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Fines Fail To Curb Cell Phone Usage While Driving
andylim writes "An in-depth study of over 14,000 London drivers by the Transport Research Laboratory has found an increase in the number of London motorists making and taking calls using their handsets at the wheel between 2008 and 2009, even though harsher penalties were introduced in 2007. It seems that most people, at least in London, still don't respect the fact that there's a much higher risk of being involved in an accident if you're using your cell phone."
It's the enforcement. We have really, really high fines here for all sorts of traffic violations, but enforcement is so lacking that it almost seems random. Your chances of getting caught are miniscule, so people learn to ignore the law. If they do get caught, the fines are staggering - but the one in ten thousand chance of getting caught is not a deterrent.
Actually it's not the fines or enforcement. It's training. Every police vehicle I've seen has a laptop mounted on the center console. Every time I see a cop driving around they have one hand on the keyboard and constantly glance back and forth between the road and the computer.
Cell phones and cars aren't going away anytime soon. Instead of punishing the citizens for doing something police are trained to do, train the citizens too. There is no reason that drivers ed. classes shouldn't discuss this and deal with it.
I think the best way to "think of the children" is to teach the children. If you don't want little Lisa to text and drive into a horrible wreck, teach her how to text and drive responsibly. Otherwise take your blanket statements and have every computer removed from police vehicles because otherwise we have an effective working double standard which provides revenue to the police force. Fuck that shit.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
One more thing... In the USA (I live in Minnesota), we have classes of drivers licenses. Lowest class being I think a D (my D license allows me to drive standard cars and trucks up to a certain size). There is a separate class for motorcycles, and tractor-trailers (semi-trucks, 18-wheelers, etc). This "problem" can easily be handled through education, hands-on training, and licensing.
Now I'm on a roll... We have these special license plates for vehicles whose owners like to drink alcohol and drive drunk. In my state we call them "whiskey plates" because the license number always starts with a W. These special license plates are a signifier for law enforcement that the person driving has been convicted multiple times of driving while intoxicated, and as such, may now be pulled over and checked at any time to verify they are not repeating the offense. I may be off on the rules, but that is the gist of it.
So, maybe we can create another class of license plates as well as license. You text and cause accidents or speed too much, and you have to go to court and tell a judge. Then your car gets "texty plates" and everyone around now knows you like to text and drive and cause problems, and the cops can pull you over and check your cellphone to ensure you haven't been repeating the offense.
I dunno. These ideas seem more American to me than making government bigger, and interfering with previously held freedoms.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
It's more training than anything else. E.g. pilots learn to "aviate, navigate, communicate" in that priority order, cops learn to drive, then talk. Both roles need the person on the other end of the conversation to also be trained to expect pauses in the conversation. That is not the case when J6P is driving and having to deal with his wife talking on the phone about random stuff that is important to her.
Note that it's much safer when J6P's wife is talking to him while he's in the car: she can see him concentrating as the school bus pulls out while the fuel truck heads towards the closing railroad crossing. Then she stops talking. (That's why hands-free vs standard cell phones make virtually no difference in accident rates.)
"I don't believe that the vast majority of people can be taught to do this safely and responsibly."
Yes, because the average person is incapable of learning simple skills. I had a roommate who was training to be an EMT. Her ambulance driving course had approximately the same number of instructional hours as my (excellent) driving training course in high school.
Now, how many quality instructional hours do you think the average driver has? How good is the test, and how often is it repeated? When I got my learners permit the ten question multiple choice test was easier than the test I'd done a week before in grade eight Home Ec. to use the sewing machine.
It is not hard to teach people skills like normal driving, dealing with distractions while driving, etc. The problem is that almost nobody gets the training because they don't have to.