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Lets say your answer is to enforce the anti cell phone law and educate people on how that works. Good idea but if it worked wouldn't that mean it would have worked if you would have enforced the driving while distracted law in the first place? And if you can educate people on one law why not the origional law?
One of the very groups you mentioned that was pushing for a study on cell phones and accidents AAA posted a study they did on driving distractions a few years ago. Cell phones were not at the top of the AAA list. But have any of the other distractions been addressed? Was the number one distraction even addressed? If the answer is no then why not?
It can't happen both ways. If education and enforcement work then they work just as well for the origional law as they will for the amended law. If the origional doesn't work then repeal it. If it works enforce it. It is just that simple. If it isn't enforced it is a waste and it will be ignored, as is seen every day on our highways. A waste of ink.
There is a process that tends to work in business and government, KISS. Amended laws adnausium doesn't.
Textecution kills texting functions while driving
No because you can be one of the minority of people who can hold the phone to your ear and still manage to keep the car in a straight line, even though your mind is at the other end of conversation.
IMO, this is why a separate set of laws are needed. We already know laws don't work, that doesn't mean all civil and criminal laws should be scrapped.
I do agree laws that clearly serve no legimate purpose should be struck from the books, e.g. it is illegal to shoot a buffalo in Times Square.
The comment or the excuse on why they didn't enforce one law and why they would enforce another doesn't even require a response. We know the answer.
"A statewide poll by Pemco Insurance in June, just before the new law took effect, showed 60 percent of Washington drivers wanted to make a handheld cellphone ban a primary offense.
But Douglass knows state lawmakers took seven years to move the current law from initial proposal to passage. And it took 16 years for the state's seat-belt law, implemented as a secondary offense in 1986, to become a primary offense in 2002."
After 6 months, drivers ignoring cellphone ban (Seattle Times)
Look at their numbers: Statewide, troopers handed out 746 tickets for illegal driving-and-talking through November. They've socked it to teenagers and septuagenarians; but mostly men and drivers in their 20s and 30s have paid the price. Troopers also issued 1,345 written and verbal warnings.
Seattle police have written another 247 tickets, according to the Seattle Municipal Court.
And the number of driving-and-phoning citations is tiny compared to the 127,185 speeding tickets state troopers wrote between July and December.
The numbers say it all about where enforcement is being targeted, and it ISN'T cell phone users.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
No, your cell is breaking up.
Oh sorry, interference from my microwave.....
Wheel good: The microwave that lets you enjoy hot meals on the move (Daily Mail)
A national safety group is advocating a total ban on cellphone use while driving, saying the practice is clearly dangerous and leads to fatalities.
States should ban drivers from using handheld and hands-free cell phones, and businesses should prohibit employees from using cell phones while driving on the job, the congressionally chartered National Safety Council says, taking those positions for the first time.
The group's president and chief executive, Janet Froetscher, likened talking on cellphones to drunken driving, saying cellphone use increases the risk of a crash fourfold.
"When our friends have been drinking, we take the car keys away. It's time to take the cell phone away," Ms. Froetscher said in interview.
No state currently bans all cell phone use while driving. Six states -- California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Utah and Washington -- and the District of Columbia ban the use of handheld cellphones behind the wheel, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Also, 17 states and the district restrict or ban cellphone use by novice drivers.
.....What makes cellphone use distinct from other risky driving behaviors, Ms. Froetscher said, is the magnitude -- there are 270 million cellphone users in the U.S. and 80% of them talk on the phone while driving.
The line I homed in on, of course, was this one, being said out loud for the first time by advocates of the ban: The Governors Highway Safety Association agreed that cellphone use while driving is dangerous, but said it would be difficult to enforce a ban. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which is funded by auto insurers, said banning all cellphone use "makes sense based on the research," but agreed that enforcement will be difficult.
They believe it will take years, but yes, those Bluetooths you all rushed out to buy will ALSO be illegal before the end of the next decade...
....and eating your fast food dinner while trying to control the kids and change the CD in the dash will still all be perfectly legal...
Common sense truly is dead.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123170801180171839.html
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
The "hard to enforce" position of some is only excuse making. With education campaigns about the ban on tv, radio, internet, billboards, print media, etc., the public will be well informed about the ban and will find out that driving and talking on cell phone is the same as drunk driving. Driving public already has been well informed over the years about drunk driving through the media. They will similarly find out about the dangers and irresonsibility of cell phone driving.
Perhaps car insurance companies can start to get involved by putting in clauses in policies that diminish some coverage if a cell phone using driver causes a crash.
Would also hope that cell phone service providers jump in with their support. Just like beer company commercials stressing responsible use of their product in tv commercials, cell providers could have commercials to stress driver use of cell phones while safely and legally "parked."
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Distracted drivers of all types need to start showing some responsibility...that's the genuine issue...but few seem to have the fortitude to face this.
Not to mention congress is in one hell of a position to hold anyone accountable for anything... :sick:
I have used cell phone while driving in the distant past and know that it is like drunk driving and not equivalent to eating a cookie.
And then there are drinks, ICE, kids and other passengers, makeup/grooming, laptops...
I agree Congressional hearings are in order. Maybe the new administration will take this up.
I question if our congress will attack the cell phone industry in this economy? Maybe if they do pass a law they can also offer a several billion dollar bail out for loss caused by government intervention like they are doing for the auto industry.
But I would still like to see the people get a vote in the issue. Once on the ballot they have to show the cost to enforce and the cost in lost taxes because of what the industry pays. It would also be nice if they showed how many accidents have happened or how many will be reduced by such a law.
As someone mentioned earlier, these solutions seem aimed mostly at teenaged drivers.
In a letter to the editor in a recent Chicago Tribune, the writer suggeted that legislation is needed to require vehicle mfrs to build in radio (cell phone frequency) jamming in ignition module when engine is running.
Except for an emergency, there is no need for ordinary citizens to talk on a cell phone while vehicle is moving. People just need to plan better to manage their lives and communication needs. Somehow, drivers/passengers managed to live and communicate without cell phones from 1900 to the early 1980's.
Great. In ten years we will have drivers making calls via their ear piece while also watching TV AND driving. And, we thought that texting was dangerous.
This builds on independent research such as the government-sponsored Virginia Tech 100-car naturalistic driving study that followed 109 drivers for one year each, including 42,300 hours of driving over two million miles. The study concluded that manually dialing a handheld device while driving was almost 2.8 times riskier than just driving. However, the on-the-road study showed that talking/listening in a phone conversation while driving was no riskier than just driving.
The government has compiled other important research at http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/staticfiles/DOT/NHTSA/NRD/Multimedia/PDFs/Crash%20Avoid- ance/2008/DOT-HS-810-704.pdf.
Wes Sherwood
Ford Communications
wsherwoo@ford.com
Thank goodness the NHTSA has stepped in at this point. And thanks for giving us some input from the automotive industry. I feel a lot better about that study that one published by some medical review that had no access to and automotive data. The hands free thing had some merit and many of us had thought that would be the end of it. But some are anti technology to the extream and even this study isn't going to help them. But I for one will keep it book marked.
of serious crash involvement among drivers using a phone at the time of the collision.
Glad the NHTSA acknowledges the exponentially growing body of evidence that cell phone usage has a relationship to collisions.
I'm going to bookmark this for the future.
of serious crash involvement among drivers using a phone at the time of the collision.
Glad the NHTSA acknowledges the exponentially growing body of evidence that cell phone usage has a relationship to collisions.
How many of those 500 drivers had previously been involved in a collision?
How many of those 500 drivers were intoxicated?
How many of those 500 drivers were under 20 or over 60?
Wireless Quick Facts
So in going from 28.1 million wireless subscribers in 1995 to 195 million in 2005 to 263 million in 2008 there hasn't been quite the upheaval and catastrophe that was predicted.
Most research based studies include a peripheral detection task of some sort which is to capture the response time issue. In most cases, it doesn't appear significantly different than the "just drive" task. In those cases where there is a statistically significant different, some aren't actually significant in the real world.
The truth of the matter is that anyone using a cell phone while driving is more dangerous--period. All other things being equal, the more extraneous tasks a driver is performing necessarily detract from his primary duty of driving. It doesn't matter what one is doing other than driving--if it doesn't directly support the activity of driving, then it detracts from the driver's ability to drive well-period. Any survey that says anything different constitutes more lies from parties that have some interest in the outcome of the study.
Sometimes good old anecdotal evidence is the best kind. As a Jets/Mets season ticket holder, I drive from SE VA to NY more than twice monthly--about 900 miiles round trip. Virtually every time I see someone on the interstates doing something stupid, they are doing something other than just driving. While most of the dopes have cellphones to their ears, some are eating, reading, smacking kids around, applying make-up or the worst of all: text messaging. If cops worried as much about distracted drivers as they did speeders, we'd have fewer accidents. No, I don't have statistics to back it up--just plain old common sense.
Good point. And they had a driving while distracted law that covered all of the things you mentioned. But as far as personal observations? You see what interests you or bothers you the most. When you buy a new car that you don't realize other have what do you see more of than you ever did before/ You see that model car. When I used to drive up the 210 to the 5 to go north of LA I would see cars in the center lane going slower than the flow of traffic. I happen to be big on lane control and have always believed slower traffic should move right. It seemed to me 8 out of 10 of the middle lane drivers were of Asian decent, or Asian looking. Do I then assume Asians are worse drivers than others? Maybe there were just more asian looking drivers in that area.
The NHTSA study will give ammunition to hands free proponents to keep the technology in the car. Doesn't mean it will stop the efforts to get rid of it but this is a political battle where the economy and safety will both be concerned. People will have to weigh the risk and eventually vote their conviction.
Common sense in conjunction with innumerable studies shows the true impact of cell phone usage, even if every cell phone driver doesn't end up in the morgue, there is a definite lack of attention to driving, which is very noticeable.
Which is all stuff they may or may not be doing if not on the phone.
Common sense in conjunction with innumerable studies shows the true impact of cell phone usage, even if every cell phone driver doesn't end up in the morgue, there is a definite lack of attention to driving, which is very noticeable.
Crash deaths are down
Yup, its just terrible out there...crash rates going down year after year, fatality rates going down year after year, terrible. Apparently, the impact of cell phone use is dropping off the table, especially after a 250% increase in subscriptions over the last few years.
That was half my point way back when I started this discussion: we don't need one more law to cover something already covered by law - distracted and erratic driving. Even vinny there had four or five other examples in his anecdotal evidence of things he had seen being done by drivers who were driving poorly.
How about enforcing the laws already on the books? But we know that will never happen, just as it is not happening now with the new cell phone laws in California. Instead, the police and highway patrol focus on two things - speeders and red light runners (with a healthy smattering of California Stoppers for good measure) - for all the tickets they write. Why? because they are MARVELOUS revenue generators, and there are so many violators just in those two categories that 100% of their time could be taken stopping people for those two offenses, if they so chose.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
BTW. It is my educated guess, and the conclusion of other scientific minds that latte drinkers do not pose the same road as cell phone users. Case closed.
Because police patrols are not needed for enforcement. Just ask Arizona residents who have to pass through cameras every 10 feet.
BTW. It is my educated guess, and the conclusion of other scientific minds that latte drinkers do not pose the same road as cell phone users. Case closed.
So you and the guy in Utah agree, I guess 2 is enough to make a quorum. We can all go home now. :P RIGHT
So little things like a 10-fold increase in cell phone usage and highway fatalities at their lowest rates in recorded history should probably be part of that.
I was on the fence when the no cell phone laws were passed but this one I agree with. How the heck can you look down in your lap, use both thumbs to hit the buttons, and think about your text all while driving.
I know there are some people (young) who claim they can do all those things and still drive safely but I don't see how.
How about other states? Any of you folks have laws against texting? In typical NY overkill, one county in my area is sending out extra patrols this weekend to cite texters.
2019 Kia Soul+, 2015 Mustang GT, 2013 Ford F-150, 2000 Chrysler Sebring convertible
I was on the fence when the no cell phone laws were passed but this one I agree with. How the heck can you look down in your lap, use both thumbs to hit the buttons, and think about your text all while driving.
I am against hand held texting for exactly the reasons you state, however there are new technologies that will allow speech based text messaging that I have no issues about at all.
One of the big bogies for driving safety is "eyes off road time." If you aren't looking at the road, you cant respond to events (like driving off the road, stopped traffic, etc). Even the amount of time the task takes by itself doesn't seem to be a big factor in lane keeping.
I thought so.
Study: Drivers Using Cell Phones Experience 'Inattention Blindness. The study is from '03 and used simulators, so I'm not sure how it stacks up against the more recent NHTSA study.
Many years ago, when I used cell phone while driving, I too experienced the effects mentioned in the study. I can remember times when after I completed say a ten minute intense conversation, I couldn't recall much of anything of where I had been in last 10 minutes. An intense conversation is much greater of a distraction over a long distance vs a brief 30 second call to someone saying you will be late for an appointment. Of course best practice is to not use phone at all while driving. Manage your life more efficiently.
Other issue brought up in study is need for driver to devote "Full" attention to the driving task. Drivers using cell phones selfishly think that their inattention while driving only slightly impairs their reaction time and that is OK because they want the cell convenience and are fully willing to impair their driving. Kind of like spoiled kids.
Can you prove this statement? Where is the connection between driver inattention and fatalities and crashes? Does it really matter that drivers who pay full attention have to make avoidance maneuvers, with increasing frequency, to those who yak and text as long as nobody was hurt of any sheetmetal dented? In other words, no harm, no foul?
Wait which side am I on? :sick
Ford VIRTTEX:
Autoblog on VIRTTEX
VIRTTEX
Toyota's
Toyota's Simulator on Autoblog
And from your Vittrex link:
"The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that driver distraction and inattention contribute up to 30 percent of crashes each year."