Federal Summit Eyes Crackdown On Texting While Driving 408
suraj.sun sends along this quote from an Associated Press report:
"Opening a government meeting on auto safety, the Obama administration reported Wednesday that nearly 6,000 people were killed and a half-million injured last year in vehicle crashes connected to driver distraction, a striking indication of the dangers of using mobile devices behind the wheel. The Transportation Department was bringing together experts over two days for what it's calling a 'distracted driving summit' to take a hard look at the highway hazards caused by drivers talking on cell phones or texting from behind the wheel. ... Driver distraction was involved in 16 percent of all fatal crashes in 2008. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have passed laws making texting while driving illegal and seven states and the district have banned driving while talking on a handheld cell phone, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Many safety groups have urged a nationwide ban on texting and on using handheld mobile devices while behind the wheel."
Re:Why do the states text then? (Score:3, Insightful)
Driving While Distracted (Score:5, Insightful)
Driving while distracted is already illegal. Telling us exactly how to do everything is not making people any more responsible. Solve the problem by applying existing law using common sense instead of making new laws that are easier to apply.
This is stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
It's just another loop hole insurance companies will use to not pay out claims.
Fault will be immediately assigned to the driver who was texting, there insurance won't pay, everybody is screwed...well except the insurance companies.
Just like if their is an accident and a vehical has a broken bottle of liquor fault is assigned to that vehicle EVEN IF THE DRIVER WASN'T DRINKING, and it's damn hard to get anyone to review and change the fault even with a toxicology report.
If someone is driving recklessly, give them a ticket. You can not pass laws to specifically name every way someone could drive dangerously.
OAN: isit me, or is EVERYTHING more dangerous then driving while drunk?(.08)
Re:Its just stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet the insurance is a nice deal for the guy that got killed while someone felt like turning him/her view from the road to the phone screen to sms.
But atleast the guy got higher insurance premiums!
Re:Technical Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Its just stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Requiring that people pay attention when operating dangerous machinery in a public place is "big brother"? Should it also be possible to drive drunk, provided you have expensive drunk-driving insurance?
The market isn't going to solve everything. Preventing you from getting killed by idiots is pretty much the most legitimate function a government has.
What is saddest (Score:5, Insightful)
... is that people have to be told that sending/reading text messages when driving is unsafe.
Are people really that fucking dumb these days?
Judging by the evidence above, it seems so.
So, what percentage of drivers (Score:4, Insightful)
Texting while driving is stupid, but current laws already cover it. I am pretty sure that a ticket for reckless driving given to someone texting while driving would hold up in court.
Distracted? By What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Opening a government meeting on auto safety, the Obama administration reported Wednesday that nearly 6,000 people were killed and a half-million injured last year in vehicle crashes connected to driver distraction, a striking indication of the dangers of using mobile devices behind the wheel.
Transportation officials said in a research report that 5,870 people were killed and 515,000 were injured last year in crashes where at least one form of driver distraction was reported. Driver distraction was involved in 16 percent of all fatal crashes in 2008.
Where did this "striking indication" come from, when the statistics given by the article do not say how many of those crashes were related to being distracted by cell phones? It could just as easily be babies in the back seat, blow jobs, etc. The point is, we don't know.
Imagine the following made up story:
Opening a government meeting on home safety, the Obama administration reported Wednesday that nearly 6,000 people were killed and a half-million injured last year in accidents around the house, a striking indication of the dangers of keeping guns in the home.
Leave it to the states (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an example of states setting their own laws to respond to an issue that directly affects the lives of their citizens. The possibility of the federal government stepping in and usurping this power is analogous to America's situation as far as the legal drinking age goes - MADD used its lobbying power to get Congress to essentially coerce the states into following its will. Keep in mind, barring a constitutional amendment, congress lacks the power to directly affect the drinking age - hence their questionable approach (albeit one that has been upheld by the courts) of saying, "well look, states, we're not telling you you HAVE to set the drinking age at 21, but if you don't, something might happen to your federal highway funding. We're just saying, it could happen." I realize that it would be somewhat impractical for the federal government to stay limited by an extremely strict interpretation of the Constitution, but there is absolutely no reason for the national government to waste its valuable time meddling here (don't we have a health care crisis or recession or whatever that they should be dealing with?). Cell phone use, like the drinking age, is one of those areas which should not be controlled nationally - if we take away all the powers of the states to set their own laws, then what's the point of even having a federal system to begin with?
Re:Why do the states text then? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're deceiving yourself here. It's actually recommended that users specifically NOT mess with their stereo while driving as that too is a major cause of accidents. Taking your eyes off the road is a bad thing. It's why so many cars now come with steering wheel mounted controls for the stereo so that you can skip tracks and such without having to reach over or take your eyes off the road.
Re:Its just stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
So the thing is to reduce the chance of him being killed in the first place. Banning texting does that. "Leaving it to the insurance companies" doesn't. Don't let libertarianism take away your logic.
Re:Its just stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
So we should also abandon laws related to murder?
You're missing the point. It is legitimately illegal to risk other people's lives. You don't get to buy the right to do it via insurance premiums.
If anything, distracted driving laws - like many traffic laws - ought to account for the fact that they can't "make things right" after the fact by doing a better job of prevention. You should not be able to 'fix' a ticket to a non-moving violation, and if you do something truly stupid you should lose the privilege of driving.
Just because American society has reached the point where driving is assumed commonplace to the extent that we'll let a turnip do it, doesn't mean that's how it should be.
How about we enforce existing laws instead? (Score:4, Insightful)
If someone was weaving all over the road while trying to shave, we wouldn't ask for a law against shaving-while-driving to be passed.
Instead we would charge that individual with some existing law against negligent driving.
Give the person a ticket. If he or she contests it, proving that the driver was weaving shouldn't be hard in this day of police vehicles with front-dash cameras. Problem solved.
Why not enforce the existing laws instead of allowing politicians to pat themselves on the back for passing a popular law that is redundant?
Re:Its just stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
This is the part where you don't get to be libertarian without a license. ;) In a libertarian/anarcho-capitalist world, the government wouldn't own the roads. You would pay to drive on privately-owned roads. You get into too many accidents due to your texting-while-driving or, really, for any reason, and it'll be very simple: the road owner would likely ban you from his road as being hazardous to his other customers. Sooner or later you get banned from so many roads and you can't go anywhere!
Re:So, what percentage of drivers (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with this completely. And in a population as large as even one developed nation, 6000 is a pittance. More than this will be killed due to almost any other type of death statistic measured.
I also balk at the blanket of 'driver distraction'. Does this cover sneezing? Or better put, how long until this does cover sneezing? Because that kills people too. Probably something like 6000 a year. What about falling asleep? Can we mandate caffeine tests for all drivers?
Operating huge chunks of plastic and metal is a dangerous task. With or without phones, this remains true. Existing law covers this fact, and establishes repercussions for those that don't abide by it.
Further what kind of social damage are we doing by not encouraging people to adapt to new technology? We're banning a form of communication when we COULD be pushing for a way to make it more compatible. This sends a clear message of, 'if new thing makes you uncomfortable, ban it' which I don't think my children should be inheriting.
Re:Its just stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Its just stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
First, let me rebut your anti-turnip driven remarks. If said turnip is able to pass the driving test and refrain from excessive bad driving behavior, by all means give it a license and toss it behind the wheel. Although it may throw off our "new" facial recognition features factored into our license pictures...
Many places already have "distracted driving" laws - I went to defensive driving school with a guy ticketed for just that. He'd been drinking a soda while in motion (and I assume didn't get along well with the cop). [For anyone interested, I'd been grabbed for a rolling stop in the middle of nowhere with nobody around for miles other than me and the cop hiding behind a burm...] I'm not sure that specifying specific laws about texting/cells/shaving/whatever is really necessary - Give the cops a little bit of credit. Make sure that you've got a "distracted driving" law on the books and let the cops decide who to ticket for driving like a douche.
I realize that the idea will panic a lot of people because we have a lot of power-hungry cops who abuse any flexibility that they're given (e.g. ticketing somebody for drinking through a straw while driving), but are we really going to make separate laws for texting, lipstick application, shaving, talking on the phone, changing shirts, peeing into a Gatorade bottle, beating the kids in the back seat to shut them up, checking your purse to make sure you remembered your dry-cleaning ticket, changing the time on the radio to reflect daylight savings, eating a taco, eating a burrito, etc?
Re:Its just stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>>should be handled by insurance, not Big Brother. If you wreck, you pay higher premium.
Yesterday I saw a mother on television who was crying. Why? Because some woman driver was texting and never saw the 5-year-old little girl - just ran over her and only stopped because she wondered what that "thump" sound was.
So how exactly do you think an insurance company is supposed to handle that case? Triple the woman's premiums? No. There is a time and place for government to get involved, and this is that time. Just as DUI is banned so too should distracted driving be banned. The government's job is to protect our right to not be murdered, from those who are too stupid or selfish to care.
Re:Its just stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
"Distracted" driving? WTF? Texting drivers are WAY more than "distracted". I almost got hit by a stupid bimbo just yesterday who was weaving into my lane, looking down at her phone that she was holding with both hands. After I blew the horn she looked up, got back in her lane, and started texting again. I had an urge to pull in front of her, slam on my brakes, and collect some cash. Not that it would have done any good, she'd still text.
What's worse is it's the young inexperienced drivers that are doing the texting.
Pretty girls walking down the street are distractions. Those blinkey flashey signs you see these days are distractions. The kid screaming in the back seat is a distraction. The passenger next to you sayiing "Oh look! A cow!" is a distraction.
Texting isn't a distraction; it doesn't distract you, it takes YOUR ENTIRE ATTENTION off of what you're doing. Calling texting "distracted driving" puts me in mind of the Holy Grail's "It's just a flesh wound".
Re:Its just stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
They're not. The insurance companies can't police it. They can only get involved after an accident has occurred and investigated. By which time the damage is already done.
Whilst it;s possible to theorise that increased insurance premiums after an accident and investigation is enough to deter, that's not the way human psychology works. People don't think that texting is going to cause the accident in the first place, otherwise they wouldn't do it. And if they don;t believe it's going to cause an accident, it logically follows that they don;t anticipate the subsequent effect of their insurance going up.
People are terrible at estimating risk. And even if told what the risk is, they tend to believe it won't happen to them regardless. That's why there need to be rules (laws) made, taking into account actual evidence of risk.
Re:Its just stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
"After a horn honking at them the texter is going to be alert and aware of what's going on around them."
Should read more like this:
After a horn honking at him, the texter found himself aware of scrap metal, and bodies lying beside him in the ditch.
The thing is, it's stupid. You can screw up. And, sometimes you don't GET A SECOND CHANCE!! How much more can it be broken down?
Re:Its just stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Its just stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, sitting at a red light isn't the time to turn your brain off, and diddle with that telephone. Pay attention to the traffic. Among other things, a tractor trailer may be making a left turn, and you need to move a few feet to let him get by. Some fool may run the red light and cause an accident - you should be able to make a statement to the police. An old lady may stroke out, and fall to the pavement in front of you - you didn't see her, so when the light turns green, you just drive over her. Do you ever look in the rear view mirror while stopped? The guy behind you may NOT stop - you might wish to move out of his way at the last second.
In short, SHUT UP AND DRIVE!! If you're behind the wheel, no matter where, you have a responsibility to be ALERT!
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
We come here for comments, but we stay for the mods.
Re:Leave it to the states (Score:3, Insightful)
And then the state should say "Fuck you" and then put big signs along the interstate freeways saying:
"This road is not being repaired becasue the federal government refuse to fund it" along the freeway.
At the very least, the truckers union will start to get annoyed becasue it impacts their members, and shipping companies will start to get annoyed, and then your funding will appear. Probably be some newly elected officials.
Re:Its just stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Holding a phone to talk and typing out a text message are two completely different things. As a regular motorcycle rider, you pay attention to things like this.
People talking on phones merely irritate me. They drive slowly in the left lane holding up traffic. They take weeks to pull out of gas stations, etc. It's like they know they're temporarily disabled, so they do everything slowly. They do sometimes become a bit oblivious to the people around them.
People texting while driving, however, should their licenses revoked for seriously endangering the lives of everyone around them. They drift lanes, they follow too closely, they brake abruptly, they don't check their mirrors and even worse they often turn lane drift into a lane change instead of a hurried correction. It's like being behind a drunk driver, but worse.
I don't give a god damn who it inconveniences. These people are dangerous and it needs to be taken seriously.
Re:Its just stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason 'keep right except to pass' is a very good idea even on multi-lane roads is to keep traffic moving in predictable patterns, rather than someone playing 'frogger' as they bounce from lane to lane trying to move forward.
It also greatly speeds traffic flow by having the left lanes for faster traffic and the right lanes for slower/entering/exiting traffic. The Europeans literally shake their heads when they see our left lane exit ramps. It completely disrupts traffic flow, which is dangerous in it's own right.
Re:More than Texting causes accidents. (Score:4, Insightful)
The physical interaction is not the major problem. It is the mental engagement that causes the driver to remove attention from the driving task. Eating that fast food cheeseburger does not take a lot of thought. Neither does adjusting the heat, mirrors, or stereo (once you have some basic familiarity with their operation). Following a route on a GPS is not a problem.
Cell phone conversations (hands-on AND hands-free) and composing text messages/email do take a significant concentration from the driving task. You are correct that passengers can be a serious problem, particularly with younger drivers*. Route-planning on a GPS is a problem.
*There is much debate in the community as to why cell phone conversations are worse than in-vehicle conversations with adults. A lot of theories, no solid evidence. Except to show that there is a demonstrable difference. One such theory is that the in-car conversation is a self-paced task while the cell phone is a forced-pace task. Your passenger does not wonder why you got quiet when trying to merge onto a busy freeway. The person on the other end of the cellphone is not aware of the driving environment and people will keep up the conversation even when dangerous to do so.
One of my favorite research videos is from a high school where students had their cars set up with cameras and computer recording. A girl goes around a slippery curve in winter, the car does two complete spins, and lands in the outside ditch. At no point does she drop the cell phone or stop talking to the other person. Although, at the end, it is mostly "Oh my god! I'm crashing!"
Re:Its just stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
If by "this is just stupid" you're referring to your comment, I agree.
This should be handled by insurance, not Big Brother.
Bullshit. When you flash past that red light because you're looking at your damned phone and not the road and T-bone me, I'm the one that suffers. Perhaps you'd like to legalize murder and let the life insurance companies handle it? Government shouldn't try to protect me from myself (big brother) but they'd damned well better try to protect me from morons like YOU.
You do realise that you put MY life in danger when you drive stupid? Maybe not, I guess, or you wouldn't have posted such an incredibly stupid comment.
Re:Leave it to the states (Score:3, Insightful)
"This road is not being repaired becasue the federal government refuse to fund it" along the freeway.
Well, if the Libertarian folks around here are to be believed, the federal government *shouldn't* be maintaining the freeways. Since when was it the fed's job to keep state roads in good repair?
'course, by that logic, the interstates would've never been built in the first place, but...
Re:Its just stupid (Score:1, Insightful)
After a horn honking at them the texter is going to be alert and aware of what's going on around them.
You have obviously never encountered what seems to be the typical texter I honk at. When I honk, they look up, hastily jerk the car back into their lane, then go back to texting and drifting back into my lane...
Re:Its just stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
It never ceases to amaze me how many people can't seem to understand the difference in the two situations.
I've found, by and large, that most slashdot posters are drooling morons.