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Will Your Car Tell You To Put Down the Phone?
crimeandpunishment writes with this story from the AP: "We know it's dangerous to text while driving, or talk on a cell phone without using a hands-free device. What if our car knew it as well, and warned us about it? Our cars buzz and beep at us when our seatbelts aren't buckled ... now there are new applications in the works that could lead to a warning if we're driving with a cell phone in our hand."
I don't know what the current numbers are, but as of a couple of years ago the story was that the leading cause of distracted driver accidents was messing with the climate control and radio. So, yeah, let's go for saving lives and make it so you can't change the radio station, volume, or adjust the temperature. There will probably have to be congressional hearings on whether defogging of the windows is worth the risk involved in enabling it. I guess for safety's sake we should just make defogging be on all the time, just in case.
I personally think that the real problem is people not giving the driving the attention it requires. Whether it's your child (my wife was once rear-ended by a woman in a SUV because she was watching her child in the back seat -- did I mention we drive an impossible-to-miss yellow car), having a beverage, or adjusting the climate control... You need to pay attention to the weapon you are steering.
Sean
It's not up in the air at all. Back in the day when cell phones were large, bulky things that took up the center seat on a standard bench seat pickup truck, my boss got me one. Most of the time, it would ring, I would tell whoever that I'm driving, and I'll call them back. One day, the boss called me to rag on me. He got moderately abusive, and my mind was on the phone call, not on my driving. Holding the phone was no great distraction - the content of the discussion was. Instead of making my turn, I drove across the state line, and only realized it after I had driven about 6 or 7 miles into the neighboring state.
Forever after, I turned that damned phone OFF while I was driving. I'm a pretty damned good driver, with literally millions of miles behind me. But, if I can screw up so badly, you bet your ass that other people can!!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Actually, steering wheels rarely kill you by hitting your head. What normally happens is that your chest strikes the wheel and experiences a deceleration injury. The way the heart is attached in the chest causes it to fold forward on the attachment where the subclavian artery meets the aorta. This causes a partial or complete tear of the aorta (aortic dissection/transection) If a partial tear is detected in the ER before it ruptures, the patient can occasionally be saved with emergency surgery. My general surgery chairman suggested that all auto manufacturers should mark steering wheels with a raised 'AORTAGRAM' mirror image on them. That way when the chest struck the wheel with sufficient force, it would remind the surgery residents to get an aortagram to rule out dissection by printing it right on the chest.