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Text While Driving In Long Island and Have Your Phone Disabled
An anonymous reader writes: A District Attorney in Long Island, NY is stepping up efforts to combat distracted driving. Kathleen Rice says motorists who are caught texting while driving should have hardware or apps installed on their phone to prevent them from using it at all while driving. She likened such barriers to the ignition interlock devices that prevent people convicted of drunk driving from using their cars unless they're sober. "Hardware and software solutions that block texting during driving are currently produced by various manufacturers and software developers, and are constantly under development. The DA's office does not endorse any particular company and is in the process of reviewing specific solutions based on their features and services. Critical features include security measures to make the solutions tamper-proof, and data integrity measures to ensure accurate reporting to courts, law enforcement, parents, and guardians." New York is one of many states who already have laws banning all handheld use while driving.
How to distinguish whether the phone user is driving a car or riding a bus?
At least you can exclude all iPhone owners from that particular test: people who can afford Apple products are so not riding busses... Or if they do, they probably know better than to whip out a multi-hundred-dollar device begging to be stolen onboard the bus.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
How would a system tell the difference between a driver and passenger in the car?
The probably answer is that you don't bother. You simply determine if the vehicle is in motion on a road (via GPS) and disable sending and receiving until the vehicle stops moving for some period of time. I'm trying to figure out a reason why we need to care whether the texter is driving or not and honestly I'm having trouble thinking of a reason why we should worry about it. Yeah people will whine about it but we've proven that people can't help themselves so maybe a little tough love is in order?
If you can think of a good reason we need to worry about the driver vs passenger thing I'm certainly listening but I can't think of any important reason I can't wait a bit longer for my text messages.