangerous as driving while texting.
This guy epitomizes carelessness (doesn't result in a crash though).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klteYv1Uv9A
Personally, I think texting while driving in some situations is ok. While of course there's no way to determine which situations are ok and which aren't, it still doesn't change that that in comparison to other things, texting while driving really isn't that dangerous. For example. Checking your mirrors can be more hazardous than texting, and this is why. When I text, it takes next to no brain power for me to keep tabs on what I'm trying to say, what the other person said, etc. moving my thumb and pushing the right buttons to form words is a mindless activity. I've always texted by letting my thumb move across the keyboard to the approximate location of the next letter I wish to enter just by muscle memory. an while driving, it only takes a glance, perhaps a quarter of a second long, to confirm that my thumb is indeed over the correct button. Or, if it is not, then that glance would have been enough to show me where the correct button is in relation to my thumb, and I'll still be able to press it. The point is, if I'm texting while driving, I'm dedicating about as much brainpower to texting as is required to tie my shoes. In short, the mental concentration really isn't going to affect my driving. My second point is that my eyes hardly ever leave the road, and that's about just as unlikely to be the source of a driving incident. Which is why I say checkign your mirrors can be more dangerous than texting. CAN be. NOt necessarily is, but can be. If you take more than half a second to look in your mirrors, for whatever reason, then your eyes are off the road more than mine are when I'm texting. My experience has shown that it is quite common for people to be examining their mirrors for a full 3 seconds or so without lookig at the road. That can be either lookign form mirror to mirror, or inspecting somehtign in a single mirror quite thoroughly. There's a lot of things I could get into, sort of like the example I just gave, but in short, any small task while driving can be dangerous. Changing the radio station, stretching your neck, checkign the time... many of these things either take more concentration or force your eyes away from the road for longer than when I'm texting. My texting is really not very dangerous. at all. if I get into a car accident while texting, it'll be because a drunk driver or a deer or SOMEHTING jumped out in front of the road in an incredibly short amount of time, and I would not have been able to avoid it even if I had been lookign at the road the whole time. For the record, I spent probobaly 50 hours texting behind the wheel this summer. there were only maybe 10 incidents where my car got close to the edge of the road, and maybe 2 of those times, a wheel went off. But I was already lookign back up at the road and correcting my error. and all those incidents happened on back country roads where nobody is walking around anyway. Once, maybe twice did I get closer to the car in front of me because they were braking harder than normal and I noticed slightly later than I normally would have, but it still was plenty far away to be plenty safe enough. If we add up all the seconds that my driving was worse than normal, and put it up against all the time I spent texting and driving, we get an approximate ratio of 1 minute to 3000. SO firstly, the chances of anythgin happening are slim, but the chances of somehtign significant or serious happenign are currently less than the chances of being struck by lightning. For me, that is a perfectly acceptable risk. Buuut, most people don't text like I do. Which is why there have been accidents, and deaths, and all that, resulting in this legistaltion in Utah. because the overall chances of somethign happenign are much larger. And while there are exeptions such as myself, there is no practical way that I can think of to determine whether or not an individual was practicing 'safe texting' or not. SO in a sense, it's really all moot. But, what if soethign was put in place to teach people how to text as safely as possible while driving? If we try to teach kids to practice
i barely ever talk on my cell
i use it for texting purposes pretty well 99% of the time.
being such an avid texter, its nothing new for me to get multiple duplicate messages as well as my cell phone storing texts that couldnt be sent when i hit the sent button due to low signal or what-have-you, so they store in the outbox and send whenever they feel like.
i think texting while driving is one of the most ridiculous things you can do and if someone is SEEN texting while an accident occurs, then sure penalties should be as stiff as texas has made them, however even if the phone company has records of a text going through at the exact time of the accident, that is not 100% proof that the person was indeed on the phone texting at that exact moment.
voice calls dont lag so the records from the phone companies would be true, texts lag all the time, so the times reported by the phone company may be accurate as to when the message actually left your phone but completely inaccurate as to when that message was originally typed out.
hope the lawmakers kept this in mind..
I am all against texting and driving and I only text at stop lights, especially cause I have a slider phone...but how in god's name are they going to enforce this.
How can they tell if someone was texting right before they crashed...I mean what evidence can you hold against someone to show that they were texting and driving?
I know there is some things you could do like phone records but although that might be enough evidence for a insurance company to deny someone's claim its not enough to sentence someone to a possible 15 years in prison.
For drunk driving you can prove unequivocally that someone was driving drunk using a breathalyzer or a blood test without there being reasonable doubt...but if your trying to prove someone was texting while driving there is plenty of room for reasonable doubt.
there was some discussion about texting while driving last week as well. Seems a hot topic these days. Honestly, if people can't talk on the phone and drive, I don't see how they expect to read their phone and type on it while driving. Some people will try and defend their position that using their phones in the car is perfectly safe, but fact is it is not. I've seen people with maps or books or whatever spread out on their steering wheels, and they are no different. Taking glances every few seconds to try and make heads or tails of what they are reading, taking their hands off the wheel to move paper or buttons. I just don't get how so many people can just turn their brains off when it comes to cell phone usage. I mean, at least when you are drunk, your eyes are on the road for the most part. You don't react as quickly, but hey, if you are looking at your phone, you don't react at all. Cracking down on these people is a good thing, as it may lead others to start using their heads for a change and realize that typing "meet me @ the park, kthxbye" is not worth the danger it puts you and others into. If you have to text, pull over. Some pull over to use the phone at all, and they are not even diverting their eyes from the road, they are just diverting their minds from the task at hand. My comment before to someone saying "I only text while I drive sometimes" was "so you are only stupid on occasion" and although it was modded insightful, all the responses were mainly saying "everyone is stupid on occasion" but I think there is a difference between having a moment of stupidity that causes no harm, and having moments of stupidity that are potentially fatal to you and others.
Of course it doesn't bring back the dead. If that were a valid argument against crimes that result in the death of human beings, we wouldn't have any laws against murder, much less manslaughter. I've always found that an absurd observation/argument to make in discussions of this nature.
Seriously, I've actually worked in the slave labor portion of traffic engineering, the guy who sits there at intersections and clicks counters and people go past. I assure you I've seen plenty of idiocy. I was also the one who schlepped over to the county offices to compiles lists of accidents (fatals and non-fatals) for particular areas (that stuff may be more automated now, but this was years ago). Let me assure you that your outrage is entirely out of proportion to the actual danger. The stats aren't compiled to show it, but if you want to reduce fatalities, remove driving privileges from more people. Old people are particularly bad.
As for our penal system in the US is far too much about vengeance, seriously. Whatever you say about it, your attitude is why prisons are subhuman and don't meet standards of human dignity. THAT IS WHY WE HAVE PRISON RAPE. That's right, your attitude is the reason why, you are feeding into it. There is no reason to have people in prison who do not pose a current danger to society, and even in the cases of murderers we do not have to treat them the way we do (there are countries that don't and get much better results and more humane prisons, see Norway as an example). And it goes far beyond prison rape, most jails don't even provide shampoo for their inmates, not even female jails. We're not talking about them providing nice shampoo and conditioner here, we're talking about giving them a bar of the cheapest soap on the market (and not even enough of that) and telling them to deal. Then the voters get mad when they find out some prisons are providing soda (at a half penny per meal) to inmates as a reward for good behavior.
I dare any of you who like our penal system to actually go take a honest to goodness tour of both a prison and a county jail in your area. Then you're going to pick an inmate in one or both and your going to provide them with actual shampoo or whatever items they need for basic, first world human decency. Marvel that you have to buy these items from pre-approved companies that bilk some of the poorest families among us for 20 dollars for no more items than you'd get for free in a 40-60 dollar hotel room. Travel sized bottles of shampoo and small bars of soap for 20 dollars, you read that right. Feel free to splurge on a 20 cent candy bar for them, it'll cost you a buck and a half.
I'm not saying prison should be a resort, but there's a really good reason much of the first world refuses to extradite their citizens to the US and it's because we don't meet the basic standards for human decency. That's right, most of the "free world" considers our for profit prison system to be a violation of human rights for the worst, most despised people among us and them.
To sum up: if you think driving is too unsafe, start building cities to not practically require it to maintain a middle or lower class standard of living (i.e. anything above poverty), this means no more suburbs and overpriced condos for you; then remove driving privileges from unsafe drivers (mostly the old, young, and partially disabled). You'll need to also invest in actual public transit that works and isn't downright unpleasant (doesn't shut down before the bars do and doesn't smell). Additionally: if you think prison is a good punishment for even involuntary manslaughter, visit one, support a prisoner of some kind (I dare you), and then work on justice reform in your area, because it is ridiculous in the US.
I could be wrong, but as far as I know, my state doesn't have a law against drunk driving. We have a law against driving while impaired, and then define (in a couple different ways) being drunk as evidence of impairment.
If you're too sleepy when you drive, you're impaired.
If you're distracted from the road by your e-toy, you're impaired.
If you're shifting with one hand, clutching with one foot, putting mustard on your hot dog with one hand, steering into your left turn with your right knee, and looking at your mustard instead of at the fire engine who is running the light perpendicular to you, which you can't hear because you have your music too loud, you're impaired.
You didn't fail to perceive the fire engine because of a distraction or clumsiness (that would be careless driving); you failed because you premeditatedly arranged for easily-avoidable conditions where your performance would clearly be inferior to your usual performance. Just like a drunk driver. Just like a texter.
Now to tackle the problem of morons with their faces stuck in their 'twatnavs' instead of watching what's going on outside the tin box.