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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'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…
That's because as a cyclist on the road, you are inconveniencing the operators of highly-lethal, 4,000 lb machines. If you haven't crossed your i's, and dotted your t's, you need to be removed from the road, for their convenience.
I was hit on the highway by a phone user who almost killed me and my parents. Speed differential was 55mph. That is, we were completely stopped on the highway and she drove for something like a quarter mile and hit us, leaving me with nerve damage and severe lower back pain. Luckily rehab went stellar and although I have some residual burning/stinging nerve damage, I can walk, run, play sports, go to the gym - you wo…
Did you have to go through a discovery process or?
What happened to the distracted driver?
This is extremely bad. In Portugal I don't cross the road if the person is using a phone, unless they fully stop of course. Yet this is a problem so big that even people walking cross roads with their faces glued to their phones. It happened to me more than once almost getting into an accident, both while walking or driving because the other party is distracted by a smartphone instead of paying attention to driving o…
> 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…
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 into erratic evasive maneuvers to avoid them. Ditto for drunk pedestrians. We should not be giving them a pass just because drunk/distracted drivers are more dangerous.
Texting while driving and drunk driving should be treated as the SAME offense.
It's possible to go from composition to focused in the span of time it takes to move the hand (and eyes) from the phone back to driving mode. It isn't possible to become 'not drunk' that quickly. I rank drunk driving as worse than dealing with screaming kids as worse than writing something at a red-light as worse than just reading a preview on the screen for a measured quantity of time when in a situation that is saf…
> The researchers specifically found that cell phone users are:
> - 9 percent slower to deploy the brakes
> - 19 percent slower to return to normal speed after braking
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.
Yeah, in practice it seems the only thing that will really work is license suspension.
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?
Why not check your phone while at a stop sign? Why not check your phone while on a straightaway with no cars in sight? Why not check your phone to make sure you're on the right route? I get what you're saying but these are the thousands of little thoughts in the back of your mind that encourage you to use your phone in the car. "Just leave the phone in your pocket" has to defend itself against every one of these litt…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of cars today have body panels that have to be replaced instead of repaired. Add in any sort of special paint color and a single panel can run $1k to make like new. Side swipe something that runs across a few panels and it can quickly add up.
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…
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 you in the wrong anyway. If you didn't know they were oncoming you couldn't have known they were "speeding." It doesn't make basic logical sense that you could have both known they were speeding AND pulled out into them, because to know that you would have had eyes on their car.
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?
But for some bizarre reason, most drivers find it unthinkable to simply pull over for 2 minutes to handle their business.
If I need to fiddle with a map or respond to a text, I pull over. It's really super ridiculously easy to do and takes almost no time at all.
Last week I was changing lane in a very slow traffic traffic jam, I turn the left sign, the driver completely stops. I assume this as he giving me space to enter, I slowly enter. He then starts driving forward slowly, he starts approaching, I'm puzzled. I realize he is driving with his phone on his face. Completely unaware that I'm in his lane. He hits. We talk, he starts saying I jumped in front of him, I just tell him he did not see me because he was on the phone. He agrees and he apologizes. We exchange information and go back home. It was only some scratches in our cars.
Later I do the insurance claim (we both had the same insurance company), and I discover that in his report he omits about the phone. I now I have to prove that he was one the phone and I have not jumped with my car in front of him. I could not prove that. I do have a front dashcam but only a very good and specifically placed dashcam would capture such proof. The insurance found me guilty.
I don't know what was the lesson here, maybe always get a police report. Contacting the police at the moment had not crossed my head because it was was not a big deal, the driver sounded reasonable (apart from the fact he was using the phone while driving), and there was something going on that was causing the traffic jam and required the police in the first place.