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"Phone In One Hand, Ticket In the Other"
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that federal regulators plan a pilot project to test 'high visibility' crackdown efforts to curb cellphone use by drivers in two cities, Hartford and Syracuse, spending $200,000 in each city, while each state would contribute $100,000 more. The Transportation Department says it wants to send the message: 'Phone in One Hand. Ticket in the Other,' and plans on ramping up enforcement on state bans of hands-free phones by motorists, advertising the campaigns and undertaking studies to see if the efforts curb behavior and attitudes. Safety advocates say that curbing the behavior requires enforcement and education, which they say has been clearly evident in past efforts with seat belts with the 'Click It or Ticket Program' (PDF) that helped increase seat belt use to 83% nationally. 'It's time for drivers to act responsibly, put their hands on the wheel and focus on the road,' says Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who last year called distracted driving an 'epidemic.'"
Should we allow airline pilots to text their friends while landing? I'm sure a few could do it without losing concentration, so why trample on their rights?
I agree that the primary focus should be erratic driving, not any one particular gadget... But the rule of civilization is that some outlying people have to give up some minor liberties to ensure the safety of everyone.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Except that, as has been posted here before, people are terrible at self-assessing their skill. I know, I know, you are different: you are not overestimating yourself, you are one of the 0.025% of people who can talk on the phone without being distracted http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-03/uou-fdw032610.php.
I know for a fact that I cannot multitask. However, I believe myself to be particularly good at self-evaluation. I know about psychology, and I read slashdot: I can adapt my self-assessment. I'm a scientist and I don't have a large ego about my regular cognitive skills, I am the typical absent-minded professor type. However, I didn't really realize how poor I was at multitasking until my late 20s, and I am particularly bad at it. I had a couple of near accidents (nothing that would have been severe), but I understand probability and statistics. I know that if I continued to drive distracted, with overwhelming probability I would eventually cause an accident. So I stopped sampling.
This does not describe most people. Many are overconfident and unable to recognize their own deficiencies. Even more don't understand that taking a small risk enough times basically ensures that the low-probability outcome will eventually happen.
I don't want those people deciding what's safe, because you know what, they won't realize they have a problem until they get in an accident. And the first time, they will attribute it to bad luck. My mother in law rear-ended someone while changing the radio station and shrugged it off: bad luck, could happen to anyone.
There are too many people on the road for them to be learning what's safe and what's not by trial and error. No thanks.
The pilot is in constant communication with the tower through a very phone-like apparatus called a radio
Yep, and strangely enough, he's got it via headset. He doesn't have one hand on the radio mike, one on the throttle quadrant, and one on the yoke.
If you were a pilot, you'd know one simple three word phrase:
Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.
A pilot's duty is to act in that order. Fly the plane, know where you are, and tell people. That hierarchy saves lives. Drivers could learn a think or two from Pilots in that regard.
This is not a sig. this is a duck. quack.
You say that as though somehow using a phone is an integral part of driving. Guess what. A couple of decades ago very few people had phones and they drove fine without them. What is so damn hard about not chatting away or doing something else while directing a multi-ton vehicle? If you really need to talk, pull over, stop the vehicle, and carry on with your conversation. You say it as though we can't easily pull over. People pull over all the time on the highway for emergencies such as flat tires. You don't need special flat tire changing areas to stop your vehicle. If the conversation is not important enough for you to do that, then wait and talk later.
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