Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers • Hacker News Board

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#31

Post by itg » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

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.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#32

Post by dvtrn » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

7952 wrote: post #21

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.

It would be interesting to see if painting lurid stripes on the car as a punishment would help. Or require the driver to have warning sign attached in prominent places. Make it as embarrassing as possible.

Can we do this for other driving offenses? Like drivers who don't signal lane changes or drive slowly in the passing lane? I'm all about publicly shaming drivers into doing better.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#33

Post by marbletiles » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

I ride a bike in London traffic and you can tell which drivers are on phones from quite some distance. I think when police stop them they are mystified as to how they got caught - they genuinely don’t realise just how all-over-the-place they are.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#34

Post by btrettel » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

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 distracted driving after nearly being hit by a driver who ran a red light because they were distracted by their phone. (I spoke with them afterward.) The police tell me that they periodically do distracted driving enforcement operations, but only in school zones so that they get double fines. I've never seen a single distracted driving enforcement operation in Austin, but I've gone through cyclist stop sign enforcement twice. It would be interesting to see the statistics here. How many people are ticketed for distracted driving every year?

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#35

Post by drblast » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

neutronicus wrote: post #27

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?

My wife expects timely logistical updates.

"I will be hours late because I got into an accident attempting to text this to you."

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#36

Post by LeoPanthera » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

kldavis4 wrote: post #30

I wonder if there is not some technological solution that can be built into smartphones to prevent this from happening. I realize that they are doing double duty as GPS & music, but imagine if your phone could detect that you are in the driver's seat and the car is moving and disable any application but the GPS. I know this would be hard, but it doesn't seem like it would be "self-driving car" hard and would have imm…

Apple's CarPlay heavily restricts what you can do while moving - you can only browse through lists that are short, and you can't type anything. These functions are replaced with talking to Siri, which it is assumed you can do with your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#37

Post by helloguillecl » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

I am seeing users on their mobiles very frequently when I see through the back mirror while driving in the city where I live. I assume this is mostly WhatsApp use.

Phone and software makers have an unique opportunity to save lives on the road by taking measures to prevent this terrible behaviour. They'll be rewarded by getting some of the public trust back, and seeing they are optimizing around public good as opposed to eyeballs.

A good example is Android Auto, which prevents the driver from typing on the car's screen while driving.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#38

Post by whalesalad » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

neutronicus wrote: post #27

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?

My wife expects timely logistical updates.

iphone/imessage, turn-on find friends, leave phone in pocket, done. my wife knows where I am 24x7 (for better or worse lol)

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#39

Post by mjevans » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

I think there's a legitimate difference between a quick glance at a mobile and actually trying to //compose// something on it. Even speech to text can be poor enough that if it isn't dead simple it should wait until stopped.

Edit: If you disagree maybe you would like to reply with how and thus form an actual discussion? I'm suggesting the split second shift of focus equivalent to changing a radio-station or disc track is equally as distracting as a quick glance at something and indicating that I /agree/ anything past that should be a zero-motion dependent event.

Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

#40

Post by LeoPanthera » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

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.

If your accent doesn't match the country you are in, change Siri's language to your native one. As a British person living in the USA, if I don't set Siri to British, she has a terrible time understanding me, but it works fine on British mode.