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No Tech Panacea For Tech-Distracted Driving
The Washington Post features an article on the continuing problem of drivers distracted by technology, specifically by texting or even talking on the phone while at the wheel. The piece mentions a few apps designed to disable phones, or at least some phone features, when they detect sustained motion that might indicate that the user is driving. Trouble is, as the writer points out, these apps are trying to do a context-sensitive task (under the best of circumstances) with only the broadest of clues. Further, many of them require ongoing subscription fees, just to be able to disable phone functions — and yet feature override features simple enough for a driver to activate.
Easy, just use my patented DPUTFP method.
Don't Pick Up The Fucking Phone.
Most smartphones have a built-in GPS, so have it shut off the phone if it detects that it's moving at more than 20km/h or so.
Yes, this means that passengers, people on trains, etc. won't be able to use their smartphones. Gee, what a tragedy. A few hours of inconvenience is so awful to give up in return for reduced road carnage.
Easy, just use my patented DPUTFP method.
Don't Pick Up The Fucking Phone.
Right. And it's no surprise that that is what the NTSB is recommending. From the article:
The National Transportation Safety Board hasn’t weighed in on any apps. Its recommendation is a human solution: Just don’t use your phone at all while driving, even if you’re using a hands-free device.
I'm glad to see that their prosecution efforts are coming to fruition. Now we just need to get the word out that, like drinking and driving, this is socially unacceptable and a harsh negative stigma should be associated with it. If you do it, fuck you, you're endangering people's lives. They're finally looking at cell phone records for the time periods surrounding crashes, just like BAC and sobriety checks although most people are probably lying to escape any ability of police checking those records.
My work here is dung.
You'll just have to wait a few more years for it though. Until Google rolls out a beta.
Posted from my tab while doing 70 down the garden state parkway.
Less speed traps, more bad driving enforcement. I know I could meet my monthly quota (that doesn't exist, wink wink) in traffic violations just by watching the drivers around me in my morning commute. Seriously, why can't a cop just drive around and ticket the same people I see? In many cases, the improper lane changer, and the distracted texter are doing so right in front of the cop who is next to me. I guess cops only know how to give tickets when they are setup in a speed trap. Why not make texting traps?
Aren't all technical solutions to social problems doomed to fail in the end ? ...)
My question is: why do so many people think so little of their fellow human's lives that there risk them for so little ? (also applies to drink/drive, RLJing, speeding,
I was shocked when I first saw a GPS system stuck on the windscreen of a car - not least the first time I came to use one in conjunction with the other countless beeping proximity devices and seatbelt chimes and other distractions in modern automobiles. Add on a reversing camera and I simply don't know where to look at any one time.
How these devices came to be there and are still somehow legal I'll probably never know.
...are toddlers. I have two of them. They fight, drop their toys, want milk, spill milk, scream, open window, throw things out of the window, get out of their seats... and all these issues have to be mitigated while doing 65 on the interstate.
Screw the government and big brother style tech solutions for simple problems. The problem: people crash. The solution: hold them personally accountable.
Car accidents happened before cell phones and they will happen after cell phones. The sad thing is some people are perfectly fine making a phone call while driving or sending a text at a traffic light. Others can't be trusted with any distraction and will still be a shitty driver with no distractions.
This idea that there is 'only one driver per car' is total and complete shit. My Jeep prevented me and the passenger from entering a new address into gps until I was going 5 mph or slower until I disabled that shit.
IMO, driving while texting should be treated the same as driving with blood alcohol over the limit. First offence should get you a three-month license suspension. Second should get you six months. Third should be a lifetime driving ban.
And that's if no-one is killed or injured. If someone is killed and you were texting or your blood alcohol was over the limit, that's second-degree murder in my book. If society doesn't take these things seriously, we'll continue to kill thousands of people a year.
There sure is a tech panacea for distracted driving.
SELF DRIVING CARS
There. Solved, Q.E.D.
I want my self driving car and I want it very soon.
What frustrates me most of all is that the biggest hurdle stopping self driving cars is the damn lawyers who are salivating at suing the first self driving car manufacture who has a problem, even though technology like this would virtually eliminate distracted driving completely.
In the UK it's illegal to use a phone whilst driving. Doesn't seem to stop people happily jabber on the phone whilst swerving their monster 4WD through traffic though.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
feature override features
Am I the only one who needed to read that 4 times before I got the meaning correctly?
Once again we are trying to find a technological fix to a human problem. People are the problem, not the technology.
Except in extreme circumstances, there is absolutely no need to check your phone every 20 seconds or send texts every five while walking down the street or ghetto driving your vehicle.
The unfortunate part is that in this case, evolution won't weed out the stupid because when these people have accidents, it's generally the other person who pays the price.
There is one way to make a dent but everyone would throw up their arms in terror. Since there are cameras in police cars, every time, not just whenever they feel like it, but everytime someone is talking on their phone while driving, they should be ticketed. The camera can provide proof of the deed and unless the person can prove they were in an emergency situation (house on fire, family member died, etc), they get to pay the fine.
Or course this will never happen because people will whine about their "rights" being violated despite the fact they are endangering the people around them. Apparently those people don't have the right not be run over or plowed into while you talk about your latest marital problems or the wench in the office who wears short skirts (true conversations I've heard).
Sure, there will always be those who will continue to talk, but once enough people get ticketed for talking/texting while driving, things will improve.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Drivers could learn from pilots - 1 fly the plane, 2 fly the plane where you need to go, 3 talk to the people you need to talk to.
One time I was driving I-5 to LA in the passing lane, which had traffic going above the posted limit. I looked in my rearview and an officer was right on my tail. I expected to get pulled over for speeding at that point, signaled and switched to the slow lane. The officer pulled right up on the tail of the next car which did the same as me. Two more cars followed likewise. The fifth driver did not notice the officer right behind him and in about 30 seconds on came the lights. He probably got a ticket for speeding, but his crime was failure at situational awareness. If that officer was looking to fill a quota any one of us would have done, but I was glad to see the unsafe driver get the ticket.
Except, of course, if it's integrated into the car, and the manufacturer of that car has spent millions bribing Congress to adopt the paradigm that any amount of tech in a vehicle is perfectly safe so long as it is integrated and the manufacturer got to profit from it.
Arthur C Clarke predicted this first.
In Profiles of the Future, he pointed out that within my lifetime, it would become a serious offence to drive a car yourself on a public road..... and not have a computer drive for you.
Of course, racetracks would still exist for Freudian reasons
However, operating a car manually on public roads will undoubtedly become an offence equivalent to drunk driving. Whether you agree or disagree with Dr Clarkes time-line, you have to agree, that this IS what will happen in years to come.
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
the government merely needs to mandate to cell providers, phone makers, and car makers, a comprehensive set of standards of how these devices interact
your car starts, suddenly you can only do voice activation on your phone, for example. they already sense passengers for air bag activation, so passenger cells can be excluded
this being slashdot, some idiot will concoct some scenario about why it won't work "what if you want to call 911! (so 911 calls are always enabled, genius)" or how government is pure evil and can do no good (no witty comeback for that, just roll your eyes)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
While it may be heresy, I humbly suggest the solution to tech-distracted driving is to turn off said technology and focus on the task at hand. As one bumper sticker so eloquently commanded: "Shut up and drive."
"The truck driver cut you off . . . while your breaks failed . . . while you were texting . . . "
"Yes, that was definitely a tech problem. It wasn't your fault."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I have an iPhone charger/radio transmitter that I plug my phone in to on the way back & forth to work. If I leave the phone active, it interferes with the radio signal, so I have to put it into airplane mode if I want to listen to music. No worries about receiving calls or text messages.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Yes, this means that passengers, people on trains, etc. won't be able to use their smartphones. Gee, what a tragedy.
If a smartphone won't work as advertised on the bus commute to and from the office, or on a Greyhound bus trip two states away, I might as well go back to a $5 per month dumbphone plan from Virgin Mobile and just carry a netbook for use with Wi-Fi. So why not ban smartphones entirely?
RLJing
If a red light has stayed red for over six minutes despite my having been parked directly on the sensor, what am I supposed to do?
Just as a time passer on the bus last week I counted up cars whose drivers were using their phone. Not with scientific rigor or anything (though it would be interesting to do so). Out of about 20 cars, 6-7 were texting, 4-5 were talking on the phone, and one person was kicking it old school and reading a paperback. On I-5. In rush hour traffic.
So I was in a 3 lane traffic jam at a stop ending a call - I was in the center lane. I looked down to press the button to end my call. The was a bang, I looked up and it took me a good while to figure out what was happening. The car in front (or 2 in front I dunno 'cause I was looking down) of me had left a gap for someone coming out of a parking lot to cross all the lanes to get to a U-turn lane in the median (a 4th lane). The 3rd lane (left of me) had cleared quite a bit, so someone in a truck pulling a trailer was going rather quickly past all the stopped cars in the other 2 lanes. The SUV pulled through my lane into the 3rd lane just in time to get T-boned and pushed sideways a good 70 feet which involved going over the curb and part way around the U-turn before coming to a stop. As traffic started and I passed them I could see the vehicle quite caved in right at the B pillar (closing point of driver door). The entire picture of what had happened did not become clear to me until I drove past, where it would have all been clear from the start had I not been looking down at the critical moment. Let me rephrase this - someone may have died 20 feet in front of me and I didn't even see it or know what happened until I had a chance to piece it all together after the fact. This lapse was due to simply pressing the red button to end a call.
Now from my imagination: Imagine you're stopped at a red light sending a text. Just as you hit send someone honks loudly from behind you. You look up, the light is green and the car in front of you is already through the intersection. What is your reaction? Most people (you can claim to be special, but most people) will hit the gas to get moving while neglecting to take a few seconds to assess the overall situation (pedestrians, bikes, cross traffic, etc...). That loss of context can be very hazardous. Driving is about knowing what's happening so you can make decisions while sitting in the driver seat - not just at 50mph.
I have never had a problem reading the map on my phone or typing out a message in a traffic jam.
However I have rear-ended someone because of a cute girl walking her dog, and have had several near rear-ending events due to cute girls. How do we address my poor decisions? Mandating all women cover up completely, or can't go outside if they might be attractive to someone like me? Blaming the cute girls is just as asinine as blaming the phone.
As some commenters noted before me, blocking cell phone based just on its speed is stupid, there is no reason to block it for passangers in train/bus or car (if they are not driving).
Where i live, we have a ban on using a cellphone with zour hands while driving. It's ok to talk with someone using hands-free set.
There's one thing for certain... 100% certain. We cannot ever depend on humans to do the right thing even if YOU (the reader) always do. For example, I never drive while drunk. Never. But that does not protect me from drunk drivers. And there will always be drunk drivers.
So. What are we to do?
1. I think we should treat distracted drivers exactly the same as we treat drunk drivers. EXACTLY the same.
2. Bluetooth devices in your car or perhaps a signal blocking headliner in the car might be an appropriate thing.
To expound upon my first point, we somehow think that "being drunk" is the crime. It's not. Operating a motor vehicle capable of inflicting death and destruction while not being fully capable of doing so safely is the crime. It puts the public at risk. And it is in no small way related to the fact that drunk driving is a serious crime that I am seriously deterred from it. I am quite afraid to drive while drunk not because I'm afraid to die or to put damage on my or anyone else's car. I'm consciously afraid because of the serious harm it might do to my life and future. (If you're drunk, your thinking is already impaired, you need to be afraid of it BEFORE you get drunk, not while you're drunk.) And if you respond with "well, are harsh DUI laws a panacea?" No, but you can bet it helps lower the rate even if I'm the ONLY person on the planet such laws work on.
So if harsher laws were put into place, there might be some progress in that area. For now, the crime of driving while electronically distracted is a "white collar crime" as it were. But to follow up on that, there's plenty of room for "reasonable doubt" in all of that so there would have to be great pains taken to avoid a witch hunt. (You know, like, "hey! he's got a mobile phone! he must have been impaired!!!") Well, no... but then again, we do often have laws in various states against "open containers" so maybe a law that says "if you have a mobile device, you need to put it in the trunk of your car do avoid being charged with an offense.") Anyway, such laws have their perils and pluses but simply doing nothing about it is likely not an acceptable approach to anyone.
As for the second approach? Obviously it would be hard to REQUIRE these things and if #1 happened, then taking such measures "voluntarily" would immediately stigmatize someone as potentially being a prior offender. But having a bluetooth signal generator paired with your phone to automatically put your phone into airplane (actually "car mode" since airplane mode kills bluetooth too) mode when the signal is in range would be an affective measure provided your phone will accept and run the app for that. And not all phones are smart phones and not all have bluetooth even if they aren't and if they aren't and have bluetooth, they may not be updated with this "safety feature" and on and on... lots of problems with the idea.
As for a signal blocking headliner? It would also cause other problems... problems for passengers, problems with GPS reception and all that. Like it or not, electronics are a part of our culture, our presence and most importantly, our future. We can't just throw the baby out with the bath water.
I text and drive all the time. Seriously, like every day. While moving at a high rate of speed, even! Jesus, you guys act like I'm murdering babies.
Truth is, I do it because it's not that dangerous. Most of us can type without looking at the keyboard. In fact, we can type without looking at the screen! I do the same thing to text while driving. Pay attention to the road first, text when it's appropriate. Don't do it when you might hit someone. Empty interstates are a good place. Red lights are decent.
You just need to teach, in driving school, that you always pay attention to the road first and second, and everything else after that. After that, you can do pretty much anything and drive without much incident.
People will do stupid things. If this were only a tech problem, then perhaps a tech solution would be appropriate -- but it isn't.
Are we asking Starbucks for "hot drink while driving" solutions? Are we asking McDonald's for "eating food while driving" solutions? Are we asking business owners for "looking for a store" solutions? Are we asking advertisers for "distracted by billboards" solution?
Until someone comes up with a "stupid drivers who do things instead of driving" solution, there isn't a solution for the "distracted driver" problem.
The problem isn't tech, the problem is stupid drivers.
The problem with texting and driving isn't the texting; it's the driving. NPR had a guest on the other week who made the point that the upcoming generation is going to see driving as a huge waste of time and likely let their cars fall by the wayside in favor of mass transit.
Just because the last couple of generations of Americans have had it ingrained in our psyche that car ownership is the epitome of our identity, doesn't mean that every generation will drink that Kool-Aid. Their Kool-Aid is always-on, always-connected, and much more interesting than staring at someone else's bumper stickers in stop-and-go traffic for a couple of hours every day.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1759791.stm
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
They need to incorporate a "Driving Mode" that will auto respond to the person texting / calling / emailing / etc and say the user they are attempting to contact is driving, please leave a message. Then, automatically enter driving mode if detected (via GPS or any other method really) that the person is in a vehicle traveling > 10 mph or so. Make it so you can manually turn off driving mode if you are a passenger. Same tech could be used for flight mode, enter flight mode if detected you are traveling > 100 MPH and / or more than 500 feet above the ground, allow manual override for special circumstances. Note: This is proof of prior art in case anyone tries to patent this.
"Computer Scientists can count to 1024 on their fingers" (non-mutant, non-mutilatated, human computer scientists)
Why would anybody install an app on their own phone that would prevent them from using it while driving, and why would someone ever pay for such a service?
Or are these app developers hoping to eventually have the government mandate the installation of their apps on every smart phone, whether or not their "customers" want it?
D. Tyler Cade
Easy, just use my patented DPUTFP method.
Don't Pick Up The Fucking Phone.
I have been using the UN-patented, Open Source LITFA (Leave It the Fuck Alone) method for a very long time, it sounds like your patent is too similar to my method, and wouldn't stand up in court. OTOH, with the crazy shit that gets patent office approval, nowadays, maybe it would.
However, all kidding aside, I do have an actual solution that doesn't require further intrusion of governmental authority into the lives of private citizens. Simply enact legislation to the effect that operating a vehicle while distracted (by whatever) is not illegal, unless something happens. Then, if you decided to become distracted by whatever, (rather than ignoring it, as you should have,) and you collide with someone or something, the fact that you willfully allowed the distraction of your attention, combined with willful operation of the vehicle, counts as an aggravating factor, and that the at-fault, distracted operator will be charged with whatever violation he/she would normally be charged with for the collision, with the addition of the presumption of malice aforethought for whatever occurred.
Put simply, if the prosecution can show you ran someone over while distracted, and that you probably wouldn't have if you had NOT been distracted, that you are to be treated as though you ran that person over ON PURPOSE (since you had a duty to watch the road, and weren't, once again, ON PURPOSE). This would apply to all forms of demonstrable distractions, including cell-phones, text messages, e-mails, pagers, GPS devices, maps, sloppy hamburgers, blow jobs, hand jobs, lighting a cigarette, extinguishing a cigarette, rolling down a window to litter (throwing the perhaps still smouldering cigarette butt out the window,) etc. Obviously some distractions would be easier to convince a jury played a role in a crash than others, but such is life in jurisprudence.
With this system, if let's say a guy cuts you off, and you rear-end his car. The penalty would normally be that you have to pay for his car repairs, etc. If you rear-ended his car because you were fiddling with your phone, the penalty would be the same, PLUS whatever penalties would be assessed, and you'd suffer whatever consequences would be levied against you if you had rammed his car INTENTIONALLY.
Who would want to risk that, just to answer a damned phone-call or text? The technological solution is of course, stupid. The idea that phones should be designed not to operate while in motion, assuming it can be done effectively, would inadvertently prevent perfectly legal, and safe operation of the device by OTHERS in the moving vehicle who are not driving.
At any rate, if you're going to make texting and phoning while driving illegal, you should also make drinking (and I mean such as soda, water, juice, etc.,) and eating illegal too. If a phonecall is distracting, isn't fighting with the wrapping on a sandwich, too? Perhaps, (as is my considered opinion,) the real problem is too many people driving while undertrained and insufficiently educated on the safe operation of a motor-vehicle. Addressing this problem would, I think, automatically address the other problem, because smart, safe, responsible drivers know not to screw around with their phones or whatever while they're driving.
These people will be dying off at higher rates. And unfortunately taking some of us along with them.
Get the distracted driver out of the equation by taking the driver out of the equation. Self driving cars. Then it doesn't matter how distracted the driver, I mean, passenger, is.
Bryan
My wifes 2005 lexus turns off the screen when you're going over ~5mph and won't turn it back on until you slow down below 5. There's an 'emergency call' button on the screen and you can dial using a little stick on the side of the wheel at any speed, but its one-touch dialing with your hands on the wheel.
So 8 years later with phones full of gps's and accelerometers, we cant do the same thing? Just turn off everything except incoming calls and 911 dialouts and allow speech dialing out. I'm pretty sure 95% of the smart phone makers could build and implement this in a day.
But as with anything, its not happening because the customer doesn't want it, the manufacturers and carriers don't either, and the data to support the entire thesis appears to be missing. By that I mean that no study has ever shown that talking on a phone while driving is dangerous. The "its as bad as drunk driving!!1!" study actually showed that neither driving at .08 or driving while talking on the phone had a meaningful effect on driving quality. The problem is that people read the headline, but not the study. When the california highway patrol was tasked with studying traffic accidents to determine cell phone causation, they found not only no causation, but not even particularly good correlation. Since the legislature ordered the study to back up the claims made by legislation they had already written, they ordered the CHP to change the study parameters to have a cell phone be the accident cause if one were simply present in either car at the time of an accident. That one worked, and they got the result they wanted. Thats how they do 'alcohol related' stuff as well. If a sober driver loses control of a car and hits a woman on the sidewalk drinking a glass of wine, thats considered an alcohol related accident.
The truth is that we're easily distracted and driving can become rather boring. So we fill that boredom with distractions. I can say with great authority after having driven for 35 years all over the country, that we had the same stupid drivers doing the same stupid things behind the wheel in the 60's, the 70's, and the 80's when cell phones didn't even exist. I've seen no change whatsoever in driving quality over the past 4 decades. So take away this distraction and we'll simply pick another one.
I've seen people reading books and newspapers, with small tv's set on the dashboard, putting on makeup, eating, smoking, playing with the radio/cd player, reading billboards, checking out people on the sidewalk or in other cars, etc.
I'd be a lot happier if they made it a $2000 fine or a 30 day license revocation for tailgaters, people who swerve from one lane to the other and people who commit 5 moving violations in 5 minutes or less. I see that last one pretty regularly. Those are the people who'll cause a lot of accidents.
Lack of personal responsibility and self control? There's an app for that!!
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
If I'm the only car on a highway with no curves and no entrance ramp in sight, I can safely drive with a lot more distractions than if I'm in busy traffic on an unfamiliar road with lots of potential "gotchas" like bad weather, obstructed views, construction, discourteous drivers, etc.
Driving distracted is like going to a business-related event where alcohol is served: If you are going to drive distracted (or drink), know how this distraction (or drink) will affect your ability to act responsibly, know how much distraction (or lack of sobriety) you can tolerate in a given situation, and don't go over whatever distraction (or alcohol) limit you know you can handle in a given situation.
If you are an inexperienced driver or if your brain isn't fully developed (due to age) or you have other limitations (such as lack of sleep), then you have little or no "margin of error" and shouldn't drive with any distractions if at all possible, and you should consider avoiding driving altogether in "high-attention-required" traffic conditions. If you are very impaired (such as very sleepy), don't drive at all.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
punishment
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
You have to fight Tech with Tech!
The reason that people think they can text/phone/eat/put on makeup in the cars is because the rules of the road artificially slow down traffic to levels much slower than you can safely drive. If you believe driving is a safe, mundane experience, you will look for other things to do while you are doing it. If everyone is driving to their limits, they will be more engaged, pay more attention, and not be interested in being distracted since they could die.
Ever drive on the autobahn? You better be paying attention or there will be a Porche or Merc up you backside.
German and Dutch towns are removing myriad road signs and letting drivers figure it out for themselves, which means they need to pay attention.
Punish the folks that actually cause a problem. If the punishment is hard enough, it will be a deterrent to people performing the action. If you get in an accident while you are DUI, you're pretty much screwed. Same should be true if you cause an accident and were otherwise distracted. Make people responsible for the outcomes of their actions, and they will pay more attention to their actions.
1) Driverless cars that can't be distracted.
2) Don't use your frakking phone while driving. D'huh.
I actually prefer (1) because the human driver is just about the only system in the car that has not had its safety performance improved over the past hundred years.
How about the opposite of self driving cars as a panacea? Cars that need the total involvement of the driver to be driven, such as a car with a manual transmission, could prevent tech distraction.
your car starts, suddenly you can only do voice activation on your phone, for example. they already sense passengers for air bag activation, so passenger cells can be excluded
So this system would be able to tell the difference between the cell phone I have in my pocket as the driver and the one being held by a passenger? You do realize that passenger airbags are WIRED into the car, so it is trivial for the CAR to disable the passenger airbag alone when there isn't one? "This wire goes to the passenger airbag disable circuit, activate it..."
How do you get a wireless signal to be so specific, and why couldn't the driver just hold his phone over the passenger seat to avoid being shut off, were there such a tightly beamed disable signal?
I've had the passenger airbag turn on because I've had a bag of groceries sitting there, so I guess that anyone who wants to use his cell phone while driving will just carry groceries everywhere and the car will think it's the passenger doing the texting...
this being slashdot, some idiot will concoct some scenario about why it won't work "what if you want to call 911! (so 911 calls are always enabled, genius)"
Why yes, there certainly could never be any possible problem with such a clever idea. Not at all. Please patent it.
Your car drives itself.