Attention: Law Enforcement Officials

I saw someonewith a death wish close to my house the other day. Young lad riding his push bike along the very busy road riding with no hands, composing a text!

Could have been a Darwin in action there as he narrowly missed the local bus pulling in.

Gareth

mrb7 said:

To make the behavior go away we have to change the societal norms that coerce our aggregate behaviors. We need to make texting while driving unpopular. Obviously laws against it and big fines is a good start, but in the end they'll be inadequate to complete the job. We have to change the underlying fundamental gestalt about texting while driving. Conversations like this help. Bumper Stickers like "Hang up and drive" help. Public service awareness campaigns help.

It takes all of these and more. But I'm still holding out for the Google car.

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I would agree with this. If I were to tell me friends that I drink and drive, they would look at me like I was crazy. If I were to tell them that I text and drive, I would not get the same reaction. We need to make texting and driving unpopular. I think that the commercials with disabled people who received their disability as a result of an accident caused by texting and driving were a good start.

I am an insurance agent and I write automobile insurance. I have seen a marked increase in accidents involving the age group from 16 to 25. The majority group involved in these accidents are female drivers. I became an agent in 1988 and at that time up until just recently, the youthful male driver was the largest group involved in or cause of an accident. If you are or were a parent who had a young male driver in the family, you can attest to the cost of adding them to your insurance policy. Now the trend has changed. That being said, the increase in youthful female driver accidents in my opinion is due to texting while driving.

mrb7 said:

This is a misconception. Making something illegal doesn't make it go away. It merely gives society a framework to prosecute those who violate the social norm that the law is based on.

Murder is illegal, and prisons are stuffed with murderers. Rape is illegal, and the same story is there. But people are in prison for murder because it is illegal, and that provides a framework for prosecution. People are in prison for rape because it is illegal, and that provides a framework for prosecution.

To make the behavior go away we have to change the societal norms that coerce our aggregate behaviors. We need to make texting while driving unpopular. Obviously laws against it and big fines is a good start, but in the end they'll be inadequate to complete the job. We have to change the underlying fundamental gestalt about texting while driving. Conversations like this help. Bumper Stickers like "Hang up and drive" help. Public service awareness campaigns help.

It takes all of these and more. But I'm still holding out for the Google car.

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agreed. Making it illegal wont stop it. You have to shame people. Make them think it's shameful in the eyes of their peers.

Mythbusters did a show about it. If it was just as dangerous to drive while on the phone as it is to drive drunk. IIRC their "scientific study" concluded that it is in fact just as dangerous...if not more dangerous.

The cellphone tests were failed by a much bigger margin, though Adam's observation was that you can put down a cellphone -- you can't get instantly undrunk.

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Toothpick said:

agreed. Making it illegal wont stop it. You have to shame people. Make them think it's shameful in the eyes of their peers.

Mythbusters did a show about it. If it was just as dangerous to drive while on the phone as it is to drive drunk. IIRC their "scientific study" concluded that it is in fact just as dangerous...if not more dangerous.

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I remember reading about a experiment in Car and Driver a handful of years ago as well. If I remember correctly, the C&D writers performed worse while texting than they did while drunk.

I will add some variety to this thread... I am an LE officer and supervisor for a State wildlife agency and we are responsible for boating laws. We covered a boat-to boat accident a few years ago in which two associated boats were running together and the driver of the following boat was checking his phone and ran up and over the other boat causing massive property damage and minor injuries.

I totally agree with the danger of texting and driving, but unfortunately it is not a violation in Arizona.

Difficult to enforce and everyone lies after they get stopped.

I did law enforcement for a little over 2 years. I was a pilot though, not regular patrol. However I had to go to the same academy to be a sworn law enforcement officer. I was told catching someone texting and driving (which was a fairly new phenomenon then.) is like catching someone not wearing their seatbelt. You have to be able to look inside the vehicle so usually a texting and driving or seatbelt ticket is written when someone is stopped for another offense.

I think texting and driving is on par with DUI as far as potential harm to society. In one instance an individual's reaction time, judgement and coordination are impaired in the other they are just not paying attention to begin with. Back when cars could only do maybe 35mph and most people lived in a rural area DUI wasn't a big deal, if you got drunk and run into a ditch you slept it off and pulled your car out with a tractor in the morning. As cars got faster and more people started living in cities DUI became more of a problem. We met that problem by lower BAC limit (not low enough in my opinion, it should be 0%) training officers to spot people who are drunk, administer field sobriety tests, implied consent laws, and hefty penalties for DUI (not hefty enough.) There are still DUIs but now we have the tools to prosecute them which is a deterrent to others.

Back when cellphones did not have the ability to text we had very few problems with them. But now that texting has eclipsed calling as the preferred method of communicating we will have to take similar actions with texting and driving. I would suggest a mandatory 1 year in jail for DUI or texting and driving as well as a mandatory 5 years license suspension and a $10,000 fine. Vehicles should also be equipped with a device that will detect if a cellphone is in use and either not allow the vehicle to be taken out of gear or if in gear kill the ignition. It should be illegal to tamper with any such device and all drivers should have to sign a implied consent form to get or renew their license that states if it is tampered with it will be detected when the vehicle is serviced and must be reported. The owner will then immediately have their license automatically suspended for not less than 1 year.

I had an experience with a captain when I was flying with a regional airline. I went to the lavatory, when I come back he was playing on his cellphone. I told him Sir, FAA regulations and company policy forbid the use of cellphones on the flight deck. He told me to shut up and mind my own damn business. So when we landed I made a formal complaint to the company, the company suspended him immediately, checked the cockpit voice recorder and upon confirmation fired him. The union got him his job back, so I went to the FAA, he is no longer a certified pilot. It ended up costing me my job because I rubbed the union the wrong way, but now I am a captain with a better company that doesn't have it's nose up the union's hind end, (and I don't have to deal with passengers. )

A recent study indicates that bans don't work.
Why?
Because people who obey the law about not using the device while driving aren't likely to participate in that risky behavior to begin with.
And people who would text or talk on the phone and drive? They are risk takers who will just "sneak" it anyway, despite the law.

http://news.sciencemag.org/2012/08/why-cell-phone-bans-dont-work

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123084040

Aqua Velva man said:

...Back when cellphones did not have the ability to text we had very few problems with them. But now that texting has eclipsed calling as the preferred method of communicating we will have to take similar actions with texting and driving. I would suggest a mandatory 1 year in jail for DUI or texting and driving as well as a mandatory 5 years license suspension and a $10,000 fine. Vehicles should also be equipped with a device that will detect if a cellphone is in use and either not allow the vehicle to be taken out of gear or if in gear kill the ignition. It should be illegal to tamper with any such device and all drivers should have to sign a implied consent form to get or renew their license that states if it is tampered with it will be detected when the vehicle is serviced and must be reported. The owner will then immediately have their license automatically suspended for not less than 1 year....

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I definitely agree that texting and driving is a huge problem and I never do it myself. I see one problem with your suggestion: how does the vehicle know the active cell phone is the driver's phone and not a passenger's phone? In vehicles where you can pair the phone to the car via Bluetooth, your suggestion would be possible but if the driver never paired their phone with the car, or if the car doesn't have Bluetooth, this would be extremely difficult.

Aqua Velva man said:

I think texting and driving is on par with DUI as far as potential harm to society. In one instance an individual's reaction time, judgement and coordination are impaired in the other they are just not paying attention to begin with. Back when cars could only do maybe 35mph and most people lived in a rural area DUI wasn't a big deal, if you got drunk and run into a ditch you slept it off and pulled your car out with a tractor in the morning. As cars got faster and more people started living in cities DUI became more of a problem. We met that problem by lower BAC limit (not low enough in my opinion, it should be 0%) training officers to spot people who are drunk, administer field sobriety tests, implied consent laws, and hefty penalties for DUI (not hefty enough.) There are still DUIs but now we have the tools to prosecute them which is a deterrent to others.

Back when cellphones did not have the ability to text we had very few problems with them. But now that texting has eclipsed calling as the preferred method of communicating we will have to take similar actions with texting and driving. I would suggest a mandatory 1 year in jail for DUI or texting and driving as well as a mandatory 5 years license suspension and a $10,000 fine. Vehicles should also be equipped with a device that will detect if a cellphone is in use and either not allow the vehicle to be taken out of gear or if in gear kill the ignition. It should be illegal to tamper with any such device and all drivers should have to sign a implied consent form to get or renew their license that states if it is tampered with it will be detected when the vehicle is serviced and must be reported. The owner will then immediately have their license automatically suspended for not less than 1 year.

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I agree that BAC limit should be 0%, your suggestions for penalties/license suspension/jail time as well as some kind of equipment to prevent cell use while driving but I think that such a device should be put into vehicles of those caught driving and texting (at their own expense) in the same way that I believe that the blood alcohol setup should be a permanent addition to vehicles being driven by those caught with a DUI. But I know here in BC, the actual practice of prosecuting on a DUI is setup in favor of the drunk driver and I fear that the same can be said about texting and driving prosecution.

In the summer of 2009 a drunk driver drove his truck through my main bedroom and into my dining/living room (my husband and I were in the living room watching TV at the time) and even though they caught the driver on scene, had multiple witnesses from multiple angles, the fact that the driver told the EMT he was drunk, it was a very hard case for the crown to get a conviction on. If we hadn't had the RCMP officer we did or the prosecuter we had (she normally handles crimes against children) it could have very well went in favor of the driver.

Aqua Velva man said:

I had a similar experience with a captain when I was flying with a regional airline. I went to the lavatory, when I come back he was playing on his cellphone. I told him Sir, FAA regulations and company policy forbid the use of cellphones on the flight deck. He told me to shut up and mind my own damn business. So when we landed I made a formal complaint to the company, the company suspended him immediately, checked the cockpit voice recorder and upon confirmation fired him. The union got him his job back, so I went to the FAA, he is no longer a certified pilot. It ended up costing me my job because I rubbed the union the wrong way, but now I am a captain with a better company that doesn't have it's nose up the union's hind end, (and I don't have to deal with passengers. )

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A bigger issue is that there aren't enough people like you who are willing to stand up and do something when they see it in action (kudos to you though). My own job involves a lot of travel in the company van and we had a driver who would text while driving (as well as break 90% of the company rules regarding the driver) and even though I work with a good number of people (over 40 people worked on our crew during the time this driver was employed), I was the only one who made a private complaint to the manager and when the manager refused to take appropriate action I went to the head office of the company. The fact is that most of the crew didn't want to "rock the boat".

DougK said:

I definitely agree that texting and driving is a huge problem and I never do it myself. I see one problem with your suggestion: how does the vehicle know the active cell phone is the driver's phone and not a passenger's phone? In vehicles where you can pair the phone to the car via Bluetooth, your suggestion would be possible but if the driver never paired their phone with the car, or if the car doesn't have Bluetooth, this would be extremely difficult.

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Any phone in the vehicle, passenger, driver doesn't matter pull over if you want to talk.

Aqua Velva man said:

Any phone in the vehicle, passenger, driver doesn't matter pull over if you want to talk.

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Are you actually suggesting that we punish and inconvenience the entire population to deal with a few miscreants?
Better yet, let's just eliminate the privilege of driving altogether. If people can't drive, there'd be no mishaps.
While we're at it, let's put video cameras and microphones in every house. Think of the crimes we could prevent.
If you don't have anything to hide, you've got nothing to worry about, right?

I do many miles on foot, most days, and most days I see dolts on the phones or texting. Nobody in my area is so important that they need to be on the phone while they drive. Running lights, almost was clipped today by a woman who ran the red light, but just by half then gave me a finger after I called her a name,

Nobody is that important, sorry. But every third car has one. Punish the entire population that thinks they can drive about without any care for the rest of us? No, that would be like MADD, but then they were unpopular also when

garyg said:

No, that would be like MADD...

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In my salad days, I was a card carrying member of DAMM(Drunks Against Mad Mothers).








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luvmysuper said:

Are you actually suggesting that we punish and inconvenience the entire population to deal with a few miscreants?

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It's like that saying by Spok, the needs of the few, outweigh the needs of the many.

garyg said:

that would be like MADD, but then they were unpopular also when

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I'm just the opposite I'm afraid. I admired MADD when they first started. Can't stand them now.

MADD did a wonderful job of raising awareness of drunk driving issues. Their campaigns are credited with changing public attitudes about drunk driving, thus making more stringent punishment of drunk driving offenders possible through legislation.

But then something happened. They turned into a prohibitionist organization, a modern day Carrie Nation, who was unfortunately called a "Temperance" leader, when temperance was the last thing she had in mind.

MADD is so far gone in pushing to demonize any use of alcohol that their ads and posters have become bizarre parodies of the Carrie Nations of today.
It's this shift away from fighting against Drunk Driving and towards eliminating the use of alcohol in any form or any quantity that caused their founder Candice Lightner to leave the group altogether.

Rockminer said:

It's like that saying by Spok, the needs of the few, outweigh the needs of the many.

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The Needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few was actually a great sentiment, particularly for a Hollywood Blockbuster, but in practice it must be tempered with common sense.
In one aspect, we pride ourselves on looking out for the minority, the underdog, and the under privileged.
On the other hand, denying life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of the majority to avoid offending a few isn't justified either.