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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.
It should be the car that is disabled (or your license taken away)
What's to stop them buying a cheap 2nd phone?
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
How would a system tell the difference between a driver and passenger in the car?
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
They don't want anyone texting out to warn people not to come to Long Island.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
But if you a cop you get a free pass.
First of all, it can't determine if you're a driver or passenger, so it will then disable your phone if you're a passenger. Not a huge deal if this is just a punishment, I guess. However it's still easily defeated by getting another phone. The right solution is to take away their driver's license for a period of time (2 weeks to start, and increasing amounts after that). Use your phone all you want, but don't drive.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
It's supposed to be applicable to people caught (and, presumably, convicted) of texting and driving. I'm sure being stuck as a passenger with no interesting distractions other than the company of the driver and other passengers might be considered a living hell by some people, but such is life.
Log in or piss off.
I can't believe we even need to consider using a forced lockout solution to keep people looking at the damn road.
The fact that there are people that think it is OK to cruise down the road without even looking is terrifying. But it fits right in line with the people that I commute with every day that don't know what a yield sign is, can't merge properly, and leave their turn signals on for miles if they even bother to use them at all. I have close friends that have driven straight over a roundabout and laughed it off. Hell I was almost t-boned by a lady who ran a red light at full speed (my advance green) and she had the confidence to turn out the window and yell at me for it (on her phone too).
I hate how carefree we are about driving here. One easy paper test, and a road test to prove you understand which side of the road to drive on and where the pedals are and here you go, licensed to drive for life as long as you can pass a vision test every few years. We're up in arms about gun control, but we put our kids behind the wheel of a few tons of metal that hurtles around at high speed in a sea of other vehicles and we treat it like a god-given right.
A friend of mine was nailed last month in NJ for simply picking up her mobile device and a cop happened to see her (yes, illegal to operate a hand-held device in NJ). She uses the phone hands free via bluetooth. She was using it as a GPS, in a town she didn't know well, and couldn't see the screen due to sunglare. She learned a hard lesson that day (as did a bunch of others) after a $160 fine and a mandatory traffic court appearance away during working hours. She now has her phone mounted in a better position rather than putting on the seat so she isn't inclined to pick it up. Judge said that met State requirements - at least in his court.
A funny story - back in the late 80's, when radar detectors were all the rage, one of my enlisted men got pulled over by a VA Trooper. As the trooper approached, the kid got out of the car and threw his $200+ state-of-the-art radar detector on the ground smashing it into pieces and calling it a worthless POS. Trooper shakes his head and starts to laugh. Kids asks why? Trooper responds that they don't use radar in VA - they use VASCAR. But, he was being pulled over because his tail lights weren't working correctly and the trooper simply wanted to warn him about it.
You could apply hardware to the DRIVER that prevents them from texting while driving. That seems to work more effectively than more complicated technical solutions.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
While I hate people that drive and text, I don't see the solution proposed by the article as effective. Phones are cheap enough and portable enough that there is no way to enforce such "interlock" if the user does not want to comply.
Fundamentally, text and driving is an interface design problem. Instant messaging interfaces are designed to almost fully occupy your attention while information conveyed is nearly trivial to cognitively process. As such, removing the need to type with your thumbs on a tiny screen to text would be my recommended solution.
It's not a nanny state thing. Nanny state would be preventing you from harming yourself. The problem with texting and driving is you hitting other people. Just last week I had some moron on a 2 lane road drift fully into my lane. Luckily, leaning hard on my horn got him to pay attention again.
If you want to text and drive yourself into a tree, be my guest. It's only if you want to text and drive yourself into someone else that I have a problem with.
>> Kathleen Rice says motorists who are caught texting while driving
And convicted. So, this rule will only apply to the lower and middle classes who can't afford the lawyers to beat the ticket down to some other charge, then?
As a motorcyclist who does not own a car, I notice this constantly: totally distracted, careless drivers. Usually lined up in the median or shoulder in teams of two or three with a dumbfounded, perplexed look on their face as to how this all could have come to be and why the police are even present, despite extensive damage present to their vehicle. the key point ive noticed is that it is not just cellular phones. the problem is much, much bigger.
1. the floorboard.: what in the hell is down there. drivers wobbling in lane face-down in the passengers seat or pretzeled around into god forbid the rear floorboard of the car. is it the shire? does frodo live down there? did you lose the one ring?
2.Food: im not sure what it is about burritos and burgers, but they have the magical ability to turn any sane driver into a maniac. even the expression on their faces while shoveling calories into their face is disconcerting. Drivers multitask too, so its not uncommon to see some lard-lad juggling a starbucks liquid candy bar and some awful breakfast sandwich trying to merge into 5 lanes of good-morning gridlock.
3.the goddamn car.: Acura and Audi drivers are the worst. im not sure what future-perfect ameneties these cars have to be saddled with in order to attract millenials and mid-lifers but id give anything if they were disabled during transit. Usually its some white-collar clown button-mashing the console or prodding in a dazed stupor at the enormous screen in the vehicle. that lane-change warning technology likely compensates for some kind of brain-damage induced by corinthian leather and more brass than sense.
4. phones.: I get it, in gridlock it seems pleasant to text someone but speaking from experience its nothing short of stupid. Ive personally watched as an inattentive driver, at impulse speed, slowly mount a curb in their ford excursion and proceed to deacpitate a parking meter in plain view of a traffic cop.
the reason drivers get away with this shit is because the repercussions are limited. disabling their phones isnt going to help, you need to start docking points from their license and sending them to remedial drivers ed. texting while driving should triple your insurance rate.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I don't think "treason" means what you think it means. Or "arresting". Or "suggestion". Actually, I'm not sure if you speak English or just pissed on a dictionary and strung together whatever didn't get wet.
How any automated system will know if the phone is used by driver vs passenger is a challenge, I imagine.
My suspicion is that they will simply not bother discriminating. If the phone is in motion on a roadway (it has GPS so it can tell) then it cannot send/receive text messages. If this means you have to wait until the car stops moving to text then so be it regardless of whether you are a driver or passenger. Text messages aren't reliable enough for any life saving use so unlike the problem with disabling cell phones in theaters there is no compelling first responder problem to deal with.
While having to wait for text messages on a road is a tad irritating, it might be worth it if it saves some lives. Kind of the very definition of a first world problem...
At least you can exclude all iPhone owners from that particular test: people who can afford Apple products are so not riding busses...
You've never ridden a bus have you? Plenty of people who ride busses have Apple products especially in big cities. Hell, in places like NYC it's more likely than not that people don't have cars because they are too expensive and not necessary. I went to school on the east coast and few of my classmates from NYC even had a driver's license. Furthermore I have employees who get paid $10/hour who have iPhones and some of them ride public transportation to work.
But it's awfully nice of you to paint everyone who buys Apple products with the same condescending broad brush. Very mature of you.
It boggles me why, on the left side of the pond, you have people with multiple DUI convictions who still get permits to drive on selected routes.
First off, that doesn't happen very often and it's very unusual to see that. Most people with multiple convictions get their license pulled though some decide to drive without one which is obviously illegal. But sometimes life is more complicated than one sentence rhetorical questions. In a lot of the US it is impossible to be gainfully employed unless you have access to a car. There simply is no alternative transportation available. It's easy and glib to just say "screw em" but that's not really any sort of solution to the problem. Do that and you are often condemning a person to a life of poverty which may not be an appropriate punishment depending on the circumstances. While drunk driving is serious and should be taken seriously under the law, one size fits all punishments are rarely appropriate.
I have a guy who works for me who did time in prison for a drunk driving conviction. Good person but an alcoholic who has been sober for 10 years now. He got his act together and is a reliable and valued employee. He screwed up and served his punishment but it wouldn't be right to never give him a second chance.
I don't see it so much recently, but as life with smartphones (and earlier models that could still text) progressed, I've had arguments with a lot of younger people who were like "well you can't do it because you grew up without the technology, but we grew up being able to multitask!" I think that notion is well perceived as moronic now, but I'm willing to bet there are still quite a few people out there who think they are somehow able to divide their attention with no consequences.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
No, don't mod parent up... just because there are too many dumb laws doesn't mean that a new one isn't good. What we should be doing is condensing laws in to more sensible ones, like "distracted driving" instead of a separate law for every way that a driver can be distracted.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
except that the greedy Telcos are standing in the way of it. It would be trivial for Apple, Samsung, etc. to program their phones so that distracting features such as texting could be disabled once the motion detector in the phone detects that the owner is traveling at a given speed. When the car comes to a stop, it's all working again.
Study after study has shown that texting while driving is at least as distracting as being moderately drunk and operating a vehicle. Yet the Telcos consistently lobby against any legislation that attempts to limit the use of texting. Why? Because the more text messages people send the more money they make. The more time your eyes are on that screen the more ad revenue places like Facebook make.
So they will continue to fight it. Just like Budweiser would fight the notion of limiting patrons to 2 drinks at a bar. It's taking money out of their collective pockets. Unless and until corporations begin to think of the collective good none of this will ever change. We get the society that we deserve.
You're forgetting though that a text message is far more likely to be transmitted than a phone call when there is minimal signal.
Well, that would explain why my language center pretty much seized up trying to make sense of that.
Log in or piss off.