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.
Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
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Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
#42I was driving about 3mph in traffic texting my wife and did 3500 dollars damage to my car. I'm glad I learned my lesson the easy way instead of killing someone. Don't text and drive no matter what, it's easy to pull over if it's necessary!
Sorry that happened. Thanks for sharing. What damage on your vehicle caused the high cost of repairs? Just surprisingly high for a 3~ MpH impact.
bumper, hood, radiator, connecting parts, paint matching on a 7 year old car, etc. Not a big deal, I just wanted to tell people my story so people realize even doing it in a parking lot or neighborhood can probably kill if it is possible for me to crash that hard in bumper to bumper traffic.
Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
#43I 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…
The problem is always differentiating between driver and passenger.
Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
#44I'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…
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.
Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
#45I 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.
The deterrence effect of punishment relies on two factors: severity of the punishment when caught and the probability of getting caught. You can only up the former so much before a single stupid mistake ruins your life. But we could increase deterrence a lot by increasing the second factor. Just think about it: You a $5 fine stop you from using your phone? Right now probably not. But if it cost you $5 EVERY TIME you used your phone in the car you'd stop rather quickly.
Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
#46I 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…
How does it distinguish driver from passenger?
Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
#47I'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…
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.
It would be hard to filter out the false positives. I'm almost always a passenger or riding a train. Locking out my phone during either of those situations would be a problem.
Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
#48Having the self driving features on a car such as Tesla auto pilot has really made this problem worse. People rely on their cars to stop in time, although this is not always the case
Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
#49This 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?
Its tempting to glance at the text and see if they're expecting you/changed plans. It's urgent because you need to make an exit decision soon depending on the answer. Its pointless to pull over because that takes longer than making a mistake about the exit. Its a drug, the potential to optimize your plans on the fly is so attractive that even folks that swear they'd never text and drive, do it the moment it has utili…
Even though my car doesn't support Android Auto, I still have it set to auto-launch on my phone. If you attempt to close Auto with the auto-launch set up, it simply re-launches.
> see if they're expecting you/changed plans
This is impossible with Android Auto, you can't read or send texts (without voice, which doesn't work properly in my car). It auto-responds telling people to phone me if it is time-sensitive (like changed plans).
If they don't call back I'll arrive late, big whoop, at least I'm not arriving in a body bag. If they have a problem with me being late, they changed plans last-minute. None of which has happened to me.
> do it the moment it has utility?
It never has utility.
Re: Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers
#50[deleted]