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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.
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.
...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.
Yes, this would have worked oh so well when that time my editor, myself, and third reporter were rushing home to get an immediate article out. We even snagged a designated driver. Our sole source of wi-fi in this remote area where Amish were a majority population was my hot spot enabled smart phone and the satellite trucks the big boys sent in.
Look, if you are reaching this point of trying to not-distract people then you might as well take the next steps:
* No cup holders to encourage drinking while driving. Drinking/eating anything is also a distraction.
* No radios or other music devices. Distractions are distractions.
* Maybe even a ban on talking while in a vehicle. How different, when you get down to it, is talking on a phone and talking to a person next to you. One sideways glance to see their reaction at the wrong moment, blammo, road carnage.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
This is the latest hyped up excuse for poor driving. Driving is about making decisions, at 50mph. Teach people to make good decisions and the problem is solved.
Sending a txt while going 5mph in a traffic jam is not going to kill anyone. Likewise while stopped at a red light. Ditto for holding up a map on a phone, depending on speed and congestion.
There are many scenarios where using a smartphone while driving is no more riskier than driving in general.
So judge the risk and put the phone, burger, drink, paper map, etc down if there is too much to be safe.
Some teens/people are horrible at this. These same teens/people will likely have something else that causes their accident if not texting.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
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.
These same teens/people will likely have something else that causes their accident if not texting.
However it won't be an easily tracked metric. Public outrage is directly proportional to ease of reporting numbers, not actual danger or risk.
From personal experience children in a car seat are by far the most distracting thing you can have in a car. Even "girlfriend in a skimpy outfit" is not as distracting.
Another automotive killer is travel. Simply make it illegal to operate a motor vehicle more than 50 miles from county of registration and that alone will cut accident rates by a considerable amount.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.
When you are doing a manoeuvre that requires some attention, you can:
1) Not choose to pick up your drink at this time
2) Zone out of the radio - this is why talk radio is popular, it's mostly a drone that you can zone into when you need something to keep your brain awake, and zone out of when driving is requiring some braining.
3) Tell other people to shut up, or they will also see that you need to concentrate and will shut up.
4) You will be looking at the road and mirrors.
However it appears that people on the phone when driving don't say "I'm driving". I don't know why. The person on the other end doesn't know you are about to do something that requires your full attention. You are compelled to pay attention to their words because you think the call is important (for whatever reason, be it your boss, or your other half nagging). And accidents happen because of this.
* No cup holders to encourage drinking while driving. Drinking/eating anything is also a distraction.
Eating and drinker are both distracting behaviors, although not as much as talking on a cell phone.
* No radios or other music devices. Distractions are distractions.
The kind of audio distraction caused by radios does little to affect driving attention.
* Maybe even a ban on talking while in a vehicle. How different, when you get down to it, is talking on a phone and talking to a person next to you. One sideways glance to see their reaction at the wrong moment, blammo, road carnage.
Passengers tend to share the driver's situational awareness, so they are significantly safer to hold a conversation with than someone on the far end of a cell phone. A sideways glance is no problem - the driver's gaze is often off the road to check, for example, speed.
See this paper for a good overview of distracted driving behavior:
http://www.nhtsa.gov/DOT/NHTSA/NRD/Multimedia/PDFs/Crash%20Avoidance/2008/810787.pdf
Look, if you are reaching this point of trying to not-distract people then you might as well take the next steps:
True, but texting on a mobile phone, or dialling on a handset, really is in a moronic league of its own c.f. talking to a passenger, popping an M&M into your mouth or even using a hands-free. Most people are incapable of walking in a straight line while texting.
However, there shouldn't be any need for new legislation - in the UK there's always been "driving without due care and attention", and I'm sure other jurisdictions have similar concepts. The cell-phone ban was just so that politicians could be seen to be doing something about the Sunday headlines, and had the unfortunate side-effect of legitimising hands-free kits. What's needed are less cameras and more actual, adequately trained, police eyeballs looking for real dangerous driving rather than petty speeding (e.g. doing something about the bloody Audi or white van driving 2' behind you because you have the audacity to only be doing 10mph above the limit).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
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.
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.