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Should California Have Banned Checking Smartphone Maps While Driving?
Nerval's Lobster writes "According to an appellate court in California, checking your smartphone while driving your Volkswagen (or any other vehicle) is officially verboten. In January 2012, one Steven R. Spriggs was pulled over and cited for checking a map on his smartphone while driving. In a trial held four months later, Spriggs disputed that his action violated California's Section 23123 subdivision (a), which states that a person can't use a phone while driving unless 'that telephone is specifically designed and configured to allow hands-free driving and talking, and is used in that manner while driving.' In short, he argued that the statute was limited to those functions of listening and talking—things he insisted could have been followed to the letter of the law. But the judge ruled that operating a phone for GPS, calling, texting, or whatever else was still a distraction and allowed the conviction to stand. That leads to a big question: with everything from Google Glass to cars' own dashboard screens offering visual 'distractions' like dynamic maps, can (and should) courts take a more active role in defining what people are allowed to do with technology behind the wheel? Or are statutes like California's hopelessly outdated?"
If the judge's interpretation was the one the legislation intended, why would we have CVC 23123.5, that explicitly forbids texting. Why would the DMV note that it does "not prohibit reading, selecting or entering a phone number, or name" or the CHP advise safe ways to dial? The judge over-stepped in this case & is legislating from the bench.
In 2010, I was written a citation for using my phone when I had passed it to a passenger. I was (rightfully) found not guilty. Because merely "touching" your phone is not using it as a communications device. Nor is the cell phone magically more distracting than other objects in a car.
A stand-alone GPS or a paper map can be at least as distracting, so why is there no provision banning their use? Because, while distracted driving is a problem, navigation aids do more good than harm. It is easier to defend them than eating, applying makeup, listening to music, etc. that we permit.
Distracted drivers - you've seen them. Possibly you've been hit by them. They look away from the road, even for a couple seconds and BAM!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
operating a vehicle containing children, parents or a girlfriend constitutes distracted driving.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
just DRIVE when driving? Honestly, it's already cramped out there, driving is a dangerous activity, can we, just for the sake of making a habit of it, JUST DRIVE the damn things, WITHOUT fidgeting around with phones, stereos, bluetooths, coffee cups, navigation systems and whatever the hell other distractions there are?
How about because there's no law to use your integrated vehicle GPS, radio, talk to folks in the vehicle with you, turn around to bat at the twins fighting in the back seat, etc., all of which are just as potentially distracting? The law is very specific in what is and what is not illegal. Enforcement outside the bounds of the law is not OK. As it's already been stated, the law was felt so initially specific to only speaking on a phone that they had to add another law to ban text messaging. That speaks to the specific intent of the law, not to ban complete use of phones, but only to ban particular functions.
The law is out of date
Apparently so. Given the overwhelming evidence that many of the activities mentioned in this thread do dramatically increase the risk of having an accident, it appears that a lot more things should be prohibited than actually are.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Several Canadian provinces (including Ontario) have "distracted driving" laws that basically state "no fucking around with electronic devices unless they're mounted to your vehicle somewhere."
If you have to hold your phone to look at Google Maps, and/or enter information into it, that's verboten. If you enter your destination before you start driving, and then mount it on your dashboard or windscreen, that's okay.
I like this distinction, and think it is a reasonable restriction on the use of electronic devices while driving. Note - hands-free phone operation is still allowed. Texting is pretty much right out (as it should be).
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
Stand alone sat nav units usually don't let you operate them while the car is in motion. You have to stop before the touch screen is enabled. When moving you can only passively use them, looking at the display and listening to instructions.
I didn't RTFA but if all that the court is saying is that you can't be trying to use the touch screen then that seems reasonable.
My Garmin GPS allows me to use it while driving.
Built-in navigation units may not, but the standalone ones generally do, even if you have to specifically enable the feature. My GPS has some features (like "What restaurants and gas stations are at the next exit" that only make sense to use while on the road.
My built-in touch-screen stereo is much harder to operate while driving than the GPS. I'd welcome a law that requires that all car controls (air conditioning, radio, etc) have tactile switches and knobs for all common functions, a touch screen is impossible to operate without looking at it.
"Should California Have Banned Checking Smartphone Maps While Driving?"
This is not a simple question. There is a preponderance of evidence that checking a cell phone, playing with a dash mounted (or cheesy suction cup mounted) GPS, eating, talking, doing makeup, shaving, or anything that takes the drivers eyes off the road is a distraction. Anything that makes for more distracted drivers in my opinion should be banned.
However I am also a Libertarian, and I agree that the government should not be getting into these nitpicky arguments, and should be left to the people and free market to decide. I personally will never pay for the option of having an in dash navigation in a car. Nor will I purchase an external GPS. I pull off to the side of the road, and use my street atlas and figure how to get anywhere. Why is this the case? Simple, I don't want to be distracted from driving.
At the end of the day, because California is so socialist, and anyone who chooses to live there wants to live in the Nanny state, then let them live in their own spoils. I just keep being being reminded of the quote, "You cannot legislate stupidity, as there will always be a more stupid idiot created tomorrow."
If I stream Pandora (or music on the device) from my phone to my car's radio and I use the car radio's remote control to skip tracks, increate or decrease volume etc., where does this law put me?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
So .. you must then advocate that people shouldn't be allowed to change the temperature of their car then, because looking at the dash is distracting? Or change the radio? Or eat? Or even look at their odometer since they have to take their eyes off the road. Or for that matter, their mirrors???
If you claim it's OK to do those things, then please tell me what exact period of time am I allowed to turn away from the highway and look at my mirror or odometer? And if so, why can't I use that same amount of time to look at a GPS?
I can glance at my GPS on a 4 lane highway while traveling in a straight line with clear lines of sight for several hundred feet and if I'm following at a safe distance, just as I can change my radio or glance at my odometer. As the highway gets busier, or starts to curve, the need to stay more focused increases since more variables are changing or can change when I glance away. But I still glance in my mirrors if I want to change lanes, so there is still a window of time that is currently acceptable to be distracted. In fact, if I'm stopped at a stop light, there is no reason whatsoever I can't glance down and check emails since nothing is even moving, as long as I don't take too long and miss the light changing.
Conditions while driving change, and what is possible in one instance may not be in another. We constantly weigh risks while driving to determine appropriate responses. Some are better at it than others, it is not possible to come up with one rule to cover all circumstances. I have gone through a red light in full view of a police officer, because it was not safe to stop. He could see that I tried since the front of my motorcycle dipped when I braked, but I continued through because the car a few feet behind me wasn't slowing down (he slammed on his brakes just after I released mine.) The police officer didn't chase me down and give me a ticket, because I used common sense.
It is possible to make sure that if someone does not use good judgement, they are held responsible for their actions. Rules like you suggest are the same ones that get kids suspended from school because they point their fingers and say 'bang'. And, in the end, do nothing because police won't bother to enforce them anyway.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I don't know what vehicles you have driven, but every vehicle I have ever operated had controls in predictable places, delineated by different textures and tactile feedback. I can change my radio station up and down, as well as toggle my AC and put down my windows without having to think or fiddle any more than having to zip up my fly
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
The brain can multi-task 4 things at any one time, and driving takes up almost all of the brain's multi-tasking ability. Adding one more distraction is asking for an accident. I've driven taxis with Garmin gps units, and learned to just do a quick-glance at the screen for when the next upcoming turn would be. Forget texting while driving, that's just asking for an accident to happen.
There's lots of evidence that they're not really any safer than handheld calls.
Incidentally, many modern smartphones allow hands-free texting using voice recognition.
You've got to balance ability to enforce as well. Banning things that you can't prove are happening (or at least not without disproportionate effort) is a way to bring the law into disrepute. Not that this stops some legislators. In any case, there's also a general "don't drive distracted" rule too; it's more difficult to prove, which is why other laws like the anti-texting ones are also present, but it is the real rule that people want enforced. After all, a moving car has a lot of momentum and kinetic energy, so failure to keep it under control can have bad consequences for many people.
The weird thing is that electronic devices are so extremely distracting, and good at holding our attention...
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
People who use a handheld computer while driving should have their license suspended, and the circumstances should be used to determine the amount of time they spend in jail... no exceptions should be allowed, in my not-so-humble and somewhat emotionally outraged opinion.
Oh, please. Let's send everyone with screaming kids in their cars to jail too.
Life is not perfectly safe. There are all sorts of things people do that reduce that safety. Get over it.
The fact is you need two hands on the wheel and two eyes on the road.
Don't know about you but I do just fine with one hand on the wheel... *as long as I'm paying attention to the road and not some damn smartphone or mp3 player*
Anyone driving a manual transmission is going to have one hand off the steering wheel some of the time.
This is exactly my position on the subject. Unfortunately, people put far too much faith in their own abilities right up to the point of injuring themselves or others.
Put the phone down. Don't panic.
Oh, please. Let's send everyone with screaming kids in their cars to jail too.
Can we just send the kids to jail? At least until they stop bugging each other and RESPECT THE INVISIBLE LINE DRAWN DOWN THE MIDDLE OF THE CAR.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
You missed something very important: BLINKING must be forbidden too :D
So .. you must then advocate that people shouldn't be allowed to change the temperature of their car then, because looking at the dash is distracting? Or change the radio? Or eat? Or even look at their odometer since they have to take their eyes off the road. Or for that matter, their mirrors???
This argument isn't unlike saying that we should coat everything in foam rubber and ban liquor, cigarettes, sugary food, etc., because kids could be hurt. The thing that is missing in your argument is reasonableness (totally a word). Radios have been in cars for a long time, and while every now and then a police report comes up that says "and while they were distracted with the radio, they plowed through a bunch of nuns in the crosswalk", it happens far, far less often than "was using a cell phone."
And if so, why can't I use that same amount of time to look at a GPS?
Because your GPS needs you to focus and concentrate on it. Using your car's accessories can often be done without taking your eyes off the road, and if you do, it's only for a moment (such as looking at the odometer, rearview mirror, etc.) There is a certain threshold of attention at which a person's level of distraction reaches the point where the risk of an accident balloons. Cell phones (and GPS) clearly are on the wrong side of that threshold, unlike looking at your odometer.
It is possible to make sure that if someone does not use good judgement, they are held responsible for their actions. Rules like you suggest are the same ones that get kids suspended from school because they point their fingers and say 'bang'.
Sure, but then there's the reverse. Last week, little Tommy took his dad's gun and went outside where little Joey was playing on the swings, pulled it out, and said "If you ever give me a wedgie again, I'll use this!" ... and then he ran home and put it back. Now every day at school, little Tommy smiles and does a finger-gun at little Joey. Little Joey is terrified and pees his pants several times, but won't tell anyone why because he's afraid Tommy will shoot him. Doesn't seem like such an unreasonable rule now, does it?
You're beating around the bush; Let's cut the crap. The truth is, the laws are imperfect, but lines have to be drawn somewhere. And there will always be a debate about where to draw that line. But you're being intellectually dishonest here by only using the 'reasonableness' of a response when it supports your position, and not considering whether it could be reasonable to not have it go your way.
The life of the law is not knowledge, but experience. If there's a "stupid" law about finger-gunning getting kids suspended, it's because something happened that made the law seem like a good idea at the time. The law is necessarily reactive in nature, and does not immediately self-correct. It must learn from mistakes and failures, not by some enlightened intellectual process. If that seems terribly inconvenient, I'd have to agree. But it is what it is.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Your comments make sense for hand held devices, but most cell phones used for navigation have window mounts,
and offer spoken turn by turn guidance. There is no reason one can't select the destination at a stop sign and return it to a
window mount or just put it on the seat and listen to the directions.
This judge does over step his authority, and you equally over state your case.
When you actually start digging into cell phone accidents while driving you find the problem is over stated,
and over reported. (Police will often list it as a contributing factor if they even see a cell phone in the wrecked vehicle just as they will report a bicyclist as not wearing a helmet after they pull his body out from under the 18 wheeler that ran over him.)
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
You must be a lot of fun on road trips. By your words, there should be no talking with passengers, no radio, nothing at all.
You can actually get people killed that way because something to engage the brain to some degree aside from driving, people tend to zone out or fall asleep. There's been some research on this and it's been found that zero distractions from the road turns out to be as dangerous as driving while using a cell phone or being mildly drunk. Those minor distractions keep the brain engaged, particularly on road segments that don't change much.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I've been rear ended three times by people on cell phones. I actually saw all three in my rear view (I was stopped), before they hit me. Want to guess what EVERY SINGLE ONE failed to mention in the police report?
if you have to "pay attention" to the radio, you're doing it wrong.
if you have to look at the passenger to talk to them, you're also doing it wrong.
No, no and no. Nice little strawman you have created there. If you had read all three sentences, you would have realised he was stopped too.
If you are driving behind another car, and you rear end them, then you were driving too close. You were tailgating. If you are distracted by a cell phone, then your total braking distance increases quite substantially, so what would have been a reasonable following distance becomes an inadequate one. Nothing causes me more discomfort than someone driving too close behind me. If something happens, and I have to brake suddenly, they will hit me. If you have more people in the road behind, you get the stupid 100 car pileups.
And that rape victim shouldn't have been wearing a short skirt, eh?
I'm not particularly surprised and after being rear ended myself, I now drive much differently and pay a lot more attention to what's going on behind me. Several times since that accident, I've avoided having others because I changed the way I drive. In particular, I take a LOT longer to slow down than I used to. If you stop on our freeways when the cars in front of you stop, there is a good chance the person behind you won't. The trick is to slow down for a while before you have to stop so that they have time to look up and start paying attention again while your brake lights are on. Maybe you're already doing that, but a lot of people assume that having accidents that aren't their fault also means they don't need to change their behavior. (Sometimes there is nothing you can do to avoid it, and I totally get that, but ... three times?)
Besides, I can't tell if you're just sharing your story or actually trying to disagree with something. The number of crashes? That doesn't have anything to do with what people report. Maybe the number of deaths? That doesn't have anything to do with what people report. The only thing left is the Erie study, but I get the feeling you didn't read it. I suspect you didn't even read the simple article about it that I linked to. You can just say "I don't care, the facts don't support my fantasy" or maybe you can specifically explain what about the study is wrong.