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Comments
Like, say, when companies require their employees to conduct business on the phone while driving instead of giving their full attention to driving? :shades:
IMO, any company, large or small, that does not have this written policy is irresponsible. This policy, along with business ethics, vouchers, travel and other matters ought to be reviewed at least yearly with each employee and be legalized by employee signing statement that he/she has read, understands and will comply with all policy content and procedures.
Hope it never happens, but if someone crashes into me or one of my family, I will for sure hire an attorney and have him/her investigate for cell phone use by the offending driver. What we need is more of awareness by general "safe" driving public that are involved in crashes not of their responsibility to investigate for possibility of driver cell phone, text messaging or other serious pre-meditated distraction.
It would not be punishment. Driver still allowed to have a cell phone on person, but can't talk while driving. What kind of punishment is that? Can't driver stop the car in a "safe" and "legal" place and then use the cell phone? Just what is so hard about that? I always take my cell phone when driving some place and do make calls in my car. But, I am always parked and in a legal and safe spot. I am not a rocket scientist, just an ordinary joe.
Present day working conditions, benefits, 8-hour day, coffee breaks, 5-day work week, etc that are enjoyed by management, professional and hourly workers of today were hard won by unions going back 100+ years. Would agree though that union attitude and power had gotten unreasonable in last few decades.
That is where we disagree, I believe there is enough evidence out there to support the laws that are are on the books and now being formed.
I have noticed that over the years, that I see less and less examples of people driving wrecklessly
Maybe in your neighboorhood. Today I had two more evasive manuevers. The more memorable one was from an Escalade, as I zoomed past the Pest-calade I didn't see the driver on the phone, although the vehicle was driving erratically. As I got in front the Pest-calade I saw the cell phone pop-up..A-ha. Not every cell phone using driver will cause an accident, just like not every alchohol consuming driver will cause an accident, but to ignore the obvious is stupid.
This is where I strongly dissagree with you? Why? Not because I don't like you, or not because I don't also want safe roads, where I dissagree is in your process.
Zero defects is impossible for nearly every process....it is a mis-guided notion. As a goal, it makes no sense...there MUST be a method and the method can not be simply "putting out fires" which is all cell phone laws attempt to do.
If you truly care about making a difference, then you should also truly be comitted to an accurate process that can evoke change and impact results, rather then be speculative.
If there are laws, we need to be able to measure change, then make adjustments and be prepared to bail when things don't work. However, making laws that don't work just further the notion that laws have issues.
Quality methods can apply to a lot more then just making widgets.
I agree, but that doesn't mean we should treat cell phone usage, which is not a distraction -- it is a voluntary reduction of attention toward driving, as a non-issue. That doesn't mean zero defects, it means addressed a pervasive issue on the roads.
If you truly care about making a difference, then you should also truly be comitted to an accurate process that can evoke change and impact results, rather then be speculative
Here is where we disagree again. It is not up to "me", it is up to "you" to put down the cell phone to keep our roads safe. In the event you can't keep the roads safe because of cell phone usage, lawyers are waiting to step in.
However, making laws that don't work just further the notion that laws have issues.
I agree, however...1) I'm not up for eliminating every law because the law doesn't work. Would result in societal chaos. 2) For the public good, having laws on the books that don't work 100% is necessary.
If any driver in my state gets in an accident and it is determined they caused the accident because they were distracted they are financially responsible. Doesn't matte what the distraction was. If they have insurance their insurance company is responsible to make good on that financial obligation. After June first hand held cell phones will be illegal while driving. It is a $25.00 fine, less than a parking ticket, and is a secondary offence, no points on your license. If they get in an accident because they were using a hand held cell phone they would be financially responsible and their insurance will pay. What is the difference? Before the law it would be an accident caused by distraction. After the law it is an accident caused by distraction. In either case the driver has to be assigned fault before they can be cited.
If however the driver has a hands free phone after June first will it be ruled not a distraction so any accident could be ruled a "no fault"? If it is still ruled a distraction then the finding would be the same as if you had a hand held and once again the financial responsibility would be the same. A waste of ink.
Two years ago when I was driving out to Fort Hood to see my son we could set the cruise control and not touch the gas or brake for hours on end. And on some of those roads they would have a better chance of catching a Yeti driving than they would of catching someone on a hand held cell phone.
Directionally, I see where you are comming from and unions certainly had a major purpose in US hisory, but the problem is they never changed with changing times. BTW, who the heck works a 40 hour works week? If I worked 40 hours I would feel like I were on vacation - lol. I do get to I take a coffee break whenever I need one, and I don't need to raise my hand when I need to go potty.- lol
Not to stray too far off topic but if you lived in western Europe, odds are you'd work less than a 40-hour week and have more vacation and better benefits :P Why many Americans take pride in working long hours is a mystery to most of the world. Certainly there are plenty of countries where people work 16 hours a day (or more) but that's out of necessity.
-Frank
40 hour week/8 hour day evolved over time as a reasonable formula to balance work life with personal life. Without unions, some companies, business owners and managers will exploit their workers to extract work beyond 40 hours. A union will make sure that adequate compensation is awarded for work over 40 hours. Non-unionized workers, whether blue collar or so called "professional" and sales people, are at the mercy of their company's managers/owners.
Companies expecting/demanding cell phone use while driving is an exploitation of a worker in addition to putting that employee and innocent other persons on the road at added risk. A responsible company would set up work load and give adequate time for employee so that any business cell calls can be made in office, home office or in a "parked" vehicle.
I agree. people will never obey laws, but I don't advocate removing them just because they don't work. At the top of the list, seems are laws against murder,
If any driver in my state gets in an accident and it is determined they caused the accident because they were distracted they are financially responsible.
But the picture changes somewhat if the person is DUI. It should also change if the person is negligent due to will abrogation of driving responsibility due to cell phone usage.
Unemployment is very high in most other countries compared to the US and many americans choose to have flexible hours. Many of us work more because there is more work to do and not enough people to do it.
And let us not forgot one thing....this is the land of opportunity. In the US, extra effort is generally reward. Unions promote mediocrity plain and simple and place no vlaue on innovation or continuous improvement.
I hired a guy 3 years ago. We was making $25k per year working for a family business. He had a 40 hr work week working on cars and working 8 to 5 every day. I hired him as a service technician at $37k and last year he earned $55k. I expect him to make $75k this year as a junior sales person....that is a three fold increase. And he shoudl be into the 6 figures shortly thereafter.
He no longer works a 40 hr work week and has no standard hours either. Cells phones, in part, allow for an arrangement like this. He never misses any activities at his kids school, and gets go the dr in the middle of day if he wants. As long as he is making numbers, he can be on his boat every friday afternoon at 2pm....I don't care. But, this all means being able to be in touch with him by his employer and by his customers.
Cell phones allow for a trade-off and give flexibility and help people "level the playing field". Ever read the the book "The World is Flat"? You will know what I am talking about.
Frankly I don't care who makes money, but if someone rams my car and injures me because they are on the phone and not driving, they should pay.
Maybe it should. Drivers using a cell phone premeditate, or make a conscious decision to do so. Drivers who might correct a kid in back seat, or swat at a bee, do not premeditate these acts. It is reflexive. A judge, or an attorney, would make that distinction. Penalties for swatting a bee should not be as high as for using a cell phone.
It's about percentages, the number of people on cell phones who drive idiotically far exceeds the number of people disciplining their children in the back sear who drive idiotically. While due to local CA that might not be true, here it is. If in CA they might have to attached additional laws, so be it.
1 - Drinking cofee....$50.00
2 - Drinking foo-foo cofee from Starbuck.....$150 (cuz they can pay more)
3 - Eating....$25.00 (because people need to eat)
4 - Smoking....$1,000 (because you obviously want to die anyway)
5 - Using the phone .....loss of your home and your children get taken away.
6 - Speaking.....$75.00
7 - Looking at someone.....$100.00
8 - Being the person who got looked at......$100.00
9 - If you are a hot chick with the top down on a vert and made someone look at you....$300.00
10 - Dealing with your kids... $50.00
11 - Unrulely kids....$50.00 removed from their college funds
12 - Drinking....$25.00, $75.00 if it is an energy drink.
Shall I continue? I think there are some people on this board that actually are already penning letters to their congressman.
That is an outright false statement because you can not prove that!
Slippery slope, ok, let's go there and use your logic. YOU premediate every time you go into the car. How about you hit me and I sue you for more because you were just driving around the block for fun and no purpose. But, if you weer going for groceries, I sue you for less.
Or, let's say you take a call....your house is buring down and you decide to answer the phone for the first time ever in your whole life. Then, a drunk hits you and you nearly loose your life. You sue the drunk, he sues you because you were on the phone (even if it is legal).
You can't see inside someone head and know their intentions.
2 - Drinking foo-foo cofee from Starbuck.....$150 (cuz they can pay more)
3 - Eating....$25.00 (because people need to eat)
4 - Smoking....$1,000 (because you obviously want to die anyway)
5 - Using the phone .....loss of your home and your children get taken away.
6 - Speaking.....$75.00
7 - Looking at someone.....$100.00
8 - Being the person who got looked at......$100.00
9 - If you are a hot chick with the top down on a vert and made someone look at you....$300.00
10 - Dealing with your kids... $50.00
11 - Unrulely kids....$50.00 removed from their college funds
12 - Drinking....$25.00, $75.00 if it is an energy drink.
I think something like this is being purposed in AZ, with the exception of the fees are AFTER you are charged with a moving violation. That is, you have to screw something else up first with respect to driving, then you get an additional fine if you were performing a secondary task at the time.
Basically, if the cop sees you speeding while you are talking on the phone, you get dinked for speeding + $75 for "driving distracted." I personally think this is the best solution, the argument on this board seems to be about whether or not you can trust your fellow motorists to decide when is safe or not safe to use a secondary device in the vehicle. I think this is a good start.
Oh please! I think your statement is "proof" that you're completely lacking in common sense :P On any given day, I can count at least a couple dozen drivers talking on their cell phones for every mile driven on a busy street. However, I can't recall the last time I saw someone disciplining a child in the backseat.
Anecdotal? Certainly but the evidence is so overwhelming that you can't possibly argue that we need some government funded study to confirm it.
-Frank
It's the easiest empirical observation to prove, drive down the freeway or local streets and take note.
My goodness, I premediate everytime I go to the bathroom. But when I go to the bathroom, I have zero possibility killing someone on the road.
We are referring to voluntary overt driver actions (read: premediated), which could lead to crashes and fatalities. Not inadvertent, like swatting a bee.
Personal observations are meaningless....that is not proof.
OK, let's try this one...."Every black person I see...." See how this works? You can't take your OWN personal observations and bias and call this fact, even if it is true in your own little world.
I rarely see anyone holding a phone to their head, but I do see women doing their nails, people reading books, looking at maps, and drinking. That's MY observation, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.
You guys are killing me....you can't make laws based on YOUR personal observations. Do you really want a world where law makers make decisions this way?
We are referring to voluntary overt driver actions (read: premediated), which could lead to crashes and fatalities. Not inadvertent, like swatting a bee.
BTW, I know someone who has been in the bathroom with you and they claimed that it could DEFINATELY kill someone.
Indeed the current way is much better.
The cell phone industry lobbyists write some laws and regs, pass some campaign contributions around, and presto, we have sausage. :shades:
Maybe you'd like a scientific study instead? Choose your weapons:
Drivers on Cell Phones Kill Thousands, Snarl Traffic
Cell Phone Use and Traffic Accidents, Revisited
You know, lobbyist are not all bad. I love it how everyone likes to demonize lobbyist. I wonder if there are any anti-cell phone lobbyist in DC. I susepect the insurance industry would have a big play here.
The biggest killer of all? Speed. I see LOTS of non-phone users speeding.
Look, I am all for safer highways. You can ban hand-held phones, but you will never stop hands-free devices.
Wow, hopefully that means you live in a state that has a hand-held ban. That or you spend most of your time among the Amish :P
-Frank
That's unfortunately true. When there's an accident, they can measure the driver's BAC or determine their speed by the length of the skid marks (or simply cite them for going too fast for the conditions).
Cell phone usage on the other hand, is much harder to determine since very few drivers are stupid enough to admit using a cell phone at the time of the accident. Even in fatal accidents where the police pull the cell phone records, it's still hard to prove that the driver was on the phone at the exact moment of impact.
-Frank
So the law against hand held cell phones is based on assumption. The assumption that because it is a distraction it causes accidents?
How about this for an assumption? There are a lot of bad drivers on the highway. More people are now using cell phones in their cars. The chances of seeing a bad driver on a cell phone are greater because more of them have cell phones.
Or this, NTHSA does a study and determines that per miles driven the FAR has decreased in 2006 to the lowest rate since 1994. However cell phones useage has increased considerably since 1994. If you assume that cell phones are a "major cause" of accidents how do you justify the figures presented by NHTSA? If a major cause of accidents is identified there should be some sign of it in the real world. It has been a theory that cell phone use is equal to drunk driving. However who in this forum would postulate that if drunk driving increased to the level of cell phones the FAR would go down? Not only that when we have had increased enforcement and education of drunk driving laws the FAR for drunk driving has gone down. A figure posted earlier showing the decrease in alcohol related deaths. NHTSA list Drunk driving as a major cause along with speeding if cell phones are the same type of major cause there should be some measurement we can see. Not simply feel.
The other troubling thing about the cell phone theory is in the places where cell phones have been banned the FAR doesn't seem to drop, or even the reported accidents, to reflect the removal of this "major cause". Even farmers realize that if you remove the foxes that are eating your chickens you lose less chickens.
And if you think you can text and drive safely at the same time you are a dumbass.
cell phones are a distraction, and if you think you can hold a phone up to your ear have a conversation and drive as safe and attentive when not doing so, you are mistaken. I used to fear legislation that would make it illegal, but, now I welcome it.
Because you choose to ignore the research and studies, does not mean there isn't any correlation between usage and crashes.
If you think empirical observations don't constitute any proof you are wrong...dead wrong, I might add. A large part of science is empirical observsations. To quote Mr. Spock: "If I drop an object on a planet with a positive gravity, I don't have to look to see if it hits the ground".
My friend, you are even doubting if this planet has a positive gravity.
A. It's not a distraction. it's a premediated overt action that diverts the driver from effectively doing his/her job.
B. Nobody can prove cell phones cause accidents. At a granular level, you can't even prove drinking causes accidents. One can show a statistical correlation between BAC and car crashes. You can show cell phone users drive like drunks.
As long as people need to be told what to do, I'm all for telling them through laws. But I like lilengineerboys sentiment. Make undisciplined driver behavior a secondary offensive and hit 'em twice.
Laws don't make it so, but there are laws I want on the books. It's necessary for society and this is one of them.
Does Cell Phone Conversation Impair Driving Performance?
Excerpt:
In sum, we found that conversing on either a hand-held or hands-free cell phone led to significant decrements in simulated driving performance. We suggest that the cellular phone use disrupts performance by diverting attention to an engaging cognitive context other than the one immediately associated with driving.
And this statement really refutes the effectiveness of the various hand-held bans:
Our data suggest that legislative initiatives that restrict hand-held devices but permit hands-free devices are not likely to reduce interference from the phone conversation, because the interference is, in this case, due to central attentional processes.
-Frank
Our data suggest that legislative initiatives that restrict hand-held devices but permit hands-free devices are not likely to reduce interference from the phone conversation, because the interference is, in this case, due to central attentional processes. "
And there is the crux of the debate. The worthlessness of the law itself. The people proposing the law do not address the reason for the proposed law in the first place. But it does improve sales of hands free units and promotes longer cell phone conversations. That study alone makes the point that there is nothing to be gained by the current laws banning hand held cell phones.
We agree, it doesn't address the issue in the same way capital punishment does not stop murder. I've been agreeing with you all along the laws do not go far enough. However, it is a start and maybe should be the basis for future legislation and/or technology changes.
Maybe to speak on a cell phone, one has to have a collison avoidance installed. Lane wandering, tailgating, speeding, etc. could be brought to the drivers attention if he/she was using a cell phone, through a very loud buzzer. Buzzer would be inactivated if cell phone was unused.
No it is nothing like capital punishment or laws against murder. Unless you say murder is ok if done remotely but not is done by hand.
Read somewhere that some cars may already have black boxes similar to FDR's in airplanes. Might be more cars coming with black boxes.
If all vehicles had these, would be possible for police to impound the black box and look for specifics in last few minutes before a crash - speed, steering, brakes, etc., and cell phone use. Seems technology available to put in a receiver in black box that monitors cell wavelength transmissions within say 10 feet of the box. Data captured would include cell phone identity.
If this box were put on vehicles, along with total cell phone ban by driver, then there would be a way to determine if cell phone were being used. This would work handily if only driver in car. If one or more passengers, and cell phone were in use at time of crash, then passengers and driver (to extent alive) would be interrogated to determine the user.
It can be done. Hands-free (for driver) could be tied into vehicle's computer system so that it would only work with car stopped and in park. Anyone altering the system would be subject to prosecution same as altering an odometer reading or disabling a car's smog emissions system.
The issue the cell phone laws are addressing are bad driving behaviors and reduced fatalities/and or crashed.
A thinking man doesn't need a crystal ball to know that a weaving, tailgating 18 wheeler with the driver absorbed into a heavy conversation is the receipe for disaster. And does it really matter if a Toyota Prius is substituted for an 18 wheeler...not really.
It is not laws that do not stop the behavior it is a law that does not address the very thing it is intended to effect. Or might even increase the behavior it was written to address. That is why it should never have been written.
This is even more interesting.
"If this box were put on vehicles, along with total cell phone ban by driver, then there would be a way to determine if cell phone were being used. This would work handily if only driver in car. If one or more passengers, and cell phone were in use at time of crash, then passengers and driver (to extent alive) would be interrogated to determine the user."
If we could just do away with the pesky fifth amendment we could correct a lot of things wrong with our society. Because NHTSA has indicated that up to 30 percent of all accidents are speed related maybe this suggested black box could send a signal first to the police department and then to your insurance company so you can get a ticket and increased insurance rates every time you exceed the posted speed limit? Then if you could just get the kids to call the local government office every time they saw their parents change lanes without signaling life would be good.
I don't believe we will see a total ban on cell phones in my lifetime so most of this black box legislation is moot to me. And with all the cars on the road without black boxes I can't imagine anyone funding retrofitting 34,000,000 cars in the near future either. And that is just two years worth of new car sales in the US. But it sure would make a entry level sub compact expensive.
Yep, things like ABS sensors retain info for a few seconds and can be useful in reconstructing accidents.
steve_, "Black Box Data Recording" #1, 26 Sep 2007 9:35 am
Boaz, we keep agreeing. I am in agreement, and using the murder and DUI laws as examples, it does not stop the intended behavior. The cell phone laws are a preemptive strike to try to head off disaster on our roads. The 18 wheeler example clear illustrates what would happen if truck drivers did what that pesk-calade driver did. I'm all for preemptive strikes even though there is no direct statistical correlation between cell phone usage and crashes and fatalities.
So again, the discussion boils down to you believe the legistlation is a waste and I believe it is valuable. But we both agree: 1. cell phone usage is bad, 2. using cell phones it is nearly impossible to drive defensively.
To reiterate I'm not in favor of striking laws that don't stop the intended behavior, just because there isn't one out there that works 100%.
I don't believe cell phone technology is bad I only believe we need to learn how to use it. I don't think we need to spend our time trying to develop technology to prohibit cell phone use in a car but we could use the same energy to improve the cars technology to make cell phones more seamless in our daily driving.
If by that you mean, when it is safer to do than not, I agree. But the problem is common sense is sorely lacking and thus the government needs to step in before somethink akin to Armaggedon happens due to stupidity. You can't legislate stupidity and common sense but you can make people pay as needed.