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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

#171

Post by blang »

I wonder if this could be solved (or at least made drastically better) with insurance incentives + technology.

Idea would be reward drivers willing to ditch their phones while driving entirely, by having drastically reduced car insurance rates.

I'm not sure how it would work, but there would be a system in the car that would verify there is no active phone. Clearly there are a lot of details to be worked out both on the technological, insurances pricing, and privacy sides, but it feels like this could be a way forward.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#172

Post by johnthedebs »

davidrupp wrote: post #169

Driving my car (phone in pocket, do-not-disturb on): Yesterday: Passed a college-aged kid on a (edit: motorized) scooter, no helmet, going about 45 mph, reading his phone. Today: Passed a middle-school-aged kid (edit: on a bicycle), with a helmet, going about 3 mph, reading his phone. Not sure which earns his Darwin Award first. It's a problem, either way.

I don’t know if I follow, are you saying the second example is a problem? If you are, it’s not clear to me why that is.

And are you sure the scooter was going 45mph? That seems unrealistically fast given that even on my bike (which is probably much more stable) achieving 20+mph in NYC is pretty uncommon.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#173

Post by duderific »

Captain0bvious1 wrote: post #41
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #5

This is "old man yells at cloud" area, but seriously - why can we not just leave our phones in our pocket until we get to our destination? What's that important?

People (and especially kids) don't know how to handle idle time anymore.

I did a fun experiment recently. I was sitting in a doctor's office waiting room with several other people, all on their phones of course. I wanted to see how long I could sit there without pulling out my phone. I made it about 5 minutes. Just sitting there, no magazine, nothing. It was excruciating.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#174

Post by noobermin »

maccio92 wrote: post #117
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.

Cellphone use while driving is a primary offense in Ohio, meaning you can get pulled over solely got that and receive a citation

I have never seen anyone get pulled over driving with a phone in Ohio.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#175

Post by carapace »

Cars and phones already have the sensors and comms to be able to curb this behavior, at least some of the time. Your car and phone "know" (potentially) when you're using them at the same time. Is there a technological fix? And if so, do we want to use it?

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#176

Post by duderific »

itg wrote: post #31
yardie wrote: post #12

In this day and age of really great machine learning I find that most people refuse to use voice services unless they are forced to do so (usually because of injury). Trying to tap out a message at 80km/h on a 5" screen is pretty fucking futile. But most distracted drivers will attempt to do it anyway. Here's a neat trick, just say, "Hey Siri* Send a message to $firstname $lastname's $phone. Tell them I'm [on my way,…

I tried, but Siri is still really bad at speech recognition whenever I try it.

I think it's gotten quite a bit better over the last couple of iterations. I use it all the time and works well for most simple tasks.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#177

Post by chillwaves »

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.

Was just thinking today that 90% of drivers on the road have no concept of blindspots. Maybe understand a blind spot on their own vehicle but the idea of a blind curve (or other blind situation due to any vision obstruction) is completely foreign.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#178

Post by bsder »

Pharmakon wrote: post #144
jeffdavis wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A citation is nothing. A couple drinks will put you in jail, cost you your license for a while, maybe your job, and thousands of dollars.

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’…

> never got more than a slap on the wrist

Everybody I know in California who got a DUI got quite penalized--it definitely stopped all of them cold so they would never have to go through the penalties again.

Maybe you can get away with DUI in the country club crowd, but certainly not lower than that.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#179

Post by sethhochberg »

Its disappointing to see that so many voices in this discussion are focused on self-driving cars and the like as the savoir solutions - I always wish there would be some discussion of ways to help people be less reliant on cars, so they spend less time driving, are less likely to get distracted while doing it, and everybody is both safer _and_ living in a less car-centric world.

We are - realistically - decades away from outright bans on human-operated vehicles at any real scale... so why not try to reign in the ever-expanding sprawl and car-centric planning that encourages/requires such widespread use of vehicles by distracted people, drunk people, etc in the first place? If its not alcohol, its phones. If its not phones, its makeup, or breakfast, or a fight with a passenger... more people who can walk, take transit, bike, etc means fewer deadly distractions or impairments.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#180

Post by hermitdev »

megy wrote: post #128
btrettel wrote: post #34

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. Until we change the incentives, distracted driving is very likely to remain a problem. Right now there's a lot of talk but very little action. I live in Austin, and I've spoken with the police about distract…

As a cyclist, I try to keep as much space from a car as I can. A particularly worrying time for me is when I am traveling around the same speed as a car. So many times I have almost been hit, and a few time shit by someone just turning. This is not a problem when you are passing cars or they pass you, because they see you. But yes, fuck people using their phones while driving. It happens every single day, every third…

I used commute on I294 in Chicago. The drive home was awful. In bumper to bumper traffic, speed oscillating between 0 and 45. Id look around me and typically I'd see 5 or 6 people in my immediate vicinity would be on their phones. Id see people watching videos, texting, talking. It was appalling.

I was hit 3 times last year. Pretty sure at 2 of the times it was due to distracted driving and the 3rd due to the asshole being an impatient and rude prick trying to skip the line and jump in. When I was read ended, the woman that hit me rolled into me at a red light. We had been sitting there for a minute or so, stopped and just as the light was about to turn green, just rolls into me. I get out and check my bumper, and there's a crack in the paint and about a dime size dent. Not a lot, right? I was expecting a around a $500-600 repair, and that was the initial estimate range. When they got in there and removed the bumper, found a lot more damage. Ended up with a new bumper, impact absorption materials and backup sensors. Ended up being around a $4k repair. All because she was distracted at a stop light. Mind I didnt have to pay that, but it was still an inconvenience having my car in the body shop for a few weeks.

The kicker is, she got out to look at the damage and tried to claim there was no damage. I called the police to get a report. She started freaking out and getting hysterical, yelling at me and pulling at my arm I'm holding my phone with, while I'm on the phone with the police. I got back in my car and locked the doors and stayed in there until the police arrived. Crazy woman kept pounding on my window until the officer showed up.

Not sure if she was cited, but I got the police report with her listed at fault, which is what I wanted to make dealing with insurance easier.

/rant

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