"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.'"

Comments

Re:Hasn't worked in the UK

[TechyImmigrant]

>In the UK we drive largely manual gearbox and holding a phone while driving means not changing gear or letting go of the steering wheel while changing gear!

That's what your knees are for.

Use It, Lose It

[DesertNomad]

a good slogan - the driver can reclaim their phone, sealed in the same bag the officer had the driver put it in, down at the station 2 hours later. worse than any ticket.

Re:Use It, Lose It

[Volante3192]

however, it does seem unfair to punish those who can drive while talking without a loss in attention or skill.

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/03/rare-supertaskers-balance-driving-and-cellphone-use.ars

The authors also took the time to remind their readers that the supertasking population really is small, so you shouldn't assume you're one of them. Unfortunately, it looks like most people tend to believe they're the exception to this rule, as the authors note, "our studies over the last decade have found that a great many people have the belief that the laws of attention do not apply to them (e.g., they have seen other drivers who are impaired while multi-tasking, but they are the exception to the rule). In fact, some readers may also be wondering if they too are supertaskers; however, we suggest that the odds of this are against them."

Re:Use It, Lose It

[pushing-robot]

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.

Re:Use It, Lose It

[brian_tanner]

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.

Re:Use It, Lose It

[DarthBart]

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.

Re:Use It, Lose It

[dpaton.net]

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.

Dangerous water for civil liberties?

[dmomo]

One thing in all this that frightens me is the fact that by letting law enforcement pull someone over based on something that is not a clear moving violation, but something the can claim to witness happening inside a vehicle,
we are effectively giving them a tool for racial profiling. This power seems ripe for abuse.

1) See someone who "looks" like they might be carrying something illegal
2) Pull them over, obtain cause to search vehicle
3) If successful, book them
4) If failure, cite them for cell phone use.

How easy is it for a customer to obtain proof that they were or were not texting at a given time?
How easy is it for Law Enforcement?
Is this proof permissible?

Re:Hasn't worked in the UK

[MrWeelson]

The other day I saw a woman applying her lipstick with one hand and on her phone with the other doing 85mph in the middle lane.

I was so shocked I split my cornflakes.

Re:Ummmm.

[Comatose51]

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.