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Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

blog.zendrive.com

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Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#151

Post by megy »

vonmoltke wrote: post #94
nothrabannosir wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is a problem so big that even people walking cross roads with their faces glued to their phones. I see this comparison a lot, and I just want to clarify: when you are distracted as a pedestrian, you're risking your life. When you are distracted as a driver, you're risking other people's lives. Getting behind a wheel drunk is considerably more dangerous to society than going home on foot. Phone use equivalently…

> I see this comparison a lot, and I just want to clarify: when you are distracted as a pedestrian, you're risking your life. When you are distracted as a driver, you're risking other people's lives. You are letting distracted pedestrians off too lightly. They are not just risking their own lives; they are risking the lives of motorists, cyclists, and other pedestrians by potentially forcing motorists and cyclists in…

Oh come one. Motorists are driving dangerous killing machines around, distracted pedestrians are just walking.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#152

Post by dredmorbius »

butisaidsudo wrote: post #53
devoply wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's trivial to mandate a phone be designed so that it can't be used in a moving car or for a certain amount of time since it has experienced significant acceleration. In fact you could ban certain apps like txting and calling during these times. I guess you could even mandate tech to help the phone figure out where in the car the person is sitting and only disable their phone.

So even passengers wouldn't be allowed to use their phones?

Yes.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#153

Post by cc439 »

btrettel wrote: post #90
stiGGG wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm a cyclist. Over the past 5 years or so I've learned to check inside of people's cars to see if they have a phone in their hands. If they do, I try to keep as much distance between myself and them as possible. I guess this is something a self driving car should also keep in mind. Next we have to click on tiles with people using phones before login.

It seems to me that many drivers and cyclists have unique strategies that could be useful for self-driving cars. My father has a good one for going around blind corners and going up blind hills at night: Check trees and other objects in the direct path of oncoming traffic for light. I also tend to look around buildings now, which is something self-driving cars probably already do but many drivers don't.

>My father has a good one for going around blind corners and going up blind hills at night: Check trees and other objects in the direct path of oncoming traffic for light.

Back in high school, I convinced one of my friends that I had a 6th sense for cars approaching on a long drive back home at night. My trick was that the light from a cars headlights slightly reflects off the semi-gloss black rubber of powerlines and we lived in an area where everything was still on poles. I never noticed this effect on tree leaves but the power/telephone line trick worked really well because a ~6 foot section would be slightly lit, presenting a very large (but thin) target for your eye to see.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#154

Post by wahern »

max76 wrote: post #58
FlyingSideKick wrote: post #7

I worked at T-Mobile and did some work on this very subject our studies showed that people are so addicted that unless there is a threat of jail time or drivers license suspension people will not put down their phones.

I don't understand why people see the possibility of a drivers license suspension as being worse than the increased risk of vehicular manslaughter. One is a few months of decreased mobility. The other is an entire life.

They're not convinced that it impairs their driving.

Consider that a plurality, if not a majority of the population is convinced that they're efficient at multi-tasking, and specifically that they can perform each task as well as in isolation. But we know that almost nobody multitasks well, period, and absolutely not with equivalent performance.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#155

Post by btrettel »

president wrote: post #141
megy wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be an instant ban from driving, you are not allowed to continue your journey, and for at least a week after. Plus fine. It is ridiculous how lenient the laws are. 40,000 people die every year on our roads.

> It is ridiculous how lenient the laws are. I think it is because people who make the laws are breaking them too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Lehmberg

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#156

Post by btrettel »

cc439 wrote: post #153
btrettel wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that many drivers and cyclists have unique strategies that could be useful for self-driving cars. My father has a good one for going around blind corners and going up blind hills at night: Check trees and other objects in the direct path of oncoming traffic for light. I also tend to look around buildings now, which is something self-driving cars probably already do but many drivers don't.

>My father has a good one for going around blind corners and going up blind hills at night: Check trees and other objects in the direct path of oncoming traffic for light. Back in high school, I convinced one of my friends that I had a 6th sense for cars approaching on a long drive back home at night. My trick was that the light from a cars headlights slightly reflects off the semi-gloss black rubber of powerlines an…

Thanks, I was hoping someone would have another good object to check. Where my father mentioned this, there weren't any visible power lines as far as I can recall.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#157

Post by e40 »

bluedino wrote: post #112

DUI and driving while using your phone should have equal punishment. I’m not advocating drinking and driving, but phone use is “no harm, no foul” right now. On the other hand you can drive without crashing into anyone but if you’ve had two glasses of wine with dinner, you can get charged with a crime.

The problem is proving it.

What a DUI perp says: I'm not drunk! Cops check blood alcohol level.

What a phone user says: I wasn't on my phone! Cops can't/won't check anything, and even if they could, how could the accident time be exactly (for proof) correlated?

My wife was rear ended by an SUV and has health effects to this day (it was over 10 years ago). There was no way to prove, or not, the other drive was on the phone. The driver was coming up to a stop sign in her own neighborhood that had a long line of cars that were stopped. It's highly likely she was on the phone or looking down at something. There was no evidence of brakes having been applied.

I argued with the insurance company for weeks about this. They wouldn't do a damn thing.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#158

Post by [deleted] »

koolba wrote: post #147
Pharmakon wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife got her start as an attorney in the U.S. and her first criminal cases as defense counsel were for drunk divers. It ended up driving (no pun) her away from defense work, because these guys were inveterate offenders and never got more than a slap on the wrist. The penalties on the books for DUI and the penalties actually administered are often miles apart. That may have changed in the last decade though, I can’…

What do you consider a slap on the wrist? Everyone I know that’s had a DUI lost their license for a min amount of time with exponential increases for repeat offenders (one month, then two years, then 10 years). And that’s only the ones that weren’t involved in a collision.

[deleted]

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#159

Post by wahern »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #76
0x0000000 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small nit you may not be aware of: use 'fewer' for nouns which can be counted (collisions, fatalities), and 'less' for nouns which can't (damage).

Stop nitpicking this. There's nothing unclear or ambiguous about 'less'. It refers to a smaller quantity of something. There's no reason not to use it. This is just pointless grammar Nazism.

Debating grammar is perhaps one of the best ways to actually learn grammar and otherwise sharpen language skills. I don't think it's a coincidence that grammar and language discourse has been a past time of the learned for millennia around the world.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#160

Post by dredmorbius »

Someone1234 wrote: post #98
yardie wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I backed out a parking spot and into some guy speeding through the lot. Me, a bit of rubber on the bumper that I wiped off with a magic eraser. Him, front quarter panel and both passenger doors had to be replaced. I was pissed off about the unfairness of it all. That him driving reckless and me being in the wrong place made me at fault for thousands of dollars in damage. I'm not surprised to see a car accident with w…

Aren't you at fault though even per your own version? You pulled into a driving lane that the other vehicle was already in. Your justification for why you shouldn't be at fault is that he was "speeding" but there's no set speed limit in a parking lot, and you're meant to verify it is clear before locomotion. Plus if you witnessed them "speeding" you would have known you were pulling out in front of them, which makes…

In many states, parking lots have a 5-15 mph speed limit. In California, the alleyway limit typically applies. There is also the basic speed law: drive no faster than is safe.

https://www.mycaliforniapermit.com/california-teen-driver-ed...

https://www.quora.com/Why-does-California-bother-having-a-5-...

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