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Comments
What I am saying is if you compare the over all rates pre-heavy cell phone use - Say 1995 to now there should be an overall jump - especially if cell phone users = drunk drivers or are blacked out or what ever several of these studies have shown.
That said the overall rate has not spiked - I would as how could that be - unless people are not the ticking time bombs when on the phone you would lead us to believe?
If there was an increase even with out the specific reasons for the accident recorded we could infer that it was due to cell phone use.
Oh and before you claim that safety enhancements are the balance here - that would not be enough to offset the spike that should have followed with the explosion of cell phone usage.
One last question - would you be any less upset if your spouse/child was killed by someone eating? putting on make up? shaving? Petting their dog? relates to the question you posed earlier...
Plus there seems to be this overwhelming desire by some to mind everybody else's business! No satisfaction till they can tell everybody else what to do.
I did read about a study though - it said posting frequently on the internet makes people dis-like you...I did not give it any merit. :shades:
This argument will no doubt wage-on for ever on this forum. Nothing will ever get accomplished. While I beleive cell phones are often times dangerous and a nuisance, I remain firm that they should not be singled-out for use in cars.
Comparing cell phones to driving drunk is rediculous. I have probably spent 50,000 minutes on my cell phone while driving in the past 15 years....no accidents and I have never been pulled-over for drifting lanes etc... In fact, I received a safe driver's award a few years for the "Million Miler Club" which is given to drivers who have no moving violations or accidents for 1 million miles. My employer allows the use of cell phones in company cars with hands-free devices. Had I been drunk during this same amount of time, I am sure the results would be much different.
In fact, my phone has helped me through blizzards, allowed me to call for safety when it was needed, and kept me in touch with my wife and daughter when my little girl was in the hospital for 6 months. I can honestly tell you that regardless of any cell phone law, I would violate it to do the same if/when faced with the same situations. You have no idea why someone may feel the need to make a call.
Drunk driving serves no purpose....there is ZERO benefit. It is an action which is by design imparing to driving. Having a conversation in a car, is not. If is an activity which has benefit.
Anyone on this board who speeds, talks, eats, or changes the radio while driving has NO business criticizing anyone for using a phone in a car..not ever. If you do, you are a hippocrit.
Did y'all hear? The AMA actually published a bulletin warning of the dangers of talking on a cell phone while walking down the street. Apparently people are walking in front of busses, into light poles, and all kinds of other stuff, because they are so engrossed in their conversations.
This happens even to people who are talking on their Bluetooths, an activity that is still legal behind the wheel of a car in California. (just couldn't resist throwing in that last part, sorry!
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
So therefore I submit any casual conclusion is at best anectodal, because you don't know if X% of the car crashes not due to dui are in fact due to cell phone use.
Today I got behind a guy doing a good imitation of a drunk...he wasn't on his phone, he was playing with the radio. Perfectly legal and all.
I actually didn't see any phone yappers in my short drive today, except in parking lots.
That's the old if you can't do one thing you can't do another because they are all equally as bad argument. WRONG! 1. Common sense says that using the steering wheels controls to change your radio station is not quite the same as talking on the phone and 2) studies confirm a cell phone talker has the driving ability of a drunk.
I suppose you wouldn't have the pilot talking to the co-pilot either during take off or landing.
pick a year before there were cell phones, 1990? 1985? Compare accident rates to a year post cell phone use. If Phones are way worse than anything else you can infer that rates will increase - and according to what you see cell phone users are the worst of the worst.
Problem is rates don't spike up. Clearly you watch and backseat drive for every car that you can see. That is fine - if it make you happy so be it.
The simple fact is that accident rates pre cell phone use don't differ much from post cell phone use - therefore any law targeting cell phones is "feel good" and won't reduce accidents, deaths or property damage...
So if cell phones users are drunks, and well over 100 million Americans have phones how come no huge increase in deaths??
I mean really think about what your are claiming here - hundreds of millions of car trips each day where the person behind the wheel is effectively drunk? There should be multi-car piles 5 times per day in every major city with that many impaired drivers on the road....but wait...there is not? Could it be that this cell phone drive = drunk drive study does not fly?
Or maybe drunk drivers are better drivers than we give them credit for? :P
Those studies are worth their weight in manure. The conditions on the roads right now disprove them flat out, end of story. I wonder what a study would find for people eating a burger while driving...oh, the control-issue authoritarians won't fund that one with their predetermined results.
I did hear in London they were padding the light poles...
I'm stating some obvious facts:
1. You can't derive any statistics on deaths or accidents because statistics aren't effectively kept.
2. It is against the law in some locations to drive holding your phone and I agree with that law.
3. Cell phone users, whether they use hands-free or not have a tendency not to maintain safe control of the car due to studies. It's non-cell phone usering drivers like me that keep them safe because I can avoid them on lane transgressions and the like.
4. You completely avoided my analogy about given a virtual sucker punch. That is what it is like to drive next a cell phone user. They don't even recognize the horn.
5. If drunk driving was so bad we should also be seeing multi-car pile-ups in every major city? Right? One car could cause a catastrophy and we know DUIs have been going up? But wait there is not? Could it be that DUI is really innocuous and the laws are overkill? Maybe you'd be fine driving next to a drunk because they are really better drivers than we give them credit for.
It can be cut both ways. I defintetly support the laws and the singling out of cell phone users as appropriate.
Report on radio also said that Illinois is working on new legislation regarding driving and cell phones. Let's hope that it is a total ban and Illinois can lead the nation.
"Cell phone use was listed as the primary or secondary cause of 1,357 crashes in Illinois last year, resulting in eight fatalities and 351 injuries, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation.
Although the tally may seem alarmingly high, it is a lowball figure, authorities say."
Accidents caused by cell phone use in Illinois are underreported, authorities say
Did they dare research other distractions? I wonder how many casualties are caused simply from the panic that ensues after a dropped cig.
Are you hinting that smoking should be banned in moving vehicles? Not a bad idea. Those driving that need a drag can pull off the road somewhere in a safe and legal spot and light up.
Cigarettes, cigars, cigarillos already banned in all restaurants in Illinois. Ok to smoke in own home, but only if family members will allow. Smokers can smoke on the decks of their houses or in back yard.
I don't smoke, I don't eat or drink when I drive, I don't yap on the phone while I drive, etc.
I have seen nothing showing the other distracted are a minority compared to phone yappers, especially when viewed collectively.
If there is such a statistic I would be interested in it. I'm not really interested in the collective view of distracted drivers, all distractions are not equally as bad as all crashes are not the same.
The numbers on the roads simply do not justify cherry-picking one distraction. Simple. End of story.
First off, the study determined that cell phone user reactions were impaired to the equivalent of having a .08 BAC. While that's the legal threshold to be cited for DUI, it's hardly going to cause most drivers to weave all over the road or result in regular multi-car pileups. In fact millions of drivers still hit the roads everyday with BACs at or slightly over the legal limit and only a tiny percentage cause accidents or get pulled over. So why is DUI illegal in all 50 states?
-Frank
Again you are using anectodal guesses to support your conclusion.It doesn't really matter how many drivers have cell phones, it's how many use them. I don't believe anyone can determine how many use them simultaneously, but the number was related to the drivers willing to use them.
Cherry picking is good in this instance. End of story.
i think many accidents are avoided by drivers who are not talking on their phones while driving, rather than cell phone talkers/drivers being safe.
my nephew, who is on our family plan, ran into right into the back another car in the left lane on the highway. the other car was not stopping.
since he had just left our house, i checked my phone records and added a few minutes to that. sure enough there was a call.
maybe as you get older and more experienced at driving/talking on the phone, it becomes less of a risk to others.
Micromanagement is always an ineffective tool in the long run, and such mindless cherry picking of infractions is nothing but micromanagement of traffic laws. It will be nothing but wasted time and money, with negligible impact, as the other busybodies will still be doing anything but driving while behind the wheel. End of story.
You are right, micromanagement is bad. Maybe we should stop micromanaging murders and the like and duis and the like. Let's have one law, one jail sentence for these crimes. Why cherry pick this one thing to stop micromanaging when there is an entire world of micromanaging at our fingertips?
Let's stop micromanaging points on the license. Anyone getting stopped by the police for a traffic violation automatically gets, let's say 4 points on the license and an insurance bump of 50%. We can make this real easy according to your logic and get rid of a ton of useless codes and laws.
OK...how about if we put cell phone controlls on the steering wheel? What will you say about that? - lol
Yep, but it ain't me.
Punishment based on details of a crime is not micromanagement, but to claim otherwise is a nice deflection.
If you want to see a useless law, wait to see the effects of going after phone yappers (only those who use their hands) while irresponsibly ignoring all other distractions. There will be virtually no impact, as there has been none so far.
So prove your case with some real statistical analysis and then submit it to the NHTSA.
Punishment based on details of a crime is not micromanagement, but to claim otherwise is a nice deflection.
Not deflection just taking your logic one step further. After all why stop at cell phone users.
If you want to see a useless law, wait to see the effects of going after phone yappers (only those who use their hands) while irresponsibly ignoring all other distractions. There will be virtually no impact, as there has been none so far.
Don't ignore any moving violations, but get special preferential red-carpet treatment to those who drive (or text) irresponsibily while holding the phone to their ears. Unfortunately the moving violator who is on the hands-free won't merit any special treatment from the police.
These laws should be shown to be at least as effective as the DUI laws, or not, but it makes sense for them to be on the books.
Nothing needs to be proven past what is already seen on the roads. Mobile devices are owned by a far greater percentage of the population than some recently claimed, supposedly using them while driving is akin to driving drunk, yet no explosion of casualties. No time needs to be wasted on pseudointellectual "analysis".
"Not deflection just taking your logic one step further"
You must just not get it.
"These laws should be shown to be at least as effective as the DUI laws"
I'll bet your net worth they won't be :P - there will be no impact at all, distracted driving will continue to be as problematic as it is today, and millions of taxpayer dollars will be pissed away on legal time and information campaigns. That will be the net result.
In this case you are right, knowledge is only a burden in understanding this issue. Although I guess we can also conveniently discount the article in the chicago paper stating cell phone accidents are underreported.
You must just not get it.
There's a whole lotta that going on around here. But it seems to me we are getting personal.
I'll bet your net worth they won't be :P - there will be no impact at all,
You can't afford me. So are you also saying since DUIs are on the upswing those laws aren't working either. Or as you have suggested in the past laws that don't work should be removed from the books. Should we go there and start with DUI? Now, I do admit that is deflection but that is the intent of some of your previous posts, while trying to discredit this fine legistlation.
I agree that from an enforcement and deterrence perspective, the current cell phone laws are essentially useless. However, I think it would be great if they did spend some dollars on information campaigns educating the public regarding the dangers of talking and driving. It would be even better if the made the cell phone industry foot the bill
-Frank
If you don't like seeing something as "personal", don't be condescending. Those who live in glass houses...you know the rest. :P
How do you know what I can and cannot afford? Don't be so sure of yourself, you know what happens when you assume. Many DUI laws are indeed ineffectual, if anything they are too weak especially when it comes to multiple offenders. But they are irrelevant to phone laws and are a deflection that does not deserve attention here. So-called "fine legislation" creates quantifiable positive results. This gross waste of resources will not. You can bank on it. This legislation simply fails to grasp the big picture.
This legislation simply fails to grasp the big picture.
I think they got the big picture, somehow you don't see it.
Legislators fail to get the picture in 98% of their actions, no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to traffic laws. Mark my words, the impact of this will be nil...the fines given might not even pay for the costs involved.
You can feel free to get the last word, I've had my fill.
By your logic the effect on all traffic laws are nil. As long as people break the law en-masse the cost to patrol will be more than fines themselves. Speeding is perhaps the best example and one behavior has been implicated in the majority of crashes and fatalities. It is not one's given right to speed, and one should not be surprised if they are stopped by the police. Cell phone usage is a root cause of bad driver behavior and bad driver behavior leads to a number of side issues.
I would rather the government kept their mitts out of my car. Instead of worrying whether all passengers should be buckled up, they should be worried about other items. Let me ride a motorcyle without a helmet, why is their business? If I cause my own fatality because of stupid behavior not much anybody can do, but if I cause your fatality because of stupid and irresponsible behavior that is another issue entirely.
Bad driver behavior existed before cellphones were science fiction, and such behavior will exist at virtually identical levels no matter what thoughtless legislation is passed.
Not wearing helmets or seatbelts...a fine distraction. Feel free to not buckle up or wear a brain bucket...
Oops, I lied about the last word...but I talk about cars now and then...
Please answer this simple question. Can we use pre-1985 accident rates (prior to wide spread cell phone use) as a base line? Just to see the overall direction and trending of accidents in the last 23 years?
Gotta agree with you there. The local police chief in Seattle admited that increasing the length of the yellow light by one second would reduce the number of red light runners. However there is no revenue in that so red light cameras were installed instead. For municipalities it is not about safety it is about $$$.
It's a good thing these revenue streams. Don't want to contribute don't speed, don't commit traffic violations, don't get stopped. I would rather the police ticket erratic behavior due to cell phone usage than pull over motorists for seat belt violations. Yeppers, single out cell phones.
Bad driver behavior and drunk driving existed from day 1. So what? What does that have to do with the price of grain in the midwest?
Or the number of crashes by the number of licensed drivers, or some such statistic. Without knowing the number of cell phones involved in a crash there is no useful information to be gained. It's like looking at the FARS database for the first year, 1967?, and attempting to figure out the number of crashes from dui. (I don't think they had them in the db until later, maybe I'm wrong)
Well the simple answer is "No". That would only work if cell phones were the ONLY variable in the equation and obviously they're not.
Just to see the overall direction and trending of accidents in the last 23 years?
Do you realize that in many jurisdictions, now-a-days police will not respond to non-injury accidents? That by itself totally ruins any meaningful comparison of accident data from 23 years ago.
-Frank
Single out cell phones will ignoring and tacitly approving of other distractions is akin to targeting a symptom while the disease runs rampant.
Bad driver behavior is usually created via silly distractions, which phones are just one member of a large family. Targeting phones will have virtually no impact on bad driving.
I have noticed on the east side many lights have no gap between red and green at intersections - when one direction turns red, the other turns green, not a second of delay. There has to be something less than beneficial in that.
Isn't that the way they're supposed to work? :confuse: Or should the lights be programed with a delay on the assumption that multiple drivers will run thru a red light? (many talking on their cell phones no doubt) :P
-Frank
You mean while trying to decide whether to treat a heart attack or hangnail in the emergency room? The heart attack is cell phones, the hangnail is soccer moms turning around to discipline children in the back seat. (Poor soccer moms, they are getting a bad rep. I really hope none of them takes their eyes off the road longer than it takes to check the mirrors!)