Slashdot Mirror
Federal Summit Eyes Crackdown On Texting While Driving
suraj.sun sends along this quote from an Associated Press report:
"Opening a government meeting on auto safety, the Obama administration reported Wednesday that nearly 6,000 people were killed and a half-million injured last year in vehicle crashes connected to driver distraction, a striking indication of the dangers of using mobile devices behind the wheel. The Transportation Department was bringing together experts over two days for what it's calling a 'distracted driving summit' to take a hard look at the highway hazards caused by drivers talking on cell phones or texting from behind the wheel. ... Driver distraction was involved in 16 percent of all fatal crashes in 2008. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have passed laws making texting while driving illegal and seven states and the district have banned driving while talking on a handheld cell phone, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Many safety groups have urged a nationwide ban on texting and on using handheld mobile devices while behind the wheel."
This has been the common thing in many European countries for many years already. You're only allowed to talk in car if you're wearing a hands-free device to talk.
Even more as speaking on a phone, SMS'ing is just stupid. You're not only putting your concentration it, but changing your view from the street to the phone screen. Sound's like a great idea.
At least 22 states currently text traffic conditions, emergencies, etc to motorist.
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
Well there is an obvious solution to this, just make a phone that reads out whatever someone texts you, and then it transcribes what you say into a text message and sends it back. This way you can text back and forth without having to type anything!
Here's an anti-texting-and-driving PSA video I came across.
It's a dramatization, but I found it to be uncommonly disturbing. Worth watching, if for no other reason than the quality of production.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I54mlK0kVw
You never need to use the phone while driving. You can pull your ass over to answer the phone, it's not that hard to take an extra 5 minutes to get to your destination. You never need to text while driving. Anyone saying otherwise is arguing semantics. Name one instant where you need to answer the phone while driving without pulling off somewhere and stopping your car that does not involve a Hollywood action movie.
Not paying attention while driving is even riskier. Do we really need to establish a new Federal law, complete with its own bureaucracy and enforcement regime to control (another) risky behavior?
At what point will people feel "safe"?
Driving while distracted is already illegal. Telling us exactly how to do everything is not making people any more responsible. Solve the problem by applying existing law using common sense instead of making new laws that are easier to apply.
I keep forgetting my place. Jesus is for losers. Why do I still play to the crowd?
NO! NEVAR! We can't possibly put more government interference in our lives! PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND LIBERTY FOR ALL. If people want to text while they drive, that's THEIR RIGHT AS AN AMERICAN(tm) CITIZEN(c). If you're concerned with them losing concentration and crashing into people and killing them, well, that sounds like it's YOUR problem, and you're just going to have to DEAL with it, 'cuz I ain't gonna let this country turn into some socialist commu-terrorist state like them goddamn FROGS out in Europe!
Freedom and liberty and personal responsibility and monster trucks and AMERICA!!1!1!
It's just another loop hole insurance companies will use to not pay out claims.
Fault will be immediately assigned to the driver who was texting, there insurance won't pay, everybody is screwed...well except the insurance companies.
Just like if their is an accident and a vehical has a broken bottle of liquor fault is assigned to that vehicle EVEN IF THE DRIVER WASN'T DRINKING, and it's damn hard to get anyone to review and change the fault even with a toxicology report.
If someone is driving recklessly, give them a ticket. You can not pass laws to specifically name every way someone could drive dangerously.
OAN: isit me, or is EVERYTHING more dangerous then driving while drunk?(.08)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yeah, the can pry my cell phone from my cold dead . . . (no carrier)!
Scary statistic : According to CBSNEWS.com, on average a text message takes drivers focus away from the road for 4.6 seconds. AT 55 mph thats the length of a football field. Also dialing and using Ipods cause a 10 percent increase in unintentional lane changes. We need more states with Laws for hands free devices. It seems that dialing and song switching where you are focusing on buttons and dials is one of the biggest issues with driving and communicating.
example applications
are you guys subjected to the "something MUST be done" syndrome by your politicians as well
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
The study showed that drivers who text and drive become more than one third slower than if they were coherent and not texting - this was compared to a person at the DUI limit or under the influence of illegal drugs. Text messaging lowered reaction time by 35 percent, while people high on marijuana slowed down 21 percent and those who were drunk slowed down by 12 percent.
On top of those findings, people reading or writing text messages drifted out of their lane more than people who were focused solely on driving. Texters also had a more difficult maintaining a safe distance from cars around them.
Around half of British drivers between the ages of 18 and 24 text while driving, the RAC Foundation said.
"When texting, drivers are distracted by taking their hand off the wheel to use their phone, by trying to read small text on the phone display and by thinking about how to write their message," said Dr. Nick Reed, TRL senior human factors researcher. "This combination of factors resulted in the impairments to reaction time and vehicle control that place the driver at a greater risk than having consumed alcohol to the legal limit for driving."
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
We've had a policy of only hands-free phone usage on military installations since roughly 2005. I wonder why it is taking this much longer to be placed upon the civilian sector. Enforcement problems perhaps?
This guy was coming right at me, crossing 2 lanes of traffic one night. Driver behind him reported that he was looking down and fumbling with a device while driving (likely texting):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28154298@N05/sets/72157605928214101/detail/
He never slowed down after hitting the bank on the opposite side of the road, and nailed the house at around 50mph.
Wouldn't this be fairly easy to address technically? With GPS in a phone it should be trivial to detect motion and prevent those functions from working.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
luv the story bout feds smakdown n teksting whl drvng.
Anway, kp up gd wrk fr all hckrs 'n ASDFASDF CA AX ;spdfom vsdpfm dpa;foa s vsimfdsap]fim vad[psfi mapsd[ miasdf as ... the end.
asdfjkclcjksasjkq34907132[-4i02-=]wsd9mv
[pasdfm] -0qsd9fm]- q0ewmv-] 0eqnr]-0qm rv-=wmv ]=e-fm ]-qfiem] -sdv0ime-]r0omev-9tmi ]-e0rfmiv -]e0rmc9]qev90m-]asd0ofm, s[pxcom
Yours In Astrakan,
K. Trout
... is that people have to be told that sending/reading text messages when driving is unsafe.
Are people really that fucking dumb these days?
Judging by the evidence above, it seems so.
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
The summary says that "nearly 6,000 people were killed and a half-million injured last year in vehicle crashes connected to driver distraction". What percentage of accidents was that? What percentage of people who drove last year was that? How many of those "driver distraction" cases were text messaging? For that matter, how many were from people using "mobile devices behind the wheel"? How many were changing the radio station? How many were eating something?
Texting while driving is stupid, but current laws already cover it. I am pretty sure that a ticket for reckless driving given to someone texting while driving would hold up in court.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
16% of accidents involved distracted drivers is a useless statistic. It doesn't say how many drivers at any one time are "distracted", so the effect of distraction on the likelihood of being in an accident is impossible to gauge from it.
Opening a government meeting on auto safety, the Obama administration reported Wednesday that nearly 6,000 people were killed and a half-million injured last year in vehicle crashes connected to driver distraction, a striking indication of the dangers of using mobile devices behind the wheel.
Transportation officials said in a research report that 5,870 people were killed and 515,000 were injured last year in crashes where at least one form of driver distraction was reported. Driver distraction was involved in 16 percent of all fatal crashes in 2008.
Where did this "striking indication" come from, when the statistics given by the article do not say how many of those crashes were related to being distracted by cell phones? It could just as easily be babies in the back seat, blow jobs, etc. The point is, we don't know.
Imagine the following made up story:
Opening a government meeting on home safety, the Obama administration reported Wednesday that nearly 6,000 people were killed and a half-million injured last year in accidents around the house, a striking indication of the dangers of keeping guns in the home.
This is an example of states setting their own laws to respond to an issue that directly affects the lives of their citizens. The possibility of the federal government stepping in and usurping this power is analogous to America's situation as far as the legal drinking age goes - MADD used its lobbying power to get Congress to essentially coerce the states into following its will. Keep in mind, barring a constitutional amendment, congress lacks the power to directly affect the drinking age - hence their questionable approach (albeit one that has been upheld by the courts) of saying, "well look, states, we're not telling you you HAVE to set the drinking age at 21, but if you don't, something might happen to your federal highway funding. We're just saying, it could happen." I realize that it would be somewhat impractical for the federal government to stay limited by an extremely strict interpretation of the Constitution, but there is absolutely no reason for the national government to waste its valuable time meddling here (don't we have a health care crisis or recession or whatever that they should be dealing with?). Cell phone use, like the drinking age, is one of those areas which should not be controlled nationally - if we take away all the powers of the states to set their own laws, then what's the point of even having a federal system to begin with?
I'd have no problem with a law that metes out the exact same (very stiff here in my jurisdiction) punishments for texting and driving as compared to driving under the influence.
Even the justifications are the same "I'm a better driver drunk/texting than all those other idiots who drive sober/undistracted."
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
And now, all the new cars are coming with these fancy IN DASH computer thingies with GPS and stuff, creating even MORE distractions in the car.
I can't wait till we start to see those bastards on the road.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Why are people texting while driving in the first place? You have a phone, dial your friends number and talk to them. It isn't that hard.
Also, couldn't there be some sort of voice recognition software created to solve this problem if people still want to text while driving?
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
...and maybe running red lights. But you'll never see existing driving-while-distracted laws enforced. So all this hullabaloo about a Federal Summit ignores the fundamental flaw in roadway policing. The cops pretty much ONLY care about the speed you're going. They never pull anyone over for violating basic rules like failing to use a turn signal, zig-zaggers who change lanes endlessly to get 3 car lengths ahead, etc. And to make it even more inane, the speed limits are arbitrary and political, rarely having a correlation to the road they are posted on.
NY state just passed "tough" new laws prohibiting texting while driving. But that made the roads a lot less safe in much of the state.
Two of the most trafficy counties, Nassau and Westchester (the two suburbs right next to NYC, with millions of their own people, and millions more through commuters) already had texting prohibitions for drivers. If a cop there saw someone texting on the road, they could be pulled over just for texting, and given a pretty steep ticket. Repeat offenses quickly revoked their drivers' license.
But the new law prohibits cops from pulling them over for just texting. Cops can cite drivers for texting if they pull them over for something else (like speeding). Texting drivers are erratic, so now cops have to catch them at the few seconds every minute they actually break some other traffic law. Or catch up with them later, when the fiery crash with several victims makes it hard to find the phone as evidence. When pulling them over for weaving or something, the texting driver will have hidden the phone that was their real crime.
I'd bet that the legislators making it safer to text while driving in NY are getting paid by telcos to protect that lucrative, though suicidal, market.
--
make install -not war
It's really not that hard at all to text while driving and be safe at the same time. You just need to text very very slowly. Taking a quick glance at the phone to see where a letter is or what that word was is no more dangerous than the quick glance you take at the radio, or the speedometer, or at that colorful sign on the side of the road. The people who say "oh, but you have to concentrate on what it is you want to say in response", are kidding right? People think about all SORTS of things unrelated to the road while they're driving. No one is thinking 'road road road road, straight straight straight straight, follow lines follow lines. If you limit text writing to very brief glances at the phone, I don't see how your risk factor could be increased any beyond that created by the normal distractions of driving. The problem is with those who stop looking at the road for extended periods of time, and that's a problem that goes way beyond texting.
If someone was weaving all over the road while trying to shave, we wouldn't ask for a law against shaving-while-driving to be passed.
Instead we would charge that individual with some existing law against negligent driving.
Give the person a ticket. If he or she contests it, proving that the driver was weaving shouldn't be hard in this day of police vehicles with front-dash cameras. Problem solved.
Why not enforce the existing laws instead of allowing politicians to pat themselves on the back for passing a popular law that is redundant?
Don't interfere with nature's attempts to weed out the stupid.
This entire anti-texting movement makes no sense whatsoever. We've been fighting drunk driving ever since cars were invented, and we've barely made any progress in that area, much less distracted driving. The main thing that has reduced fatalities is better auto safety design, but people are still getting behind the wheel when they're impaired. If we can't stop people from driving drunk, how can we possibly expect them to drive "undistracted"?
On top of that, how do you prove that texting caused an accident? With a drunk driver, you can perform sobriety tests. If a person is talking on a cellphone and has an accident, you can pull the cell phone records and correlate the connection time to the accident time. But texting is an asynchronous means of communication by its very nature; you can be composing a message, have an accident, and no one will be able to prove a thing.
There's no social solution to this problem, but there is a technological solution, and that is to take control of the car away from the human being. Within twenty years the first autonomous vehicles will be hitting the roads, and eventually drunk driving and distracted driving will become moot issues. People will be able to do exactly what they're doing on the roads right now; eat, drink alcohol, smoke, talk on the phone, text their friends, play games, read a newspaper, apply makeup, etc. The only difference is that they won't be killing innocents when they do it.
Virginia made texting illegal as well. So I can't text on my iPhone while driving, but I can still update my location with Loopt, send Tweets on whatever comes to mind, update my Facebook status and check on my friends, check the weather, look at Salesforce.com, etc. In other words, specific laws aren't going to solve the problem. And what about all the drivers on the Beltway and surrounding roads in the DC area, for example, who are also applying makeup, reading the newspaper, etc.? If you're going to make a law, you should probably get it right...
Ich suche die Leidenschaft, die keine Leiden schafft.
States' Rights? Ring a fucking bell with anyone?
I am not left-handed, either!
I prefer to play Freecell and manage my servers over SSH on my phone while driving to work in the morning - good thing they didn't ban that yet!
We've been bombarded with media telling us everything we do is unsafe, from drinking water, to letting our kids play outside, to going to the airport. Yes, a reasonable person looks at texting while driving and realizes it's unsafe. But a reasonable person also ignores when people tell him this or that is unsafe, because that's pretty much all you see or hear these days, and you simply couldn't live your life if you listened to everyone.
I guess what I'm saying is, we've created a culture where it's not only okay, it's a good idea to ignore media and politicians when they warn of dangers. Because every one of them is a dirty fucking liar trying to capitalize on your fear (even if they sometimes contain a small grain of truth).
I agree that distracted drivers is a BIG problem. However, the response to it is idiotic:
Why is it idiotic?
There are laws already covering it. If you're driving >10mph under the limit, you're guilty of a reverse "speeding" infraction, AND hindering the flow of traffic. Two lucrative finable offenses.
If you are weaving in and out of your lane you are guilty of two or three offenses: failure to maintain control of your vehicle, improper lane changes (one offense per time you cross the line without using turn indicators), and reckless driving,
If you sail right through a stop or yield sign, or if you change lanes cutting someone off (aside from anyone exceeding the speed limit or anyone using the breakdown lane - here in MA the breakdown lane MUST yield to ALL other traffic where breakdown lane travel is allowed, but unfortunately the massholes who use it use it as a passing lane and will not yield to anyone) you're guilty of reckless driving and ignoring rights of way, yield, and traffic signal laws.
Either way you look at it, there are laws in place which can be used to solve this problem once and for all. However, thanks to assholes who don't think logically, but think with their hearts "Oh someone think of the children" my using my GPS could be outlawed. That's okay though because I will go back to using a compass and street directories. That way, I can become a distracted driver who is paging through a thick book and staring at a map to figure out where I am but that will be perfectly legal, and presumably safer than using my handheld gps/phone with its realtime traffic updates.. Right? Of course the printed street directory will be safer. Gotcha.
See the problem is the massholes causing the problem are going unpunished because revenue officers are too busy pulling people over who are "speeding" on the interstate (although those evil speeders are traveling at speeds of at least 60mph slower than the interstates were originally designed for - based on 1960s automotive suspension technologies) so they can meet their quotas rather than enforcing actual safety issues covered by law. No, instead it's just easier to punish everyone because of the irresponsible few. Throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don't you dare pick up that cellphone if you're a doctor or an EMT on call. Don't you dare pick up that phone and call for directions when you're lost (instead, drive around erractically as you figure out where you are). Don't you dare check your GPS or click "reroute."
Instead, much like the drinking age, using cellphones without headsets, and trans fats and sodas, let's throw out the baby with the bathwater. Let's punish EVERYONE for the irresponsibility of the few.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
lets get our nation completely dependent on 24x7x365 cell usage, then ban it
Honestly, I'd think that a technological solution would be better than a legislative one, though likely the two would have to do hand-in-hand. My first thought was a motion-based lockout: phones detect when they are moving at faster than 20MPH (the current world record for distance running being about 18MPH) and disconnecting existing calls and refusing to make new ones until they were moving more slowly than that again. The reason for my 20MPH limit is that the current world record for distance running is about 18MPH, and so allowing for some later room for growth, this still provides a reasonable point as which a person with a phone moving that fast must be in a vehicle. Unfortunately, the problems with this include passengers in cars and other vehicles: too many babies get thrown out with the bathwater.
However, what if a page were to be taken from the RFID industry: three RFID-like chips (not actually RFID, and probably not even unique) with a range of 1.5-2 feet, would be installed in three places: the floor under the driver's seat, the ceiling over the driver's seat, and the steering wheel. When a cell phone is about to make or receive a call it checks for the presence of this chip, and likewise periodically checks during conversations. If it detects the presence of a chip within range and the call is not to 911 or another emergency-services number, then it disconnects the call and disallows the sending of messages. No new calls may be made except to emergency services, nor may any text messages be sent, until the phone is out of range of the chips. Incoming calls and messages would silently be saved to voicemail and inbox, just as though the phone were off. Take the phone out of range, and they start showing up again.
The point to this would be to keep the phone away from the driver while still allowing passengers to make and receive calls. A hands-free phone could still be placed on the passenger seat and operated from there if needed, but there would be no practical way for the driver to reach the phone, which is the whole point of the exercise: hang up and drive.
I wonder if there is a technology solution? My understanding is that on a cell phone you can be located by triangularization among multiple cell phone towers. I wonder if a way could be devised to cut off the connection of people who are in motion. Actually, I am sure there is a way to do that. Except it would cost money that the cell phone companies don't want to spend.
Since tests show that distracted driving (including hands free mobile phones) are about as dangerous as drunken driving, I think the penalties should be the same.
Ok, even if you presume that all 6000 deaths are from cell phone use, that's still only 14% of car fatalities and 0.2% of fatalities nationally. Realistically though distracted driving comes in many forms and the number of fatalities that are from users of proper hands-free equipment is likely to be a small fraction of the overall. So we are threating the states to take action ( which most have already done ) to combat something that is already on the books.
In terms of severity 7000 people drown each year in the US, 16000 are murdered, 42000 die from lack of health insurance, 63000 from the seasonal flu, or our number 1 killer heart disease at 631,636.
Raising the price of gas to $4 would prevent more than 6000 fatalities every year!
The other problem with these stats is that despite growth in both miles driven and explosive growth in cell phone use over the past decade, traffic fatalities have remained fairly constant. People can argue that cars are safer, but I doubt cars have gotten *that* much safer over the past decade in order to mask the growth in cell phone use. In the end I think it comes down to stupid people will do stupid things with or without laws that restrict the general population. Also the problem with TXT'ing will quickly become something else next year and will the nanny state be back to square 1 demanding action on another activity that should already be covered under standard "distracted driving" laws.
Congress needs to grow some balls and look at this problem in perspective; then move on to something that might actually make a difference.
On Monday. So everyone does it. They arent supposed to do so - supposed to pull to the side of the road. I was a bit afraid she'd run into my car because she wasnt paying enough attention.
I am surprised that we're cracking down on something without providing a solution. People realized fiddling with radios would cause a problem on the road loooong ago (when the first radios were being installed in cars) and there was this huge uproar over it. They tried sanctions of all kinds, had a (relatively) big campaign to do -something- about these dangerous devices in cars, but when they realized that people liked them so much and they weren't going away, what happened? We have radios in cars to this day. Car manufacturers, in response to the renewed complaints started including steering-wheel controls and voice activation to their radios, but -we still have radios in cars.-
I understand how texting while driving is an extreme distraction. I understand being on the phone can be a similar distraction. Having a toddler in the seat (I came from the generation that sat in the front seat) can be an equivalent distraction, if not more so, **but we still do it.** Don't sit there and write tickets or make laws that ban their use. If someone uses a phone responsibly, without incident, why should they be punished? And what's more, why aren't we designing technologies that solve the problem? Head's-up displays and voice-driven interfaces aren't all that futuristic anymore. Ask car manufacturers to include those as options in -every car- with a bluetooth-based phone interface. Have phone designers come up with cheaper phones that have bluetooth in them so they can use that interface. It's going to cost money, but it's going to cost someone regardless.
Instead of raging like I hear some people online (e.g. "People who talk on the phone while driving need to be shot",) quit complaining and do something about it.
Replace DWI(ntoxicated) and all of these rules with one rule: Driving While Impaired. If the a cop/judge/court decides what you were doing to impair your ability to drive, you are charged with DWI: Driving While Impaired.
You might be impaired by depression, legal or illegal drugs, talking on a cell phone, adjusting the screen of your Canyonero's DVD player or hooting and hollering with your friends after the big game. If you allow something to distract you, making your vehicle a threat to others or yourself, you're DWI.
The cause doesn't matter. It's the behavior. Running over a pedestrian because you're drunk is just as bad as running over a pedestrian because you're an egomaniac. i also don't care if anything bad came of it. Taking the risk is crime enough.
We should also do away with fines as punishment and replace it with community service, license suspension or jail time. Fines are relative, time is not. Once a few BWM driving assholes start talking about losing their licenses for a month because they didn't put down their crackberry, or teens because they were giggling about how awesome $band is, you'll see these problems go away very quickly.
Driving isn't a right.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
With Text to voice you don't need to read it.
Plus passengers can get them, and you can look at them before getting into the car.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Some people claim slow rush hour driving is boring, so they watch video.
>>> half-million injured last year in vehicle crashes connected to driver distraction, a striking indication of the dangers of using mobile devices behind the wheel
Not that I agree with texting while driving, but I think its a bit much to just arbitrarily deduce that texting is a major part of all driver distractions that resulted in accidents.
Cell Phone carriers (such as AT&T, Verizon, et. al) should write phone firmware that indicates to the network when it is traveling at a high rate of speed (faster than can be humanly achieved... indicating that the user is either operating a vehicle or a passenger in a bus, train, plain, car, etc.).
Sure... being a passenger might suck... so they should have an option like... "Dial #MV on your phone to change the settings... permanently disable or disable for 24 hours".
People that don't own a car and are perpetually passengers in vehicles they don't operate will likely opt-out. However, people that own cars and operate speedy vehicles on a regular basis would likely prefer the feature... opting to have the carrier "hold my calls or texts while I'm driving".
Of course, the system wouldn't be fool-proof... for example, if you're sitting in traffic and traveling pretty slow, a flood of texts that have been held for you might dump on your phone... or incoming calls will be patched through rather than being held.
To solve that... maybe carriers should partner up with car makers... when the phone detects your Bluetooth car (such as a Prius)... the phone just locally holds your calls/texts... then when you get 20 feet away from your car... ALERT! 5 missed calls, 12 texts! If a smart phone... it could even do something like reply to the caller/texter... "Your friend is driving right now... please try again later" (either in that annoying automated voice, or in the form of a reply-text).
There just seems to be so much more that we can do about this rather than relying on some law that will ultimately be unaffective. Honestly now... how on Earth is a judge supposed to accurately determine (other than the cop's word against yours... unless perhaps there's another witness involved) that you WERE or WEREN'T texting/talking on your phone. After-all... were it me, I'd just say "I wasn't texting... I was just checking the time". Now, extenuating circumstances aside... such as if the police person was behind you watching you fiddle with your iPhone-in-hand for 60+ seconds... I really see these laws as silly. Either put a full ban on using a phone while driving period, or don't make legislation on the topic... out-lawing, say... texting, but not checking the weather, or calling but not e-mailing makes no sense. Even the hands-free paradigm doesn't work because "Hands-Free" doesn't mean "Eyes-Free". I can see a crash occur with a Hands-Free option if the user is required to look at the screen for longer than 3 seconds.
I think that the problem also extends further than just phones. My buddy just crashed into a parked car last week (and rolled his car, totaling it) because he was staring at his in-dash touch-screen trying to select a song to play. There's a reason that factory in-dash stereos are minimalist, people! It's so that you don't have to stare at the thing while driving!
Some cars with factory in-dash LCD screens are designed to turn off the display while driving, or have a minimalist display with large features so that you can interpret the data they display "at a glance".
In other words... in this day and age... there's no excuse why technology can't solve this problem. Technology started the problem... technology can solve it (because apparently, people are too stupid to know that when you're operating 2000+ pounds of steel with hundred(s) of kilograms of force/power behind it... you need to pay attention to what you're doing on not stare down at the shiny thing 3 inches from your face! but rather the destruction you're going to cause by not watching where you're going or what's going on around you).
There should be a mandate to stop selling technology that allows people to grossly endanger others and start selling technology that caters to the million-plus nimrods.
--
Devin
Legalize HERF guns. Problem solved!
So nobody else noticed that neither the blurb nor the article ever make any connection between texting and an actual crash having occured? They mention the percentage of crashes caused by distracted drivers, but they never even try to make a case that texting is a measurable percentage of those crashes.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want zombie drivers texting. I just prefer that an actual case be made, rather than just using vacuous hype to rally rabid opponents of TWD.
Since the study is not published on the Internet, we should probably assume it to be a sham.
I haven't read all the responses, so it may have been said, but most if not all cell phones these days have GPS. Why not have a setting available (turned on by default) that intercepts calls and texts while the phone is moving at a speed that would equate to driving, and reply with a message stating the user is driving.
Lets consider for a moment all the things that are distracting.
Seatbelt - they have to often be adjusted for some people
Radio - whether it's the station or something on it, it distracts
AC - it's too cold, it's too hot, fiddle, fiddle fiddle
Changing gears - for those who have manual transmission, I'm sure you've experience funky gear changes
Other people on the road doing stupid crap and you being defensive, that's a distraction
Mirror - sometimes they need adjusting
Seats - sometimes they need adjusting
your body - sometimes you need to shift in your seat
high heals - if they get caught on floor mats.
These are all things within the car and are considered acceptable distractions
Cigarrettes - #1 on my list. You drive one handed, you're always flicking ashes, and if they land in the car, drivers freak
Loud stereos - you can't hear others in the car, much less stuff outside of the vehicle
Fast food (any food/drink) - You're eating or drinking, then both hands are not on the wheel
Pagers - reading phone numbers or messages
Cellphones - texting / twittering / talking / answering / dialing, unless it's hands free....
iPODs - if not attached to the stereo, people are always switching to different songs / play lists
GPS devices - help us pay attention to the road right? NOT, easy distraction
Kids - everyone remembers the "mom, make Tommy stay on his side of the car" stuff.
Passengers - can often be distracting
DVD / TVs - I understand they can help keep kids quiet, but all too often, if a DVD ends, Mom / Dad has to switch out videos, and you know they don't pull over for that one.
Over-worked - constantly thinking about work, and not paying attention to the task of driving
Too tired - struggling to stay awake and not paying attention to the task of driving
Road Rage - worrying about someone else and not paying attention to the task of driving
Drugs and Alcohol - self explanatory
There are many more things that could cause distrations. I don't advocate texting while driving, but people need to understand that they are not the only distractions causing accidents.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
This makes me think of a great idea for a new iPhone app. You speak into the iPhone, and it will compose a text message for you. That way, you won't have to spend so long writing the message while driving. It can also read text messages out loud while you are driving for you too, so you can keep your eyes on the road.
In fact, this might be popular enough that people will use it when they aren't driving too!
People will still take the chance no matter how many laws are enacted.
Its just unfortunate these idiots take the stronger with them sometimes.
If it ain't broke, DON'T fix it.
I do it all the time, and I've never had an acci
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
... a Twitter account so we can keep track of the proceedings?
Have gnu, will travel.
Text messaging lowered reaction time by 35 percent, while people high on marijuana slowed down 21 percent and those who were drunk slowed down by 12 percent.
I think you got the figures for pot and alcohol exactly backwards. Do you have a link to the study? Clicking "Parent" showed no such link.
How can you tell if a driver's smoking pot or drinking? Wait by a stop sign. The drinker will flash right past it, while the pothead will stop and wait for the stop sign to turn green.
If they're texting they're liable to run off the road before they ever reach the stop sign; it's hard to steer when you're looking down at your lap and holding a phone with both hands.
Free Martian Whores!
Instead of making it illegal to text they should just prevent it in the first place. Replace the windshield and all windows with an inch of metal that blocks all cell phone frequencies.
My webcomic
Texting while driving may be one of the most irresponsible things a person can do when on the road. Why not just close your eyes for all that time and drive its pretty much if not the same exact thing.
Texting and driving should without a doubt be banned but I donâ(TM)t think it will be that easy of a thing to put a stop to. Everyone knows someone whoâ(TM)s a texting pro and can do it under a table with only a glance or two. So how do you stop those people?
Its a very tricky situation because banning people from doing one thing while driving may just lead to more and more bans where driving may become near impossible. However something does need to be done with the issue of texting and driving. The younger generations that have grown up with cell phones may now find it common to use them any place and anytime. Phone use should still be allowed but texting and driving needs to come to an end.
While I understand the frustration we all feel with a distracted driver, we must remember that this is a blatant violation of free speech in the US.
Blanket punishing of everyone for the few idiots who cut you off on the road is tantamount to road rage on the political scale, and blinded by rage we are all taking away a persons basic right! the right to speak freely and have free press.
The effect of text messaging on driver behaviour: a simulator study
Author N Reed, R Robbins Pages 62
Date 12/12/2008 Reference PPR367
ISBN 978-1-84608-752-3 ISSN 0968-4093
RAC Foundation (2008) reported the results of a survey of 2,000+ users of Facebook, showing that 45% of UK drivers engage in texting whilst driving. The RAC Foundation commissioned TRL to study the impairment caused by texting whilst driving using TRL's driving simulator. Seventeen drivers (aged 17-24 years) took part in the study. Drivers completed one drive as normal (undistracted) and one drive in which they completed text messaging tasks. Participants were impaired in their performance when reading and writing text messages, particularly reaction time and ability to maintain lateral vehicle control. Reaction times were around 35% slower when writing a text message. Earlier studies at TRL showed that alcohol consumption to the legal limit caused a 12% reaction time increase; cannabis slowed reaction times by 21%. When texting, drivers slowed significantly, indicating that they recognised the impairment, attempting to mitigate risk by reducing speed. However, greater lateral variability in lane position and drifting into adjacent lanes when texting are not mitigated by speed reduction and would lead to potential conflict with other traffic. Female drivers showed greater variability in lateral lane position when texting than male drivers. However, female participants tended to show greater speed reductions, indicating that they may have had greater awareness that their driving was impaired. This study highlighted that when texting, a driver may present a greater accident risk than when at the legal limit for alcohol consumption or when under the influence of cannabis, reinforcing that drivers should refrain from this dangerous activity.
Even seems to corroborate your experience with the lane swerving bimbo ;).
I agree the figures on blow and booze seem mixed up. Most people i know get less carefull with booze and more carefull with blow.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Modify the current Driving Under the Influence laws to state DWI instead of DUI.
Add cell phone calls, texting, etc.
Keep the same punishments.
There needs to be a test for distracted driving, but the person taking the test can't know he's taking it or he'll be on his best behavior.
Call centers have a solution: keep people on their toes at all times. "This drive may be recorded for quality purposes."
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Last week there was a story on NPR about this. In this story, they interview two teenage girls. OH... MY... GOD... The stupidity is just unbelievable.
One girl is 16, had a serious accident caused by her texting, spent some time recuperating. She recovers, starts driving again, and immediately has another accident, again while texting (she rear-ended a stopped semi). When asked if she'll stop texting while driving, she responds "Like, I've tried, like, but it's just, like, SOOOOOOO hard. Like."
The second girl says "It's fun to text while driving! Everybody does it, I mean, like, who doesn't?"
I fear for our future...
There is NO need for an additional laws regarding talking on a cell phone or texting, 41 states already have existing laws that make DOING ANYTHING that interferes with your ability to drive an automobile safely and responsibly a crime. If you can't drive a straight line and chew gum it is illegal for you to chew gum while driving a car. These choad warrior politicians are just grandstanding for attention by cluttering up the books with useless laws. Enforce the existing prima facia speed and reckless statutes and all would be covered.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I'm confused about the purported correlation of texting to accidents. We know that traffic fatalities are at an all-time low. And we know that the rate of texting is increasing dramatically.
So shouldn't we assume that texting makes driving safer?
This sort of thing is nothing but sensationalism and panic mongering. Over all numbers of traffic fatalities have decreased in number year after year since the mid 1970s. The rate of them per million miles driven has decreased linearly since the late 1960s. The numbers and rate have also decreased in the last 10 years as well. The number of injuries in car accidents has also declined in car accidents since the mid 1990's as well as the rate at which they occur. Lastly, the overall number of non-fatal accidents has also decreased from 2007 to 2008 as it has in previous years too. See this link for more info: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811172.PDF Cell phone usage has exploded exponentially however with cell phone use growing from some 34 million handsets in the U.S. in the 1990s to over 208 million in 2008. That's a 600% increase. Text message use has also exploded in the last 5 years jumping from something like 10 billion to 100 billion messages sent. So tell me exactly how cell phone usage has anything to do with making our highways less safe? Correlation does not imply causation.
If texting is twice as dangerous as drunk driving, then shouldn't the penalties match. Not just for killing someone, but being pulled over. There are harsh penalties for drunk driving with thresholds at numbers like .08% blood alcohol levels. Most people haven't got a clue what their blood alcohol level really might be. But, they do know if they are texting.
Maybe we need a similar measure for texting. Twittering over 80 characters, for instance.
Keep those tweets short, sweet and sober.
I remember the British electoral campaign slogan "TOUGH ON CRIME, TOUGH ON THE CAUSES OF CRIME".
You're advocating "TOUGH ON BAD DRIVING, LAX ON THE CAUSES OF BAD DRIVING."
If you crack down on bad driving, the bad drivers will be barred from the roads. What's next: outlawing pushing a button to close a window while the car is moving? Banning changing of radio stations or even turning down the volume while driving? Disabling climate controls while the car is in motion? Banning manual transmissions? Banning the viewing of billboards? Why not just cite the infractions according to the existing laws, since the result of those behaviors is the real problem at stake, and is the whole intent of those laws in the first place?
You must be the product of public schools and obviously believe thought control is okay, and logic and personal responsibility are outmoded concepts.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The law should be for "Driving while distracted" not for individual activities (which need to be added one by one).
No sig today...
Don't you dare pick up that cellphone if you're a doctor or an EMT on call. Don't you dare pick up that phone and call for directions when you're lost (instead, drive around erractically as you figure out where you are
Have you ever heard of a place called "the side of the road"? When you get a call or need to fiddle with your GPS, use that place to stop.
... and then they built the supercollider.
So how come you've wasted trillions responding to the Twin Towers thing where a mere 5000 people died.
Clue: Politics and politicians who'll spend any amount of other people's money in order to grab ten minutes on TV.
No sig today...
What a snotty post!
Banning the viewing of billboards? Too late. First Lady Lady Bird Johnson got billboards banned on federal interstates. Likely well before you were born.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
However, it was pointed out to me that the goal is primarily that of getting the clue in to new drivers (primarily teens) that it's not a good idea. There's already a law against it, but enforcement is haphazard and unless it's explicitly spelled out, you won't get any recognition or buy-in by the youth. Once it's a law, they'll nod and either go with it or not, but will at least recognize it.
hi all, i am now 54 years old. in my teens the abnomation was dont trust anyone over thirty. now it seems it is dont trust anyone under thirty. in my day,too high. today too distracted. have'nt been to vegas since 73 regards, mike
And thank God for that.
Never have I seen so much uglification of the countryside caused by roadside advertising, as I have in the United States (the midwest seems particularly bad). And I've pulled long, long highway hours in many countries: Australia, UK, Japan, various other EU countries, New Zealand).
In most countries you might see one advertisement on the edge of a town or something. Maybe. If you're lucky. But US highways seem to basically be a shopping catalogue! Billboards every quarter mile and quite a few of them are electronic (e.g. scrolling things like "OMG 12-packs of Coke only $5.99" or whatever.
America is blessed with astonishing natural beauty and a wider variety of landscapes than most other countries. But you ruin it with those damn billboards.
And don't even get me started on those temperature displays that every shop seems to have. Sure it's nice to know the temperature but I don't need 10 of them on one street (all reading different temperatures, of course).
Well, it didn't say how much alcohol or pot was consumed. It could be that the drinkers were at a .08 while gave so much pot to the smokers that they were nearly unconscious. Without knowing the amount of impairment, I guess the reaction time percentages are pretty much meaningless. Had they indicated how many beers and how many bong hits (and how good the pot was) you could get more out of it.
As to the bimbo, what's worse was it was in heavy traffic in the city at rush hour on a 30 mph 4 land one way street, in fact the main street out of town. There are some really stupid people living here, but then it's a state capital so I guess that's to be expected.
Free Martian Whores!
Put a cell phone jamer in each car -- that turns on when the car moves. Then people would have to stop to use the phone...
Even if the laws are on the books, I can see difficulties enforcing them.
I would expect this crowd to come up with technonerd solutions to this problem. I can see some possible tech solutions.
1. A video camera on a 5 minute loop that runs whenever the engine is on. It has a view of both the driver and the dashboard. In the event of an accident, the police routinely dump the vid. This is part of the evidence used to determine fault.
2. Program the cell tower system to take longer to hand off to the next tower. If normal routine was to have a 10-15 second drop out when moving from tower to tower cell phone use from a rapidly moving vehicle would be *really* annoying. You might still get people doing really short calls, but long yaks would be rare. Does nothing for texting.
3. Since most phones have GPS, it should be easy for the cell companies to monitor the speed of the phone. If transit drivers and cabbies have cell phones, in principle you can figure out who is likely to be a passenger. (Your location is the same as a 'designated driver')
4. If your phone is in a moving vehicle and you are not a passenger, then your phone goes to voice mail with a custom message, "Your recipient is driving right now. He will be notified of this message when he stops." As soon as the GPS indicates that you have not moved for a time of 2-3 light changes, it gives a distinctive ring. In principle the phone can predownload the messages. (Not sure why they don't do this.)
5. There is a message you can send to the cell company that says, "I'm a passenger in a moving vehicle, and can give full attention to my cell phone" This state continues until speed indicates clearly that the person is no longer in a vehicle or when the user sends a "I'm no longer in a vehicle" message. Using this mode under false pretenses results in you having to surrender either your cell phone or your drivers license.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
1) Drivers' attention budgets vary widely, by up to several sigmas. Some are able to multitask while driving in any number of ways, safely. Others are barely capable of keeping the car between the bar ditches if they have both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the road.
...
2) Most drivers with any sense recognize when they're using too much bandwidth on a non-driving related task to the point where it's interfering with their concentration on driving, and recognize that it's perfectly acceptable to tell the person on the other end of the call that they need to focus on a tricky bit of the road coming up, or wait until they can pull over into a parking lot to respond to that last text message.
3) The ones who see other people talking on cellphones or responding to an occasional text message while in sparse traffic and relatively stable traffic flow situations, and take that as a signal that it's OK to drive with the phone glued to their ear or with their eyes fixed on the text chat they're madly typing on, with no regard to how little attention they're paying to actual driving related tasks. These are rare if egregious exceptions.
4) Penalizing the drivers who are too clueless to realize they don't have enough attention budget to spare for multitasking, or even the ability to multitask safely, penalizes the people who *do* know how to manage their attention safely (the majority, IMHO) just to make examples of the people whose behavior is already breaking existing laws. The only people who really benefit from such laws are the politicians who get to grandstand and look like they're "tough on crime" and "promoting public safety" when the laws themselves are the moral equivalent of trying to swat flies with RPG's.
5) Most of this will be ignored or, at best, glossed over by the people who refuse to admit that some people are better drivers than others and insist on micromanaging everyone's cockpit management skills down to the least common denominator
I hate people who drive while talking/texting on their cell phone as much as anyone, but placing a law against such actions is a terrible loss of freedom.
Many states already have laws against reckless driving, this is just going to give corrupt cops one more excuse to pull someone over.
6,000 sounds like a lot of people dying, but it's nothing compared to the amount of people who die from asprin or ladders, both those items kill more people every year.
The solution is to educate the public about how dangerous it is to drive while texting/talking on cell phones, similiar policies aimed at educating the public about the dangers of drinking and driving have proven effective. I wouldn't object to heavier fines placed on those who actually cause a traffic accident while using a cell phone, such a policy would teach these reckless individuals a lesson. But to outlaw talking on a cell phone while driving entirely would only result in a massive loss of freedoms.
Consider this situation: You're driving down the road when your phone rings, it is a relative who has just had a horrible traffic accident on an isolated road and is suffering from massive blood loss. You ask her where her location is so you can alert emergency services and rush to her side right away, when an officer pulls you over for driving while talking on the cell phone.
The situation may sound unlikely, but these types of laws tend to cause much more damage in unintended consequences than the amount of 'protection' they supposedly offer.
People are going to use cell-phones while driving. Period. Laws against this action won't prevent it, and neither will insurance premiums, the only morally correct action for a society to take is to try to educate it's citizens as much as possible so that they make the right decisions for themselves.