The one time I've been in any sort of accident was when I was fumbling around with maps on my old Nokia C5. The front tire grazed the sidewalk, and the tire basically disintegrated after a few kilometers. Since then, I'm very particular about not using the phone at all. I've tried to use Google assistant to do things like change tracks, or start navigation, but it's not reliable enough yet.
Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
201–210 of 293 posts
Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
#202I’m wondering if these aren’t the same people. The ones that, if not texting, are driving while putting on makeup, ogling every lady in a dress, turning into oncoming traffic, popping ambien, or driving drunk.
It seems like a personality type that’s generally careless and self important. Texting isn’t much more distracting than the thousands of other unsafe things people do.
Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
A vehicular manslaughter charge often leads to jail time. That's more likely to cause someone to lose their job.
Sure. But let’s say the chance of losing your license is a hundred times more likely than that of committing vehicular homicide, and the effective penalty for a homicide is 10 times worse than that for losing your license, you should be 10x more worried about losing your license.
Most people do not think like that logically.
In addition, I believe the effective penalty for vehicular manslaughter is probably ten thousand times worse because of the psychological cost of being responsible for someone's death.
Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
#204Isn't using a phone while driving illegal in most countries now? Here in Australia you can only touch one if it is in one of those GPS holder things, with ~$400 fines for non-compliance. The police put a few plain clothed ppl at traffic lights and raise thousands. Sure it's revenue raising, but the message gets out pretty quickly.
Not sure how quickly that message is getting out, mobile phone use while driving is very common here. It's _really_ noticeable when you're on a motorbike, your view is clearer, but also being a little higher you can see the phone on people's laps as they drive along looking down at them.
Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
#205Driving 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.
(edit: "Scooter" is overloaded. Think "Vespa", not "Razor".)
I didn't have a radar gun on him, no. But I was doing about 50 passing him, so ...
Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure. But let’s say the chance of losing your license is a hundred times more likely than that of committing vehicular homicide, and the effective penalty for a homicide is 10 times worse than that for losing your license, you should be 10x more worried about losing your license.
Most people do not think like that logically. In addition, I believe the effective penalty for vehicular manslaughter is probably ten thousand times worse because of the psychological cost of being responsible for someone's death.
Indeed. Somehow this doesn’t occur to people though when they get behind the wheel of a 3000lb death machine and decide to start looking at their phone. I personally find the prospect terrifying.
Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
#207As others have said, as a motorcyclist, my number one concern on the road is a person using their mobile device while driving. I am less worried about road rage (which is still a top concern for me) than distracted drivers. I see it literally hundreds of times a day. People are driving their cars at over 70mph while texting. They use instagram and facebook at stoplights. They text or call while driving too fast down…
> It is statistically more dangerous than driving intoxicated.
It might cause more deaths/accidents, but how many more people are driving distracted compared to driving intoxicated?
Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
#208Driving 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.
And yes, the kid on his bike is a problem. More of a problem, in some ways. This was in my neighborhood, so speeds were low all around. But I had to time passing him very carefully, and I was very aware of how much he was weaving around the road, however slowly. And this kid will be on a scooter next. Then in a car. And having his phone available at all times will be even more second-nature to him. Maybe he'll get lucky, and truly autonomous vehicles will be a thing before he gets himself killed or badly injured.
Maybe.
Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
#209Many here who work for companies like Facebook probably have blood on your hands as a results of your pursuits to "increase engagement".
Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
#210In 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,…
The problem with your solution is that voice assistants excel at practical tasks which aren't at the root of phone and social media addiction. These are people addicted to the dopamine rush of validation and acceptance they get from social media like FB, IG, and Twitter, as wel las personal text messages. It's an addiction like nicotine, small effects repeatedly played out over time. But it gets to the point where they are dangers to all of us when they are driving on top of all the other social costs (worse performances at work and school, for example).