Fines Fail To Curb Cell Phone Usage While Driving 339
andylim writes "An in-depth study of over 14,000 London drivers by the Transport Research Laboratory has found an increase in the number of London motorists making and taking calls using their handsets at the wheel between 2008 and 2009, even though harsher penalties were introduced in 2007. It seems that most people, at least in London, still don't respect the fact that there's a much higher risk of being involved in an accident if you're using your cell phone."
Re:It's not the fines.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the enforcement. We have really, really high fines here for all sorts of traffic violations, but enforcement is so lacking that it almost seems random. Your chances of getting caught are miniscule, so people learn to ignore the law. If they do get caught, the fines are staggering - but the one in ten thousand chance of getting caught is not a deterrent.
Actually it's not the fines or enforcement. It's training. Every police vehicle I've seen has a laptop mounted on the center console. Every time I see a cop driving around they have one hand on the keyboard and constantly glance back and forth between the road and the computer.
Cell phones and cars aren't going away anytime soon. Instead of punishing the citizens for doing something police are trained to do, train the citizens too. There is no reason that drivers ed. classes shouldn't discuss this and deal with it.
I think the best way to "think of the children" is to teach the children. If you don't want little Lisa to text and drive into a horrible wreck, teach her how to text and drive responsibly. Otherwise take your blanket statements and have every computer removed from police vehicles because otherwise we have an effective working double standard which provides revenue to the police force. Fuck that shit.
Re:It's not the fines.... (Score:5, Interesting)
One more thing... In the USA (I live in Minnesota), we have classes of drivers licenses. Lowest class being I think a D (my D license allows me to drive standard cars and trucks up to a certain size). There is a separate class for motorcycles, and tractor-trailers (semi-trucks, 18-wheelers, etc). This "problem" can easily be handled through education, hands-on training, and licensing.
Now I'm on a roll... We have these special license plates for vehicles whose owners like to drink alcohol and drive drunk. In my state we call them "whiskey plates" because the license number always starts with a W. These special license plates are a signifier for law enforcement that the person driving has been convicted multiple times of driving while intoxicated, and as such, may now be pulled over and checked at any time to verify they are not repeating the offense. I may be off on the rules, but that is the gist of it.
So, maybe we can create another class of license plates as well as license. You text and cause accidents or speed too much, and you have to go to court and tell a judge. Then your car gets "texty plates" and everyone around now knows you like to text and drive and cause problems, and the cops can pull you over and check your cellphone to ensure you haven't been repeating the offense.
I dunno. These ideas seem more American to me than making government bigger, and interfering with previously held freedoms.
Re:It's not the fines.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Same here in California (Score:3, Interesting)
Hands-free devices do little to reduce accidents. The big thing that causes accidents while using cell phones is the fact that most people devote most of their attention to the conversation.
When someone is with you in the car they can see the road conditions just as well as you can. They will often shut up when you are in a tense situation that needs your focus. When someone is on a cell phone they will chatter away regardless and your attention will be divided.
If you're going to use a cell phone in a car you have to be willing to tell the person on the other end to shut up for a bit when you need to and to be able to recognize when you need to. And the person at the other end has to recognize that this isn't rudeness on your part, but a basic safety precaution.
In reality, as I mentioned in another post, driving is a horrible deplorable waste of human time and attention. It would be better done by machines. The next best would be to have it done by a very small few in society so only their time was wasted, but people seem allergic to public transportation.
Re:It's not the fines.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Yeah, I can't believe some people think driving is a right. I'm mostly blind, and the idea that it was ever unfair for the government to prohibit me from driving never even entered into my mind. I'm an unsafe driver. People who drink and drive are unsafe drivers. People who text or talk and drive are unsafe drivers.
Re:Same here in California (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm just one person, and it's an anecdote, but I really don't think it's fair to say that all people are worse off while on a phone. I'm much better on a phone than with a passenger.
Re:Good (Score:1, Interesting)
Did you read what I said? Do you generalize every single person to be exactly the same? Passengers distract me more than cell phone conversations. I didn't say cell phone conversations didn't distract me at all, only that passengers are more distracting that cell phone conversations. You have absolutely no ability to evaluate or refute that statement. Sorry, but you don't. I have a tendency to look at passengers when I'm talking to them. That's a bad thing. I don't do that on the phone. I have a tendency to get wrapped up in a conversation with a passenger. I don't do that on the phone. Passengers are generally not good for me.
Re:It's not the fines.... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's more training than anything else. E.g. pilots learn to "aviate, navigate, communicate" in that priority order, cops learn to drive, then talk. Both roles need the person on the other end of the conversation to also be trained to expect pauses in the conversation. That is not the case when J6P is driving and having to deal with his wife talking on the phone about random stuff that is important to her.
Note that it's much safer when J6P's wife is talking to him while he's in the car: she can see him concentrating as the school bus pulls out while the fuel truck heads towards the closing railroad crossing. Then she stops talking. (That's why hands-free vs standard cell phones make virtually no difference in accident rates.)
Re:It's not the fines.... (Score:5, Interesting)
"I don't believe that the vast majority of people can be taught to do this safely and responsibly."
Yes, because the average person is incapable of learning simple skills. I had a roommate who was training to be an EMT. Her ambulance driving course had approximately the same number of instructional hours as my (excellent) driving training course in high school.
Now, how many quality instructional hours do you think the average driver has? How good is the test, and how often is it repeated? When I got my learners permit the ten question multiple choice test was easier than the test I'd done a week before in grade eight Home Ec. to use the sewing machine.
It is not hard to teach people skills like normal driving, dealing with distractions while driving, etc. The problem is that almost nobody gets the training because they don't have to.
Re:It's not the fines.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Rights are inalienable, to use an American term, while privileges are revocable for cause.
Rights aren't inalienable. They can be taken away with due process of law. Hence why convicted felons can't vote or possess firearms.
Re:It's not the fines.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Training is well worth it (Score:3, Interesting)
At first, as a young academic, with 10 year's driving experience, it seemed pedestrian, until you had to drive at at least 40 MPH in a special police car with absolutely bald tyres, for an hour, on a skid pan, eg oil+soap+water, much slicker than ice. You learned abou front, rear and 4 wheel skids, how to get in, easy, out, and use them. Handbreak turns
At the end, two, including me, got a prize, the Police Class 1 test, the two winners drove one-way Chelmsford-2-Leeds ( M) in an un-marked Jaguar Police car with concealed lights and siren, that you were NOT allowed to use. To pass you had to average 80 MPH which meant that you had to constantly overtake traffic with 20+ MPH overtake speed. UK speed limit is 70 MPH.
If the Instructors had to use the lights and siren you failed, average <80, you failed. I passed with 80.1 MPH and was washed out for a week. At the time I could fly, and thus talk with ATC and watch the instruments, out the front window, and behind. A constant scan.
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Texting while driving a car is insane! Voice is OK, only on Hands Free, and if you can master a clear sense of priorities, first drive safely, then talk. If I answer the phone in the car, an dont know the caller, I say "I am driving so, if traffic gets busy bear with me". For me the Baregg an Guberist tunnels, in rush hour, are the only places where I really have a problem. A stau in Guberist means the in-tunnel cell gets overloaded anyway.
Re:It's not the fines.... (Score:3, Interesting)
the public transportation is so poor that most people would be unable to function without driving. They would quickly lose their job and become homeless. This certainly isn't true for many cities,
Name one outside NYC.
The unfortunate result is that our society has become much more relaxed about drunk driving.
Compared to when? Five years ago? Ten? Twenty? Fifty?
And exactly how many people die per year due to drunk driving in the States? Exactly how much does it cost to eliminate a so-called drunk driving death, when you've reduced the number of accidents due to intoxication to a few tens in each State?
DUI in the United States is not a practical issue, measured in terms of cost and benefit. It's a quasi-moral, religious issue, where the States is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to punish people for a supposed immorality, when the same amount of money spent on health care, social services or (egads!) education would save hundreds of lives. MADD-- Typical American hypocrisy, of course.
Re:It's not the fines.... (Score:3, Interesting)
The primary reason for our ridiculously high imprisonment rate is our ongoing "war" on drugs.
If we stopped locking up potheads and started prosecuting the people who are actually dangerous to someone other than themselves the US justice system would be a lot more efficient and considerably less crowded.