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Quantifying the Risk of Texting Drivers
An anonymous reader writes "More than 5000 people die each year as a result of being distracted while driving, and a new study indicates that teens and cell phones make for the most volatile combination. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that of all drivers under 20 involved in fatal crashes, 16 percent were distracted — the highest proportion of any age group. 'Shockingly, texting drivers took their eyes off the road for each text an average of 4.6 seconds — which at 55 mph, means they were driving the length of a football field without looking,' said David Hosansky."
If you notice someone driving dangerously, you can report them to the police. I did this when someone decided to start reversing out of a parking space and drove into my leg. Very low speed collision, so I wasn't injured, but he refused to admit that he'd done anything wrong by reversing into a stationary pedestrian without looking. The police went and had a chat with him about paying due care and attention. Maybe next time, he made sure he checked his blind spot before reversing...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Texting is right up next to drunk driving for stupidity.
Texting while driving has actually been demonstrated to be worse than drunk driving in some experiments.
At least the drunk person has the intoxicating effects to blame for their idiocy (although obviously they're the ones that chose to drink in the first place so no sympathy on that count), but most people trying to text and drive at the same time are stone sober and thus have no excuse for their stupidity.
That's probably not safe to do while driving either.
In The Netherlands there was a contest on one of the radioshows for this, and the gesture that won was a hand, with all fingers stretched out (open hand) in the air. It's actually quite common to see it.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)