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Could Anti-Texting Laws Make Roads More Dangerous?
An anonymous reader writes "A new study has found that various state laws that ban texting while driving might actually make the roads more dangerous. If that seems counterintuitive, it's the laws of unintended consequences at work. The theory is that the laws don't do much to stop people from texting while driving — but instead, leads them to try to hide the activity more. That is, they end up trying to text with the phone held lower down to avoid it being detected. But, of course, that also takes their eyes even further off the road. The study itself looked at texting-related accidents both before and after 4 different states implemented such laws, and also compared them to neighboring states with no such laws. The results suggest the laws certainly don't help and in some cases appeared to make the situation worse. So if the laws don't work, what is a better solution to preventing texting while driving accidents?"
Sense vehicular motion (including vibration) and shut down the texting function while in motion.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
It is better to change people thru inspiration and education rather than by force and control. Always has been, always will be. However, if the states launched an education campaign about texting & driving dangers, that would be an expensive, not an income from citations. Also, our precious insurance companies wouldnt be able to jack your rates up nearly as high.
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
And why does "texting" need to be explicitly mentioned in the laws. How hard would it be to prove someone was "texting"? No, I wasn't texting, I was shopping, playing a game, whatever.
Call it what it is... bad driving / reckless endangerment.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Write people an extremely hefty fine if they are involved in an accident while texting. Make it easier to convict them on involuntary manslaughter charges if they were texting at the time they hit a pedestrian. If people can safely text, great. If not, punish them when they cause problems. This is the same as any other distraction while driving - you can think about other things than the road while driving legally (work problems, family problems, etc). If you can still safely drive, great. If not, you pay the piper when you hurt someone else.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
Studies have shown that it's not the act of holding the phone that is the problem, but rather the fact that you're concentrating on something other than the road.
Granted, speech-to-text would be less of an issue than talking because you can pause while doing some tricky driving, but you're still going to be thinking about the message you're composing rather than on your driving.
Ugh. A slashdot article linking to some dude's blog post linking to the Christian Science Monitor's discussion. Can't *someone* link to the original study by the Highway Loss Data Institute?
Here's the HLDI's summary, with graphs:
http://www.iihs.org/news/rss/pr092810.html
Links to more details on that page. It's actually a pretty interesting analysis, if you go beyond the lede.
If nothing else, keeping it illegal keeps accidents caused by it from being declared "no fault."
A Speech-to-text system in your car -- or built into your phone, that's the better solution...
Person says "lol, omfg. u r so right"
Speech-to-text system says "I'm sorry. I didn't understand that. Please say again."
Person says "L - O - L. O - M - F - G. You - are - so - right."
Speech-to-text system says "I think you said "Laura oh my friendly good."
Person interrupts saying "NO YOU STUPID FUCKING TEXT TO SPEECH FUCKER. I SAID LOL AS IN LAUGH OUT LOUD GOD DAMN YOU. OMFG STANDS FOR OH MY FUCKING GOD YOU FUCKING RETARDED PIECE OF MOTHER FUCKING SHIT!"
Speech-to-text says "You want to call your mother. Is that correct?"
Then after the texters have killed each other off, re-open their roads to the non-texters.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
One thing about this study: the laws are only a year or so old in most states. In my experience, people tend to ignore minor laws until they get caught, then change their behavior to avoid repeat offense penalties. There hasn't been enough time for the average texting addict to get busted and possibly break the habit.
Let's look back on this in a year or two before we make a final verdict.
I sometimes wrestle with th question of whether or not dangerous behaviors should be punishable at whatever level it takes to make people stop doing them.
For example, we know texting while driving is dangerous, based on stastics. It significantly risks other people's lives. Also, any sane person should know it's just a dumb idea.
So would it be just, or a good idea, to simply have a thre strikes rule for this? First strike - no driver's license for 6 months. Second strike - a public caning. Third strike - execution or banishment to Wasilla, AK (offender's choice).
Similarly for dealing dangerous drugs, or drunk driving.
Why is it that when the repeat offenders play a game of chicken with the law, it's always the non-offenders that blink and let the offender get off with light punishment? (I'm thinking of drunk drivers with many, many offenses.) Why can't these repeat offenders be given threats of penalties so serious that it actually curbs their behaviors that endanger others?
A report by the National Safety Council found cell phone use leads to about 1.6 million crashes a year. About 200,000 of those accidents are caused by texting while driving. Studies show teenagers are especially prone to text and drive.
Link is Here.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
You presume that:
1. Driving while using a cellphone is genetic or otherwise hereditary and thus selectable against. 2. People doing so will be eliminated at a higher rate than people who drive sensibly (There's nothing stopping one idiot in a truckzilla from taking out a family of 7 in a minivan when they blow through a red light doing 90).
I presume nothing, other than that I clearly should include joke tags in the future.
Catch someone texting while driving - impound their car and tow it away. We already do this for people who are too drunk to drive. This just does the same for people who are too stupid to be allowed to drive.
Take the phone away too.
I don't usually text and drive, unless I've been drinking.
Studies have found that laws prohibiting bank robberies have failed to reduce the number of thefts while making them more dangerous for innocent bystanders. Police officer's attempts to enforce those laws have only encouraged criminals to carry weapons.
While I think it is ridiculous to write a law to make prosecuting every little driving distraction easier, the fact is the law is there. If people are attempting to be more discreet while still violating the law, the problem isn't that this makes them more dangerous. The problem is that the penalties are not severe enough to stop the behavior.
Example: I'll drive 5 over on the interstate because I know the chance of getting a ticket is slim. I won't drive 5 over in a school zone. The risks are higher and the penalties are nasty.
Another day, another update to a Google android app.
... Is the person who is on the other side of the accident, obeying traffic rules and minding their own business when some idiot blows a red light because they were too busy texting and then is killed. Traffic accidents are incredibly traumatic, physically, mentally, and emotionally. I know a friend who had an accident that wasn't her fault, but is still making payments on her newly purchased car because the insurance company paid her for the value of the car, not the value of the loan. And death is forever, so punishment after the fact is little solace to the teenager last month who plowed into a family SUV last month in my home town and killed the passenger all because he was too impatient to wait behind a car driving in front of him around a curve on a backroad.
Your same logic could be applied to people who speed or run redlights. Sure don't ticket them until they have an accident after running a redlight. The problem with your idea is that people already think they are fantastic drivers and could not possibly get into accidents. Then they get into an accident and the damage is done. Sure don't ticket that guy driving drunk until he kills a nice happy family of four or something that looks equally gruesome and heartwrenching on the 11:00 PM news.
To me, the obvious answer to car accidents is public transportation, and I'm sure that these rules are not helping very much because it's very hard to enforce before an accident anyway. However, if we continue to insist on cars as the way we get around in the US, then we all have a vested interest in making them safe by insisting on enforcement of rules that protect every driver as best we can. I'm not saying the anti-texting laws are effective, I'm just saying punish only on results is not as effective as you think.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
We know that texting-while-driving is far more dangerous than driving while drunk.
We have decided, as a society, that driving while drunk is so dangerous that we have made it illegal, and impose stiff penalties. It isn't just illegal to drive while drunk. It is illegal to have an open container in the car. This is based on the reasonable assumption that, if there is an open container, the driver may take a drink and become impaired.
I think it would be reasonable to decide, as a society, that texting-while-=driving is so dangerous that we should impose stiff penalties. And, it shouldn't just be illegal to drive while texting. It should be illegal to have an open texting device in the car. If there is an open texting device, the driver may look at it and become impaired. Many times, I have seen a teenager say "look at this", and hold his/her phone out so that another person can read it. If that other person happens to be a driver, the drivers attention is taken away from the driving.
I really don't have any problem with drivers who decide to kill themselves, other than perhaps that I get stuck paying part of the cost of the emergency services. I have a really big issue with drivers who try to kill me, by swerving their vehicles toward mine while driving at a high rate of speed. Recently, that has happened several times each day.
Easy. Instead of writing new laws targeting the specific act (texting while driving), enforce the existing laws that address the underlying reason it's a problem (distracted driving). That way the presence or absence of a phone isn't a factor, so concealing the phone has nothing to do with anything. If someone isn't paying attention to the road, ticket them.
I was on a walk at night several months ago and a woman drove by with the dome light on in her car. With the inside of her car being perfectly illuminated against the darkness, I could clearly see that she was reading a book. This was especially scary, as she was driving through a school zone in a neighborhood with many children and few lights (reduced light pollution, I think is the goal). I would expect that if she had driven by a cop, she would have been pulled over and sited for reckless endangerment. Why should this be different for texting?
The gov't can flaunt all the studies/stats out there even show videos of what happens when you get into an accident, but that won't help. People will still think to themselves, "Shit, I need to tell XYZ that I'm going to be home late, or to let out the cat...."
Last week I was walking in the mall and saw a woman about 75ft in front of me looking at her phone while she was texting and walking. I stopped walking and just stood there. A few seconds later she walked right into me. In the 75ft that she walked, she never looked up once. She proceeded to blame me for not getting out of the way and I calmly told her that I was standing there looking at the display, I can't be responsible if you were not paying attention to where you were walking.
I can only imagine what this woman is like when she's driving a 3000lb car going 45mph.
I agree with the other posters, if you're texting while in an accident, hefty fine, removal of driving privileges, suspension of license, put it on your record (like a DUI), increase your auto insurance rates, public flogging etc...
Btw, in California they are trying to lower the fine for making a 'rolling stop' at a stop sign from $450 to $219. The fine is supposed to be painful.
Can you remember when the CB radio fad took off, and there were all these news reports talking about the danger of CB'ing and driving?
Wait... that never happened...
Did we not have an over-sensationalist media that tried to get us to tune in by scaring us so shitless that we began begging lawmakers to create laws based on knee-jerk reactions back then or something?
1. Telephone companies can and do routinely trangulate from towers or use GPS-enabled smartphones to establish the position of a cellular phone. It's not rocket science to integrate those measurements over time and obtain the velocity of a cellular phone.
2. Add some code to phone company messaging servers that disables sending and receiving of text messages while the mobile phone is in motion.
3. New phones should have some code that notices the situation and disables reading old messages and typing new messages in advance. Perhaps they won't allow you to dial anything but 911 or even receive calls unless you have bluetooth.
Yes, this means that we take away some convenience to be safer. Yes, the phone companies won't make as much money. I'm sorry. People are behaving like children and we need to take their toy away.
They'll be more easily caught though, because they'll be swerving all over the road.
Some drunk driver the other day was convicted of murder instead of manslaughter because he'd already had a DUI conviction, knew that driving under the influence could lead to someone else's death, chose to drive while drunk anyway and killed someone. Just run a "Don't drive while texting" PSA campaign and then punish infractions severely and punish deaths caused by people who were texting VERY severely and people should get the idea pretty quickly. It's a pity about all those innocent bystanders who are going to die before people realize that the consequences of doing this will too severe for them to risk doing it, though.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It seems like education is likely to be the only solution.
My approach to education: If you hit me b/c you were fucking with your phone, I may exercise my option to beat the shit out of you.
You're on the road to drive. If you cannot or do not want to be responsible for operating a 3,000lb weapon, pull over - or call a cab. I'm sorry that it is so much to ask that while you're sharing the road with other people, you take some responsibility for what you're doing and pay attention. Your first job when behind the wheel is not your makeup, not your hair, not your girlfriends' latest hangup, not your buddy's party last night. Drive your damn car like both our lives depend on it.
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
When a criminal murders someone & there are witnesses, he typically kills the witnesses also.
If there weren't anti-murder laws, he wouldn't have to kill the witnesses.