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."
It's not the fines.... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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, Insightful)
I think the best way to "think of the children" is to teach the children.
The problem is, everybody has their own ideas about what to teach the children, and the vast majority of those ideas will turn little Lisa into an imbecile, a sociopath, or a robot.
On the other hand, at least the robot can be programmed to drive safely.
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and if they are stepford robots to ensure that wives are really really loyal.
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.
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Convicted multiple times of driving while intoxicated?!
Here in the UK you'd be very lucky to still have a driving licence after that. I believe the typical punishment for being caught once is a year's ban.
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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 thousa
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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.
In the U.S., places I've personally lived without a car, without any problem: Boston, Seattle, Pittsburgh, ...
Places where I haven't lived, but where friends have lived without a car, without any problem: Chicago, Portland (Oregon), San Francisco, ...
Outside the U.S., of course, decent public transportation tends to be the norm rather than the exception.
Re:It's not the fines.... (Score:4, Insightful)
cite [dot.gov]
If someone is looking at LOLcats on their iPhone and kills you in a car crash and they blow a 0.01 on a breathalizer because they were eating a bagel with their free hand that is considered an alcohol-related fatality. If you run over a a drunk guy on a bike that counts as an alcohol-related fatality. Furthermore, if there is no breathalizer done then they use "statistical modeling" to determine if alcohol is involved. I don't know what kind of modeling they use, but my guess is that they say there is a 33% chance alcohol was involved and list is as such. I'm not sure why their threshold for "alcohol-related" is so low, but it definitely gives us some big, scary numbers.
Re:It's not the fines.... (Score:5, Insightful)
what, exactly, is so fascist about suspending or terminating the driving license of someone who has proved that their driving habits are a danger to pedestrians and other drivers?
sounds like common sense to me.
(and if losing their license causes some fuckwit to lose their job - and whatever goes along with that - then so be it. fuck 'em.)
you don't have a right to drive. you don't have a right to endanger the lives of others because you're too fucking stupid to realise that drunk driving (or driving while distracted by cell-phones, video screens, or whatever) is dangerous.
drink all you like in your own home or when you're not going to be driving. in fact, take whatever drugs you like. your body, your life, your choice to do whatever you like to/with it. but you don't have any right to endanger others.
fuck you and your sense of entitlement.
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How is any of that flushing your 4th amendment rights down the toilet? Show me anywhere the 4th amendment give you the right to drive. Show me anywhere the 4th amendment says that the government cannot restrict what/how/where/when we drive?
Driving is not a right.
The only reason people think so is because we have built our country, our cities, and our system in such a way that makes it very inconvenient to not drive. But if you don't like the licensing requirements, or you don't like the license plates, o
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Driving is not a right.
It's open to anyone who can demonstrate ability and only revocable if you show yourself to be a danger to others. Sounds like a right to me.
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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:4, Informative)
Driving is also not probable cause.
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Driving is not a right.
It's not about 'the right to drive' - It's about the right to be going about your business (including driving) and not being randomly pulled over by the police to determine if "maybe you might have done some kind of crime perhaps."
If I'm swerving all over the road, fine, or if you see me chatting on my phone (or eating a cheeseburger or watching a DVD or texting) then fine, but being randomly pulled over so the police can check my phone logs? Fvck that.
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How is flushing the 4th amendment down the toilet not "interfering with previously held freedoms"? Why do all my fellow countrymen want to turn this country in to a totalitarian police state hell hole? WTF is going on in this country??
Exactly how is this flushing the 4th down the toilet? How else do you punish adults other than restrict their rights or outright revoke them? I am a proponent of the concept that if you fuck up badly enough as an adult you need to have a severe punishment.
Allowing the police to stop you and verify you're not drunk is a compromise yes, but an acceptable one for society as a whole. Otherwise society as a whole would vote to change it. I happen to agree with this, as it is democratic (even if it is a uncomfort
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You'd have to have a very strong exclusionary rule. The purpose of any such search should be limited to "are you drinking" or "are you texting". It wouldn't work-- the police are trained to use pretexts.
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Exactly how is this flushing the 4th down the toilet?
You don't see being subjected to a traffic stop without any sort of probable cause as a violation of the letter and spirit of the 4th amendment?
Re:It's not the fines.... (Score:5, Insightful)
These plates do not require all police officers to pull the vehicle over, but they do give additional indicators that this driver who is driving oddly enough to gain the attention of the officer has a history of DUI convictions that warrant a more careful check to verify sobriety.
I think these plates are a great idea. But only after multiple convictions (not just being pulled over multiple times but full convictions) for DUI.
Re:It's not the fines.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If a person is shown to repeatedly endanger the public they shouldn't be tagged with a little "I've been naughty" sign. They should be locked away where they can't hurt anyone.
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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.
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Nope, makes no sense even in mourning (Score:3, Informative)
I'd bet the farm you're naive attitude would Disappear after some drunk asshole killed your family.
Why should it? When I know whatever law was passed wouldn't have prevented it anyway, I wouldn't turn to the idea of "more government" for solace. Honestly I don't know what I would do, but again since I know it wouldn't stop anything that would literally be the last thing to occur to me to think of. Things like MADD and all started with a good intention but as always it's a noose that draws tighter around
Re:It's not the fines.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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This ignores 2 things:
1) People learn, usually by doing.
2) Police are not special, they are the same as anyone else.
If cops can learn to use a radio with complex codes to remember, or a laptop connected to a specialized system, so can anyone else.
If the 'anti-cell phone in cars' people had their way, we wouldn't even have radios in our cars.
The majority of people ALREADY know how to talk on the cell phone and drive safely, through experience.
The occasional event you hear about involving a crash caused by ta
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"If cops can learn to use a radio with complex codes to remember, or a laptop connected to a specialized system, so can anyone else."
The cop is getting PAID to do it, and most of them have some desire to appear professional to their peers.
Joe Sixpack doesn't give a shit about much of anything.
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.
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
Won't work. Unrealistic. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
First of all, you cannot train folks to multitask because humans are incapable of doing it [npr.org]. The cops can't do it either. What you call multitasking is actually them selecting attention rapidly between their laptops and driving - if they're even doing that.
Two, even if it were possible to train folks how to do it, what makes you think that folks will follow their training? People are trained not to tailgate, speed, cut others off, etc...
Everything you've proposed is impossible. The ONLY solution is to ban cell phones in cars. There is absolutely no reason to talk in a car anyway - no exceptions. Got to talk? Pull over.
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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 know where you're going with this but the reality is, people won't want to drop the $9k for that driver training and that's how much it costs. People think it's cheap to train cops or something in Ontario it's $150k/per officer. On top of that, you tell me how many citizens are going to turn around and take 2 weeks for 4-5hrs a day(at the minimum) to learn how to do it? That's the average here in Ontario right now.
Now I'm sure if you can get something passed by government giving certification it might
Re:It's not the fines.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I find it amusing that you just assume that the cops are not, themselves, a danger on the roads when they're doing this.
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I find it amusing that you just assume that the cops are not, themselves, a danger on the roads when they're doing this.
Exactly.
From discussions with traffic police I know in the UK, it seems to be standard practice for traffic patrols to have two officers in the car, and the one who is not driving is the one who is on the radio, giving the commentary during a pursuit, etc. If there is any serious car chasing to be done, a traffic car with suitably trained officers and proper spec will take over as the lead car as soon as possible and get everyone else to back off. There are pretty strict limits on the extent to which other
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Re:It's not the fines.... (Score:4, Insightful)
While I believe that your argument is valid in some other, not traffic-related cases (e.g. I believe that teaching young people how to drink responsibly is better than deterring them from drinking, but that is a different thing), I believe it is not valid in this case. When driving, have one hand at the steering wheel and occasionally one at the gearshift. That's it.
Spot on. Training! (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually it's not the fines or enforcement. It's training.
Also look at pilots who must by law be on the radio while piloting a vehicle in 3 dimensions that falls out of the sky if you slow down too quickly or bank too sharply while going slow. They are taught aviate, navigate, communicate - in other words fly and know where you are before worrying about the communication part.
Even if you remove mobile phones, radios and all other electronics, what about all the other distractions on the road? What about th
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Training won't suffice. If the police are acting as you describe, then they are being unsafe drivers. Divided attention means MUCH less attention to each part. You need the attention to do each part, and you also need some attention to manage the coordination. (This isn't just theoretical, there's also experimental evidence.)
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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.
I am guessing you are from the states. Here in the UK we keep our police in pairs when on patrol in vehicles. This means the guy in the passenger seat can use his radio or whatever, the driver can concentrate on driving.
The parent poster is spot on though, there are very high fines for driving while on a mobile but the police are reluctant to throw the book at motorists for it unless they happen to be behind you for half a mile without you noticing and hanging up.
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Too busy teaching her how to play Russian roulette responsibly.
Lesson #1: Don't use a semi-automatic [darwinawards.com] pistol.
Same here in California (Score:2)
A law requiring the use of a hands-free device when using a cell phone while driving went into effect last year. For the first few months, there was a noticeable drop in the number of people seen with a phone held up to their ear as the Highway Patrol was concentrating on writing tickets for people caught doing that. Now that the CHP is no longer making a concerted effort to ticket phone users, the numbers are right back up to their old levels and I'm still getting cut off on the freeway by people paying mo
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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 ca
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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
Yep, agreed. Which why I mentioned that exact same thing in my post.
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I'm just one person, and it's an anecdote, but I really do
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Human being is not a mathematical beast. People take risk that will kill them and/or cripple their family every single day. Think about tobacco, drinking while driving,
To solve the problem, you need to increase the risk so that people think that the risk is real. After that you need to make
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Then can you explain why people continue to text/use their cell phone while driving knowing that it increases their risk of dying in a car accident? THe problem is that most people do not have a good grasp of the actual magnitude of risk * probability.
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No, the problem is that people DO have a good grasp of the actual risk * probability.
And it's simply not that high. Yeah, you have a higher chance of an accident if you're texting/talking while driving. But it's not like you raise your chances of an acciden
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No. I can prove to you that peoples' risk calculations are fubared. People freak out over the swine flu and terrorism and yet heart disease which kills a thousand times more people doesn't seem to get that much attention; certainly not enough for people to consider changing their diets and exercising a little more.
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By all means, please do.
And if you think this is proof, you're mistaken. It is, at best, anecdotal evidence, and at worst, your opinion.
Oddly enough, I don't know ANYONE who is especially worrie
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Personally, I've seen one person, a 16 year old girl, try to text and drive at the same time. She allowed her vehicle to drift into both the left and right lanes multiple times while texting/viewing a text message, full aware of her lack of vehicle control (i.e. she made 3 corrections
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Note that "one girl" is an anecdote, not evidence.
And a 16 year old girl is, by definition, almost as stupid as a 16 year old boy.
Which is to say that using one 16 year old as a guideline to planning the laws of the land is almost as stupid as the 16 year old....
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I would say it's the expected cost of violating the law that matters. In other words, it is probability of getting caught x the cost of the fine. If you raise the fine so high that it will bankrupt you ($1 million) then people probably won't risk it. People still park illegally even though the chances of getting caught is pretty high relative to other violations but since in most places the cost/fine is so low, the expected cost makes it worth the violation.
What they don't mention is that the punishment is not just a fine - it's also three points on your driving licence.
Accumulate 12 points, and it's an automatic ban. Though most people tend to be fairly blase about these things until they've clocked up at least a few points.
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In the U.S. many municipalities pick some areas or time slot with which to hyper-enforce traffic laws as a means supplementing the municipal revenues.
It is too bad they don't do that by targeting cell phone use.
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Same in California. It's also hard to respect the law when the governor's wife is constantly getting caught with a phone in her hand.
Fine with me (Score:2)
I think fines will make little difference (Score:2)
It's hard to enforce, and you would have to get enforcement percentages way up there for people to decide the risk/reward ratio wasn't worth it. And your police officers have more important things to be doing with their time.
No, the thing to do if you're a government and want to make people safer given this behavior is to do everything you possibly can to encourage the development and use of economical self-driving cars and/or really excellent public transportation.
Frankly, driving is a waste of valuable t
Using a cell phone while driving is not dangerous (Score:5, Funny)
I'm using my I-Phone right now to ma
Re:Using a cell phone while driving is not dangero (Score:5, Funny)
Prohibit children (Score:4, Funny)
I think they're going about it all wrong. Children are much more distracting to drivers in my experience. I can't count the number of times I have almost wrecked trying to pick up a pacifier, etc.
London should prohibit driving with children in the car. It's an inconvenience for parents, but it's a safety issue. Likewise car radios should be banned.
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Banning is a touch extreme. We taught our kids at a very young age that cars have special rules: the main one is that "quiet" means "immediately stop talking for one minute."
They thought the rule was stupid until they got to watch a near accident at 50 mph in realtime :)
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Tie a short string between the pacifier and rug-rat.
Positive Reinforcement (Score:2, Insightful)
Have they tried educating rather than penalising? Strange as it may see, most of us respond positively to scientific fact rather than an impersonal fine. Who can say why this takes place?
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Oh Come On! You will never be elected by being soft on crime! We must INCREASE THE PENALTIES!
Take money out of education, social programs, health care, rehab, and PUNISH THE CRIMINALS!
Re:Positive Reinforcement (Score:5, Insightful)
Have they tried educating rather than penalising? Strange as it may see, most of us respond positively to scientific fact rather than an impersonal fine. Who can say why this takes place?
Man, what alternate universe do you live in? Whichever it is, I want to go there--a large percentage of the people in my universe don't seem to respond to any sort of fact, scientific or otherwise. Only a cold, hard dose of reality (such as running their car into a fire hydrant at the end of their driveway) ever gets through to them.
Re:Positive Reinforcement (Score:5, Insightful)
hard dose of reality (such as running their car into a fire hydrant at the end of their driveway) ever gets through to them.
In my universe that person would blame the fire hydrant...
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In my universe that person would blame the fire hydrant...
In my universe, 12 hot women pop up and assert they are my lover.
I love fire-hydrants.
Re:Positive Reinforcement (Score:5, Insightful)
Have they tried educating rather than penalising? Strange as it may see, most of us respond positively to scientific fact rather than an impersonal fine.
What planet do you live on? Facts don't dissuade people from doing what they want to do. A lot of it in this case is self-overestimation: people will continue to cell/text/IM while they drive because in spite of the evidence, they are all convinced that they are an exception to the rule and can do these things and still drive safely. In their minds, those studies and laws apply to all those other people, not me. It's very reminiscent of "well, most people probably shouldn't drive after drinking, but I can do it just fine."
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.
How about teaching little Lisa to keep both hands on the wheel, both eyes on the road, and her mind focused on driving? How about teaching her that that phone call or text can wait until she gets where she's going? How about teaching her that the world won't come to an end if she's not constantly in touch with her little friends 24/7?
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There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.
By "much higher" you mean "10%". (Score:2)
It's bad, but it's not that bad.
It would be interesting to see a productivity study to go along with the accident study. I'm not claiming to know what it might say, but it would be interesting to understand if any tangible benefit could be defined.
Use the same penalties as DUI (Score:2)
Texting and driving (Score:5, Insightful)
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Texting while driving is not merely using a cellphone. Try to drive and use a fiddly little keypad at the same time. It's not merely distraction, it's attempted murder.
Here in Poland, there's large popular support for a lifetime driving ban for anyone who causes an accident while DUI. I'd support the same for idiots texting behind the wheel.
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I call shenanigans!
How do you know he was texting if he was going 70mph, it was the middle of the night, and you ended up in a ditch (presumably not able to follow and identify the person or his activities). How do you even know it was a teenager, or that it was a "he"?
Risk (Score:2, Insightful)
What, the tax cameras can't tell? (Score:2)
No Problem (Score:2)
Rule to survive:
If you see somebody driving erratic, keep extra distance behind, then try to pass quickly and check cellphone-use. If positive, take note.
Keeping a tab on positive will quickly convince you that
a - It's a dangerous world out there
b - Darwin's law of survival... holds true
c - Politicians are stupid (CO no-phone-use-in cars was watered down to no-messaging-while-driving)
http://www.livescience.com/technology/050201_cell_danger.html [livescience.com]
Blue Tooth (Score:2)
LA may be better (Score:2)
My own casual observation (and one that my friends seem to agree with) is that since Los Angeles introduced a similar law last year, it has in fact curbed such behavior. Prior to that it seemed to be a much bigger problem (as it was in previous cities I lived in). This isn't to say you don't still see it most of the times that you drive, but more frequently it's that one idiot on the cell phone during your trip rather than a whole road full of idiots on their cell phones.
Everyone I know has also made it a
Personal observations (Score:2)
Why is it every time I see a cop they're on the cell phone?
The best thing I did to improve my driving cellphone-wise was set my Blackberry to no alert on email when holstered.
Cell Phones = Boogeyman (Score:2)
It's undeniable that cell phone usage distracts most drivers and increases danger. But so do myriad other things (eating a Whopper, smoking, smacking the kids around, having just one drink, etc.) and those are not singled out for prosecution.
So the inevitable conclusion is that it's not about safety, it's about taking advantage of the fear of new technology to generate revenue. And nobody respects that.
It turns out that encasing yourself in a 2 ton hunk of steel and plastic and hurtling it down the highwa
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It's undeniable that cell phone usage distracts most drivers and increases danger. But so do myriad other things (eating a Whopper, smoking, smacking the kids around, having just one drink, etc.) and those are not singled out for prosecution.
So the inevitable conclusion is that it's not about safety, it's about taking advantage of the fear of new technology to generate revenue. And nobody respects that.
That conclusion is not inevitable at all.
Eating a whopper and smoking have a relatively small increase in
Since when... (Score:2)
...has prohibition *ever* worked?
If cell phones were as dangerous as people like to make them out to be, accident rates would have skyrocketed over the last decade.
Technology will find a solution to the problem (Score:2)
Mobile communications are here to stay, there is no going back and there is no way you are going to stop people from answering their phone.
Why do cars not yet come with bluetooth?
This would be simple and inexpensive. A mic in the steering wheel and the sound comes through the speakers.
I stopped texting and driving once I got an iphone because I can not send a m
It's b/c we live in an age of instant contact (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody remember the days before call-waiting? Y'know the days when you called someone and if they were on it you'd get this thing called a busy signal? We live in an age where we expect people to be able to be in instant contact. I sent you a text message, you get it instantly. We IM people on the computer. Creating mobile phones allows us to call someone (or be called by someone) almost anywhere we go. Nolonger do we have, "Sorry I was at the grocery store for the past hour.." You get called while you are in front of the apples. Conversely, you can call home and find out from your wife what type of apple to get for the pie.
People have grown accustomed to this... this leash. There was a time when people didn't have cell phones or pagers for that matter. When you went to the movies, you went to the movies, and when you were in the car driving to grandmas house, she couldn't call you. Now she can call you, and I would bet that most people would answer the phone rather than wait until you could a) safely pull over or b) arrive at your destination before you answered the phone or checked to see who called and call them back.
Do I think that we'll ever change our behavior to where we don't have this desire to have instant contact? Nope, and with the young kids of today growing up with email being the slowest form of communication, they won't think twice about driving while on the phone, texting or whatever comes out next (video-conferencing via the center console mounted computer?).
Re:Not just London... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not just in London, I think you will find that this is the case everywhere in the world...
Basic human behavior, and it's hardly restricted to cellphone misuse behind the wheel. You see, everyone is somehow special and better able to handle a given situation than anyone else, and is therefore immune to consequence. That is, until such time as a consequence kills them dead, or if they're very lucky just scares the shit out of them. Cigarettes, drugs, risky sex, bad driving ... most people don't learn to think until after their stupidity nearly kills them. I don't have a problem with that, particularly, unless their mental malfunction gets someone else killed. That's what makes using that damn cellphone on the road a bad thing.
Wise up people, you're no better at driving and texting than anyone else, and nobody is any good at it.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Just how many IFR Pilots do you know? (assuming you're not an Aviator yourself and more likely to know a few).
Take a flight on a fully-loaded 747, I'll bet even money the only two people who can fly that plane are already in the cockpit. I don't know what definition you have of 'rare', but IFR Pilots are, IMO.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with that argument is that if someone else fucks up, you or I may be affected by the consequences in terrible ways that no amount of compensation or punishment inflicted on the other party could correct.
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Try reading what I posted next time.
Re:Big Surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not victimless (Score:2)
Driving while distracted is not a victimless crime. There wouldn't be so much support for penalizing phoning and texting while driving if we weren't all experiencing idiotic driving by cell phone wielding seat warmers every day. Ninety percent of the time when I see another vehicle do something dumb - like running a red light, plowing through a pedestrian crosswalk when all the other traffic has stopped for somebody to cross, changing lanes without looking, or sitting at a green light - I then see that the
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It's quite reasonable to make illegal some specific activities that drastically increase the probability of a fatal incident. Endangering the lives of others around you is wrong.
The motive behind the law is to prevent accidents through active punishment and awareness of the law. I frequently disagree with the police, but that seems like a fairly reasonable and justified strategy to me.
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