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U.S. Goverment Shames Texting Drivers on Twitter (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: "The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is the federal body tasked with automotive safety," reports the Verge, adding "If you look at NHTSA's Twitter feed right now, you'll find that it's just a non-stop stream of burns aimed at people who admit -- sometimes gleefully -- that they text and drive."
For example, seeing a tweet that read, "I have no problem texting while driving, but I won't text while going down stairs, the NHTSA replied "You might not have a problem with the texting & driving...but we do. Stay off your phone and #justdrive - it's not worth it." And seeing a tweet that read "I text and drive way too much," they responded, "Um, agreed... Please realize you're putting yourself and others in danger, and a silly text isn't worth it. #justdrive".
The Verge argues "For what it's worth, NHTSA is right: countless studies have linked texting in the driver's seat with higher accident rates... Getting shamed online by a government agency is far harsher than getting shamed by a friend -- but it's still a lot better than getting killed over an email." To which the NHTSA responded on Twitter, "Thanks for the shoutout, .@verge! #justdrive"
For example, seeing a tweet that read, "I have no problem texting while driving, but I won't text while going down stairs, the NHTSA replied "You might not have a problem with the texting & driving...but we do. Stay off your phone and #justdrive - it's not worth it." And seeing a tweet that read "I text and drive way too much," they responded, "Um, agreed... Please realize you're putting yourself and others in danger, and a silly text isn't worth it. #justdrive".
The Verge argues "For what it's worth, NHTSA is right: countless studies have linked texting in the driver's seat with higher accident rates... Getting shamed online by a government agency is far harsher than getting shamed by a friend -- but it's still a lot better than getting killed over an email." To which the NHTSA responded on Twitter, "Thanks for the shoutout, .@verge! #justdrive"
My ex-girlfriends shame me all the time on Twitter. Just not about texting and driving.
My dad was killed by a texting driver while he rode his bike. The whole thing was caught on his camera, and in the video from his rear-facing camera, you can even see, in crystal clear high definition, that the driver's head is looking down towards her lap the whole time.
She got a ticket for failure to yield right of way. That's it. No manslaughter despite her obvious negligence.
Make it at least as bad as DUI, or better yet... First time felony.
Both should be automatic felonies, with extended loss of license. We treat both as minor offenses in the US which is itself criminal.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I see it all too often. The car driving under the speed limit slowly drifting out of its lane is driven by someone chatting on their phone. The one below the speed limit weaving all over the place is a texter. Or very drunk. The person on their phone driving safely and consistently, well, they don't exist.
A friend moved from the US to the UK and joined the company I worked at (he wasnt a friend before that point) and he was astounded by how different the drink-drive culture is in the UK - over here, its universally accepted that its a very very very bad thing to do, to the point where very few people pressure you to "have a quick one" if you are driving, and drinking soft drinks on a night out is completely acceptable.
He was very approving of it, and said that it was unheard of from where he came from (California).
You should work on your understanding of this issue. Texting while driving is dangerous like drinking while driving. If you can't drive responsibly, you shouldn't be allowed to put other peoples' lives at risk. This is not too difficult to understand. Do you perchance happen to text while driving, and are getting all defensive?
As a cyclist, not looking where you are going in a 2 tonne metal box is the same as shooting a gun randomly. You may not have hit anyone yet, but on a long enough timeline you or someone else will.
> [...] "kill feature" while driving.
Now killing the driver (while effective) might be argued to be a bit... exagerated?
But hey, we might try and see.
I wish they would pull over texting drivers and then punch them in the face.
there is NO REASON.... to text while driving. NONE... and if you do it you deserve a punch in the face for risking others with your selfish behavior.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's simple, really. UK learned through public education from sane groups of people that don't hate alcohol, they'd just rather you consume it without driving a car.
The US (and to a lesser extent, Canada) attempted to teach it through harsh sentencing, surveillance nets, and public education from temperance groups (and later, groups that don't advertise themselves as pro-temperance, but act so much like it the president quit for that reason alone).
Extremely harsh sentencing doesn't work for the death penalty, and it won't work for drunk driving. Surveillance doesn't seem to work either, though I think it's a byproduct of the next thing: Temperance groups telling you to drink less are laughed at.
The UK has reasonable drunk driving laws. There's attempts by the temperance groups to bring our laws down to "Not even one", or 0.03%. When you teach from such an outlandish position, your attempt at education has the baby thrown out with the bathwater.
No, you don't. You just don't realize how bad you're driving. Same goes with weed. I live in CO, and have met many people who claim they drive better while baked. Having witnessed them driving while baked, they really don't. Driving 20 MPH in a 50 MPH zone is actually quite dangerous contrary to what they seem to think.
In addition to this, the US' culture is very much "It's only illegal if you get caught and the cops will do something about it". About -everything-.
If you tell someone they really shouldn't do something because it's dangerous/irresponsible, they'll blankly stare at you and go: "But...how will they ever catch me? I don't understand". No matter their age or what you're talking about. There's no critical thinking. It's just about scoring by sticking it to the man.
I mean, everywhere has a little of that, it's just human nature, but when I moved to the US, I was really amazed by how far they push it.
Public transport in most of the UK is terrible. Some cities, like inner London and Birmingham, are an exception, but for the most part a car is essential.
Drinking and driving became socially unacceptable here, much like smoking indoors has. It was down partly to some pretty shocking advertising on TV, and the potential repercussions of being caught (fine, points on licence, massively increase mandatory insurance costs).
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
In Japan anywhere that serves alcohol must ask if there is designated driver and not serve them anything alcoholic. They usually ask that person to wear a pendant or something so it's really clear to all the staff. Serving the designated driver is an automatic loss of licence.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Why doing half the job? Ban drivers and implement self-driving autonomous vehicles.
Achille Talon
Hop!
The headline:
"U.S. Goverment Shames Texting Drivers on Twitter "
Is what should be shamed. Stare at it for a while, boys.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
And as a cyclist AND a motorcyclist, you are deluding yourself to think you have total 100% control over all situations. If someone flies around a corner from behind and hits you from behind, there are times where there is absolutely nothing you can do to influence the outcome. In my case, had a broken rib and collapsed lung. I did everything I was supposed to in order to protect myself and still nearly got killed.
I'm tired of this it's all our own personal responsibility fault bullshit. Personal responsibility and attention is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for me not getting killed on the road when I'm on two wheels. At the end of the day our safety is dependent upon others acting responsibly as well. We need everyone's cooperation and not text/drive, else it will just be chaos out there.
Not to mention I don't see how texting and driving is more of a distraction than having some screaming toddler in the back.
You don't have to see. The facts are completely independent of your willingness to educate yourself.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I wish more people would at least stop and think first.
In more and more cities, I'm seeing situations where a person is given a citation for "texting while driving" even though their vehicle is stopped at a red traffic light. These are often the folks who were trying to COMPLY with the law by not touching their phone until they knew they reached a red light, where it was finally safe to take a quick look at what was sent to them.
For example, in the DC metro area, we recently had a cop dressed up like a homeless person on the side of the road begging (except the sign he was holding explained that he was a law enforcement officer). He was handing out "texting while driving" tickets to people at the intersection, at the red light!
When I pointed this out to a girl I know who was ranting about the "need to lock people up and throw away the key" for texting while driving, she just shot back, "Good! The people using their phone while sitting in the car ANYPLACE should be punished! Anything to make us safer!" That's the mentality in America that always scares me.
In most of the UK, a car isn't merely unessential, it's a liability, with no space on the roads and great difficulty parking it. On the odd occasion a city's bus system is subadequate, a bicycle is almost always a superior way to get around compared to a car.
British people bitch and moan about transit, sure. That's partially because it's transit, and like the weather, the post office, and TV, it's something everyone bitches and moans about regardless of quality; but it's also partially because that's what British people do, about everything.
I've only been in one place, a part of rural Wales, where a car was probably something you'd want, but even so I didn't need one, I used bicycles and rail and the occasional bus to get where I wanted to go.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Car driver here, but I completely agree. A few years ago, I was driving my wife, mother-in-law, and then-toddler son in our mini-van to a local computer store. As we passed through an intersection (which was green for us), I spotted a car turning from the other direction that was going to hit us. It was one of those "time slowing down" moments - I could see that the impact was going to happen, but had no options for preventing it. The guy hit us, our mini-van went careening across four lanes of (thankfully light) traffic on two wheels. We wound up facing the other way on the other side of the road. Somehow, we didn't hit into anyone else, flip over, or suffer any major injuries.
Nothing I could have done would have prevented this accident. The guy was turning illegally (he was in the wrong lane and had a red light for turning at the time) and simply didn't pay attention to where he was or who was coming in the other lane. I couldn't have avoided him and his careless actions could have resulted in me or my family suffering serious injuries or worse. When someone texts and drives, they are distracted from the road. Some people think "oh, it's only a second", but all it takes is one or two seconds of not looking at the road to cause a major accident. If a text is that important, find somewhere to stop and answer it. If it's not important enough to stop over, then it can wait until later.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I don't disagree that public transport is pretty bad in much of the UK (unless your baseline for calibration is the USA), but there are some important differences. Cities in the UK tend to interleave different property types. This means that most people live within easy walking distance of a pub (most villages collect around one and you'll find at least one in most residential areas of a city). In contrast, UC city designers like ensuring the places where people live and places where people want to be are as far apart as possible, so that it's basically impossible to get from home to a bar without driving.
As a knock-on effect from this, if you do need to get to the pub in a car and there aren't busses (and there often are in many cities, though they're not always convenient), a 10-15 minute ride in a taxi is pretty cheap. Most US cities sprawl so much that it's a 30-40 minute drive, which is a lot more expensive.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Your freedom to make decisions on your own ends when those decisions endanger innocent people around you who didn't consent to be hit by your car.
You certainly can contrive situations where that happens. They are relatively few and far between though. Most people who've told me that they just cannot live without their car in the UK have made a combination of certain choices, living far away from their employer because they have a car, and exaggeration of the circumstances they're currently in.
I've lived all over Britain, Oxford, Reading, Aylesbury (urgh), Norwich, Leeds, and Milford Haven (double urgh) to name a few. Only the latter I'd argue came close to US styles of mandatory driving. And even there driving was not mandatory. I didn't drive, I used a bicycle and the public transport that existed.
Coming to the US was an utter shock as a result. In most parts of the US, even a bicycle isn't going to get you very far. There are no urban centers, buildings are deliberately spaced far apart (imagine walking 1,000 feet and passing 5 stores. That's typical. The space in between? "Free" parking.)
In the US, not owning a car outside of a small number of decent cities means you're no longer able to support yourself. By all means tell me that your current job and current home means a car is more optimal, but tell me seriously that if you didn't have a car, you wouldn't be able to have a job capable of supporting yourself. That's not true for anyone in Britain. That's true for 90% of Americans.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You should work on your understanding of this issue. Texting while driving is dangerous like drinking while driving. If you can't drive responsibly, you shouldn't be allowed to put other peoples' lives at risk. This is not too difficult to understand. Do you perchance happen to text while driving, and are getting all defensive?
No, it's nothing like "drinking while driving" (intoxicated driving). If you are incapacitated by drugs or alcohol, you're simply incapable of operating a vehicle safely. No matter what. Getting behind the wheel at all is endangering yourself and others.
When we talk about texting while driving, we are simply referring to a specific kind of distraction. There are many others. Fighting kids, eating in the car, playing with the radio (or "in-car entertainment center"), hunting through the console, putting on makeup, eating, talking on the phone (yes, even hands free), being sleepy.
In fact, drowsy driving is just as dangerous and causes as many highway deaths as drunk driving. Far worse than the specific type of distraction called "texting".
If you're stopped waiting for a stop light, you can whip off a quick text "Driving right now - will respond later". Perfectly safe, and perfectly legal even in jurisdictions where non-verbal mobile phone use (texting) has been outlawed. Nothing like drunk driving - if if you manage to stop at the stop light, it's still not safe for you to be driving.
The whole issue is just another instance of wanting to punish everyone because some people are irresponsible with things. People that allow distractions to interfere with their driving will find another distraction. But people that can use their phones safely while never being in danger of a distracted accident are punished.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia