UAE Police Claim BlackBerry Outage Made Roads Safer

Posted by Soulskill on Monday October 17, 2011 @02:07PM from the keep-your-thumbs-at-ten-and-two dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Road traffic accidents in Abu Dhabi and Dubai plummeted last week — and the local police have a theory as to why: drivers' BlackBerrys weren't working. Police in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have claimed that last week's worldwide BlackBerry outage, which frustrated business people around the world who were unable to communicate with their colleagues, had one positive result — less texting and reading of emails by people who should have been concentrating on driving instead. There could be other factors at play, however. For instance, popular UAE soccer player Theyab Awana was killed in a high speed crash near Abu Dhabi in September, amid claims that he was sending a message on his BlackBerry when he hit a lorry. The football star's father, Awana Ahmad Al Mosabi, made an emotional plea to people not to use smartphones while driving, and a Facebook campaign against the use of BlackBerry Messenger while driving has grown in popularity."

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Re:Banninate it. by rolfwind · 2011-10-17 16:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

To add to the last post:

Some people can multitask to the point where they can talk on the phone and drive. Some people need a hands-free device to achieve the same result.
A lot less than many people think. Most overestimate their abilities:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95256794
Which is a very American trait, I noticed:
http://desicritics.org/2006/10/20/012720.php
Kind of like how those people who "work" 12 hours a day, brag about it, and lag behind people who work an honest 8 hours a day in productive because they spend most of the time at the watercooler or on the internet. Seriously, when you're driving, please drive - stop overestimating your abilities when they really get reduced by not paying attention. If you don't want to do that, either carpool with someone who doesn't have that problem and is willing to drive, or use mass transit.
But stfu because you can't stop diddling with your smartphone for 30 seconds and want to bullshit the rest of us that you're just as good with it as without it.