Smartphones Are Killing Americans, But Nobody's Counting (bloomberg.com) 415
An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg report: Over the past two years, after decades of declining deaths on the road, U.S. traffic fatalities surged by 14.4 percent. In 2016 alone, more than 100 people died every day in or near vehicles in America, the first time the country has passed that grim toll in a decade. Regulators, meanwhile, still have no good idea why crash-related deaths are spiking: People are driving longer distances but not tremendously so; total miles were up just 2.2 percent last year. Collectively, we seemed to be speeding and drinking a little more, but not much more than usual. Together, experts say these upticks don't explain the surge in road deaths. There are however three big clues, and they don't rest along the highway. One, as you may have guessed, is the substantial increase in smartphone use by U.S. drivers as they drive. From 2014 to 2016, the share of Americans who owned an iPhone, Android phone, or something comparable rose from 75 percent to 81 percent. The second is the changing way in which Americans use their phones while they drive. These days, we're pretty much done talking. Texting, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are the order of the day -- all activities that require far more attention than simply holding a gadget to your ear or responding to a disembodied voice. By 2015, almost 70 percent of Americans were using their phones to share photos and follow news events via social media. In just two additional years, that figure has jumped to 80 percent.
But we just passed a law to fix this.... (Score:5, Insightful)
We just made using a phone while driving illegal in Texas... Didn't passing a law fix this?
Wha? You mean people don't obey laws?
Re: But we just passed a law to fix this.... (Score:2)
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Oh yes...http://www.jrlawfirm.com/blog/texas-texting-and-driving-laws/
Of course this is just texting, but they can now pull you over if they suspect texting... We also got open carry in Texas on the same day, which means I can walk down the street with a real loaded pistol in my holster that goes with my cowboy boots....
The trained eye will see my crosswise swipe at gun control laws in my original post, albeit not specifically discussed, until now..
Re: But we just passed a law to fix this.... (Score:4, Insightful)
So what?
TX also passed laws making carrying of most knives and swords, dirks, daggers and Bowie legal again too.
Basically, you're getting rights back that you used to have many years ago and now, you have them back again.
However, you are forced to do so yourself.
I would dare say, a potential robber of the local Kwik-E-Mart might think twice about pulling his weapon if he notices that 10-20 of the patrons there are openly carrying weapons.
Re: But we just passed a law to fix this.... (Score:5, Funny)
An article about people who drive like assholes - and think it's their god-given right - and you pop up.
Whodathunkit?
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any competent robber will wait until there are no customers. If there are 10+ customers in a supermarket, they can just bombard the the moron with cans of beans.
Re: But we just passed a law to fix this.... (Score:3)
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Prove it..
Personally, if you and your friends want to open carry down at the corner store and the store management doesn't object to it, that's fine by me. I don't open carry myself because it's tactically stupid if you can conceal carry, but I'm not scared of those who do. I target practice with my weapon for a reason and I'm not opposed to lawfully defending myself if it's necessary...
Some say that an armed society is a more polite one.. I'm inclined to agree...
Re: But we just passed a law to fix this.... (Score:5, Insightful)
.. And yet America is almost universally considered one of the rudest countries in the world.
Certainly some of that is just culture (everybody has a somewhat differing opinion of what is "polite." That is, what we consider rude might be perfectly fine if you were speaking to another American.)
But even with that consideration, Americans tend to be more standoffish than most of the rest of the world, just in terms of general speaking patterns.
The gun debate is a prime example. Americans want to protect their person and their property, while the rest of us shake our head because we realize that its really a tragedy of the commons in disguise. Every individual is choosing to arm themselves for their own (vaguely) good reasons, but at the end of the day you just end up with a society that, as a whole, just has a hell of a lot of killing tools, most of which will never actually be used for their theoretical defensive purposes and exist in the world purely as a risk factor.
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Some say that an armed society is a more polite one.. I'm inclined to agree...
Yet Canadians are considered much more polite then Americans.
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Some say that an armed society is a more polite one.. I'm inclined to agree...
And you'd both be wrong.
Try spending some time in countries with lots of guns, like France (30 firearms per capita), then try spending time in countries that have few guns, like the Netherlands (4 firearms per capita). The Dutch are amongst the most polite and friendly people in the world.
Re: But we just passed a law to fix this.... (Score:3)
The NRA has a proud history of fighting to support African Americans rights to armed self-defense [slashdot.org], but you knew that, right?
You probably also consider it a coincidence that better than 90% of all mass-shootings over the past several decades all occurred in so-called âoegun-free zonesâ, where attackers could be certain their victims were unarmed/defenseless.
Do you know what a white Texan calls an armed black Texan? Neighbor.
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No, not at a Kwik-E-Mart you wouldn't. You'd do _that_ at a Circle K.
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You mean it goes off? That would only happen if they leave one under the hammer, and only an idiot would do that.
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Plenty of idiots participating in open carry. Just saying.
Question (Score:2)
Are the exonerated because their actions are justified or are they exonerated because they are being investigated by fellow officers and prosecutors that a sympathetic to their situation?
Correlation or Cause (Score:2)
That's always the conundrum in such metrics. For example, it is actually well known that more powerful motorcycles are safer than underpowered ones. WHY? Because they ensure the ability to move quickly when needed in order to avoid accidents.
Could the increase in accidents be due to the auto industries efforts to achieve better MPG in EPA testing? I've noticed that many newer vehicles, particularly those I've rented, have a trait where hitting the gas does not always move the vehicle. Often, you have to p
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"That's always the conundrum in such metrics. For example, it is actually well known that more powerful motorcycles are safer than underpowered ones. WHY? Because they ensure the ability to move quickly when needed in order to avoid accidents."
Assuming you've survived the first hour of driving your Hayabusa, as an example.
Oh, and you should not buy it form a dealer located on a busy street, or you'll have to survive the first 5 minutes.
After that, acceleration may save your life. May. After you've failed to
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That's always the conundrum in such metrics. For example, it is actually well known that more powerful motorcycles are safer than underpowered ones. WHY? Because they ensure the ability to move quickly when needed in order to avoid accidents.
It is also well known that unsubstantiated claims are worth jack shit.
Cite or GTFO.
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Re:But we just passed a law to fix this.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here in our state, there are often road signs that say "Fines double in work zones". Perhaps the same should be applied to all traffic incidents when a cell phone is being used.
Re:But we just passed a law to fix this.... (Score:5, Interesting)
That works only if it is enforceable, and actually enforced by the police, courts and juries.
I'm guessing that the DA would choose not to try cases that involved such stiff fines for texting while driving... Mainly because the average person would be loathed to convict a soccer mom with three young kids to 5 years on confinement for sending a "Get Milk on your way home" text, and you can bet that if this went to trial it would be in front of a jury. A couple of those cases and that law is effectively worthless, because the defense becomes "If you didn't convict x, y and z for this with better evidence, how can you convict my client?"
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Well, if you wanted to know why road deaths are going up in the US, there's your answer. The first step to fixing a problem is acknowledging that it exists.
Re: But we just passed a law to fix this.... (Score:3)
Except that road deaths are not going up per capita. Cars are vastly more safe now than at any time in history. The number of cars on the road is going up causing more total deaths.
I am not sure if the number of accidents is going up or down, but crashes are more survivable now.
The fact that phones are undoubtedly increasing accident rates is the issue here. Without those deaths we could be even safer.
Re:But we just passed a law to fix this.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would they have a problem?
They'd have no problem if she was drinking and driving....and I believe studies have shown that phone usage impairs your ability to drive on the same levels as drunk driving.
Same type danger...so, why not convict on one and not the other?
Drinking and driving is not illegal because drinking itself is an "evil" activity....it is illegal because it impairs your ability to drive to the point of putting others in danger.
Texting while driving does the same thing.
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Why would they have a problem?
They'd have no problem if she was drinking and driving....and I believe studies have shown that phone usage impairs your ability to drive on the same levels as drunk driving.
Same type danger...so, why not convict on one and not the other?
Drinking and driving is not illegal because drinking itself is an "evil" activity....it is illegal because it impairs your ability to drive to the point of putting others in danger.
Texting while driving does the same thing.
There are no 5-year prison sentences for drinking and driving, not anywhere in the US. The highest is 180 days in county for a FORTH offense.
But causing an accident and injuries or death can bring other charges, but those apply regardless of the concomitant circumstances, such as alcohol/drug impairment, reckless driving, etc. So you don't need another law for punishing people for using their cell phones. You hold someone accountable when they cause a problem for someone else.
That's the true definition of a
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Mainly because the average person would be loathed to convict a soccer mom with three young kids to 5 years on confinement for sending a "Get Milk on your way home" text, and you can bet that if this went to trial it would be in front of a jury.
The average person is a dangerous jackass who enables other dangerous jackasses then. They should treat that soccer mom at least as harshly as they would a teen texting "Gon get drunk AF tonight!"
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Seize their license/plates for two weeks, next time for a month, then a year.
Re:But we just passed a law to fix this.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Tons of laws on the books. Cell phone laws are not enforced and violations are not villified.
Get caught drunk and your life will be ruined by the legal system and the attached stigma. Get caught texting, which arguably poses a similar risk to others, and you have a small chance of getting a small ticket.
Until cell phone users (and all others distracted drivers) get treated legally and socially commensurate with the danger they pose to others nothing will change.
Re:But we just passed a law to fix this.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But we just passed a law to fix this.... (Score:5, Insightful)
This. Distracted driving laws make driving significantly less safe. They're exactly backwards, and those of us with common sense have been saying this since the first distracted driving laws were first proposed. But states keep passing them anyway, and they keep proving us right by producing statistically significant increases [nih.gov] in accident rates despite the appearance of a reduction in use (Trempel et al). And it isn't just the anti-handheld talking laws. Anti-texting laws had the same effect [iihs.org].
You want a cell phone law that will reduce accidents? Make it legal to use a cell phone, but only if you hold it in a way that you can use your peripheral vision to see the road. Make it illegal to use it in your lap and legal to hold it up in front of your face for brief interactions. Encourage app developers to add low-distraction modes for their mobile apps so that you can interact with the basic controls at a glance.
Of course, the problem is compounded by car companies that keep switching to non-tactile touchscreen interfaces on their high-end cars, thus guaranteeing that drivers get used to taking their eyes off the road for extended periods of time. And make it illegal for new cars to be sold with touchscreens on the front of the dashboard while you're at it. Require the screens to pop up from the top of the dashboard instead.
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I also really appreciated your point on fucking touch-screen radios. My van has one and I can't stand it. Most of the controls can be dealt with via redundant steering-wheel buttons, but some people are going to spend their time fumbling around a flat screen.
I have no idea who came up with that idea, but they should be run over by somebody trying to change the EQ settings while driving.
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Open carry of swords was made legal as well in Texas as of last month. I see people with far more respect for their handguns and machete than they do with their smartphone, when it comes to being a hazard to others.
Only thing you really can do is what the Russians have learned -- have a dash cam on your vehicle and have one on your person. There is one that is being crowdfunded which looks interesting, as it can use a cell link to stream footage for safekeeping in realtime. That way, if there is an issue
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I live in the UK, any mobile phone use (including talking) while driving has been outright banned here for a number of years now. Never the less you occasionally see someone on the phone, and even worse using the screen - people using screens is always apparent from the outside by fact that their driving is clearly distracted, they often wander all over the road, fail to notice other drivers, traffic lights, pedestrians, given way signs etc etc.
I've had people almost collide with me head on from wandering
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Clear its time for some "Common Sense Smart Phone Control Legislation"
Exsiting prohibitions on texting while driving etc are not enough. There should be background checks. Limitations on high capacity storage, being able to send or consume data at rates higher than 3G should require a federal license!
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Ah.. Somebody got it!
Yea, we need to create a whole new category of Assault phones, defined as those which have any four or more of the following options:
1. Auto-Reply texting while in motion.
2. Glare Reducing coatings
3. Blue Tooth adapters.
4. High rate data plans while in motion.
5. GPS navigation
6. Storage about 5 Gigabytes and/or an SD card slot
7. If they are placed in some kind of mount that is viewable by the driver.
If they do, they are treated like Title 2 devices..
8. Pistol Grips or extra ca
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Same old dumb argument. Are you saying that nobody obeys any laws? Are you saying that laws are useless? Are you saying that we don't measure things before and after laws are made to determine their effectiveness?
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No, no and no.
I'm painting parallels with Gun laws... Sorry you missed it.
I blame car makers (Score:4, Interesting)
If every car had by default some good way to mount a cell phone there would not be nearly so much distraction, since you could see the road and not have eyes diverted to the side for notifications or what have you.
But I am pretty sure car makers do not want your eyes to have any competition from the crappy entertainment consoles they build in, so they provide no good way to view phones which 99% of people would prefer to use for directions and the like.
That's another factor the article seems to not consider at all - how much does relying on GPS directions which can be confusing and mean many more sudden movements from divers play into increased traffic incidents? Again a problem reduced quite a lot by having a phone holder in line with your view of the road.
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Only one solution (Score:5, Interesting)
If every car had by default some good way to mount a cell phone there would not be nearly so much distraction, since you could see the road and not have eyes diverted to the side for notifications or what have you.
There have been numerous studies showing that mounting the phone or even having hands free operation still results in unacceptable levels of distracted driving. And having a mount doesn't force people to use it.
I've said it before and I'll say it again even though it's not popular. The ONLY way to eliminate the problem is for the smartphones to utilize their tracking abilities and to cease most functioning aside from a few items like 911 calls and GPS when it shows you to be in a car traveling down a road. Since it is impossible to determine who the driver is then it would have to apply to everyone. Yes this will limit passengers use too and that's simply going to have to be a trade off to be made for safety. Exceptions can be made for properly designated first responders. There is no other technology nor any law that I'm aware of that will otherwise adequately mitigate the problem. If you have a better idea I'm all ears but as draconian as it sounds I think it's the only way to force people to be safer.
Re:Only one solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, /. really went from "I own this device, I should control what code runs on it" to "the State can (benevolently) require phone manufacturers to lock users out against their will".
Also, this poster has never had a 45 minute bus commute or taken a 5 hour inter-city bus.
[ Or thought about Airplane Mode, which is required by law to disable GPS. ]
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Don't forget we'd between make sure laptops and tablets have the same restrictions!
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I'm 38 - I grew up before cell phones, let alone smart phones, were basically a necessity. I still do not understand why people cannot drive 10 minutes without having to be connected.
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While I disagree with sjbe, this comment makes no sense. An automatic, non-overridable airplane mode is exactly what sjbe is asking for.
You don't get it? It meant that how the phone knows if the person is just a passenger in a long and boring trip, e.g. bus or train.
Also, airplane mode does NOT stop people from playing with their phone! Playing with your phone does not require cellular connection. Some (idiot) people like to play with their phone while driving regardless what they can do with it.
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Unfortunately, the cat is kind of out of the bag on this one. Let's forget about people who will go out of their way to disable this safety mechanism as there will probably only be a small subset of the population who knows how and wants to do that.
There are tons and tons of cell phones out there now, and by all accounts their turnover rate is slowing down already. If all new cell phones have this technology from now on it will still take probably a decade to get the old ones out of circulation. I'm not say
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If all new cell phones have this technology from now on it will still take probably a decade to get the old ones out of circulation. I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, just that it won't solve the problem overnight at this point.
You're assuming that you need to replace all existing cell phones. The vast majority of all cell phones run either android or IOS and come with a ton of sensors that can detect bluetooth, movement, light, speed, etc... and most also have the ability to do OTA updates and many even auto install those updates. It would be relatively simple to push out an update that disabled all smartphones that were traveling faster than 15 miles per hour. The harder thing would be providing exemptions for passengers and
Perfect is the enemy of good (Score:2)
Unfortunately, the cat is kind of out of the bag on this one. Let's forget about people who will go out of their way to disable this safety mechanism as there will probably only be a small subset of the population who knows how and wants to do that.
If they intentionally disable it of course they can do that but then they should be exposed to liability in the event something goes wrong.
There are tons and tons of cell phones out there now, and by all accounts their turnover rate is slowing down already. If all new cell phones have this technology from now on it will still take probably a decade to get the old ones out of circulation. I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, just that it won't solve the problem overnight at this point.
So we should do nothing because it won't solve the problem instantly? Stop making perfect the enemy of good. With a simple software update you could get huge swaths of the smartphones out there updated overnight and the rest could be handled over a few years as they get traded in. We don't have to get every phone out there to make a huge dent in the problem.
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You'll survive (Score:2)
That will also prevent people on the bus from using their cell phones. I hate distracted driving too, but yours isn't an acceptable solution.
So what? Somehow the world survived for thousands of years without having people use smartphones on buses. It's amazing how entitled people get. I assure you you would survive the experience of not being able to use every feature of your phone for a few minutes. Furthermore there would be nothing preventing you from using a wifi enabled device like a tablet on a bus. It just means you aren't going to be texting or making phone calls while the vehicle is in motion. The point is to keep people from maki
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Since it is impossible to determine who the driver is then it would have to apply to everyone.
I think it would be relatively simple to determine who the driver is especially if you got the car manufacturers and/or the phone manufacturers involved. There are two problems though. Problem #1 is that the car/phone company would be adding a "feature" that makes their product less desirable so you would have to get everyone to do it at the same time. Problem #2 is that people now use their phone for navigation so you would likely want to exempt certain apps and who would decide which apps are exempt.
Perfect is the enemy of good (Score:2)
I think it would be relatively simple to determine who the driver is especially if you got the car manufacturers and/or the phone manufacturers involved.
How do you figure? You have some way to unambiguously and reliably determine who is in the driver's seat? I've never seen such a solution though I'd certainly welcome one. I think that would be an extremely difficult problem.
Problem #1 is that the car/phone company would be adding a "feature" that makes their product less desirable so you would have to get everyone to do it at the same time.
Easy to get most people with software updates and even if you can get most of the people it should have a herd immunity effect similar to vaccines. Make it a law that after a certain date all phones sold as new have to have the ability to limit use while on roads and force manufactu
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I think it would be relatively simple to determine who the driver is especially if you got the car manufacturers and/or the phone manufacturers involved.
How do you figure? You have some way to unambiguously and reliably determine who is in the driver's seat? I've never seen such a solution though I'd certainly welcome one. I think that would be an extremely difficult problem.
You can live without facebook while driving I assure you. Even as a passenger.
I agree that disabling even for passengers should be the default. As far as re-enabling for passengers that meet certain requirements, off the top of my head, if google can detect distinct pet dogs then surely it can train a neural net to detect whether a steering wheel is present in the back camera, whether eyes are focused on the phone in the front camera, whether there is excessive movement of the phone, etc... you could even do something like requiring a moving passenger to do some specific task every
Laws don't solve the problem (Score:2)
Our society has things called "laws" that we use to coerce the citizens into proper behavior. Welcome to civilization!
Yes and those laws have completely eliminated drunk driving as a problem and nobody ever talks on their phone while driving in a state where it's illegal. Spare me. Laws only provide a means to punish after the fact. They don't bring people back from the dead.
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Our society has things called "laws" that we use to coerce the citizens into proper behavior. Welcome to civilization!
Yes and those laws have completely eliminated drunk driving as a problem and nobody ever talks on their phone while driving in a state where it's illegal. Spare me. Laws only provide a means to punish after the fact. They don't bring people back from the dead.
You make a good point with regards to drunk driving.
Every driver should be required to do a breathalyzer before getting into the car, however since the technology isn't there to know it's the driver, we should make every single person entering a car take a breathalyzer beforehand.
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If (IF...) this uptick is due to using those engaging features such as photos, etc, I doubt position fixes much. You're still engaged with the screen, and for an extended (at highway speeds) time.
I've had a mount in my car for phones for decades, knowing that having my phone floating around is terrible. And Bluetooth headsets to both keep wires out of the stick shift and to let me talk without holding the phone - this concept still eludes many drivers.
Mounting options are plentiful in most cars. Vent holder
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If every car had by default some good way to mount a cell phone there would not be nearly so much distraction, since you could see the road and not have eyes diverted to the side for notifications or what have you.
Uh, no. There is no configuration that would be deemed safe for a driver to operate a smartphone, so let's stop pretending there is. And yeah, that goes for mega-infotainment systems too. Surfing your car stereo controls is not any different than surfing your smartphone controls when it comes to distracted driving.
That's another factor the article seems to not consider at all - how much does relying on GPS directions which can be confusing and mean many more sudden movements from divers play into increased traffic incidents?
Been using GPS systems long before smartphones came along, so I've seen many iterations. They continue to improve, both in functionality and accuracy. GPS can easily be navigated with nothing
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I used to live in a place where I had to park on the road and had multiple legally parked vehicles hit by people texting while driving. I have never been in an accident that didn't involve someone else on a cell phone and I have been driving since the 80s. I did have what I can only assume must have been drunk driver hit and run my car in the middle of the night they also hit a neighbors house and took down some fencing all along my road.
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Clearly we need more parked cars and fences along the road for people to hit instead of pedestrians and bicyclists. Get those bad drivers off the road before they do any real damage!
Unfortunately, transportation engineers have been facilitating the opposite by removing roadside trees [petroliala...pendent.ca] and therefore violating their code of ethics to protect public safety [streetsblog.org]. Isn't it ironic [strongtowns.org] when they widen streets to make it easier for paramedics to respond to collisions caused by wide streets?
That and other [youtube.com] reasons [strongtowns.org] are why tra
Re:I blame car makers (Score:4, Interesting)
You actually bring up a _much_ bigger problem -- WHY is the driver even taking their eyes off the road in the first place?
We have had the technology for **decades** for HUD (Heads Up Display) -- i.e. the speedometer + other stats is projected onto the windshield.
But everyone is too cheap to make it a standard [youtube.com] Of course HUDs aren't perfect but it is a step in the right direction.
Making HUDs standard, along with your idea of standardizing holders for smart phones on the dash -- cars would be safer. But I guess we don't value safety enough.
--
Censorship IS precisely the problem, not the solution.
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Actually, it doesn't matter. If you're looking or listening to your phone, you're not paying attention to the road. Looking somewhere near the road isn't good enough. http://www.nsc.org/learn/NSC-I... [nsc.org] https://www.bostonglobe.com/op... [bostonglobe.com] and lots more articles that got pulled up when I Googled for "hands off cell phone safety"
No car maker wants the liability (Score:2)
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>Write that shit down. Look at a map before you get in the car. Christ.
Luddite.
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Phone calls can be distracting too (Score:2)
People deep in a conversation on a cell phone can also be quite distracted - and cause accidents.
I was once almost hit by a taxi cab at a zebra crossing because the cab driver was yapping away on his cell phone. I saw him using the phone because I was trying to get eye contact with him, expecting him to stop at the crossing as is the law when there are people out on the crossing. I had to jump.
Suck it up till driverless (Score:3)
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Or just treat using a phone the same as DUI, if a cop catches you doing it, say goodbye to your license and say hello to several thousand dollars worth of fines. It is fair, phone users kill more people than drunk drivers behind the wheel.
Absolutely the right solution.
The only problem with this is dealing with the massive number of 49cc "DUI" mopeds you would have to navigate around every day on your way to work, since a large percentage of drivers today are smartphone addicts, and would invariably get caught.
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I don't (Score:2)
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I own a flip phone while I ride the bus with the people who pick up your trash. We aren't all millionaires out here in Silicon Valley.
Given the median price of a home there, not even the millionaires are millionaires...
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Sounds like you might need to consider MOVING to another city/state where jobs are more plentiful and cost of living is much less, so that you could afford your own car.
Autopilot (Score:5, Interesting)
What we need is more driver assistance tools: autopilot, collision detection, lane assist. There's money in it , it appeals to the laziness of the drivers, and allows to take control away from the drivers. What's not to like.
Yet again, (Score:5, Interesting)
we can have the conversation about how road deaths have consistently not tracked cell phone use over many years and there is pretty much no solid statistical evidence that phones increase accidents. They certainly contribute to some accidents, but that's very different to them contributing to higher accident rates. It's entirely possible that map applications reduce accidents by causing people to drive less and to know where they are going to turn before they get there.
Why, when road deaths increase are people quick to blame cell phones? If road deaths go both up and down while cell phone use goes in one direction, that's evidence that they are not directly linked. What about other likely culprits like shorter yellow times at traffic lights? Increased use of speed and intersection cameras causing people to suddenly brake? An increase in politically infuriating radio shows?
People have simplistic minds and no clue about statistical inference.
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Correction:
The poster of TFS has a simplistic mind and no clue about statistical inference.
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>It's not like we don't know which accidents are cell-phone related.
But we don't know which road trips without accidents were cell-phone related.
How about all the road trips without cell phones? Have the accident rates changed among that group?
There are 4 cases to consider. Considering only one of them is not statistically useful.
Good luck 'fixing' that... (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a big problem with 'people' in general - they won't learn any lesson you want to teach them, as a population, no matter how simple, or stupid the thing you're trying to correct.
At a basic psychological level, we sometimes get the urge to correct them at large - a lot of road rage is effectively this, where you try and interfere with a rude driver to 'teach them a lesson'. It virtually never actually works.
You can't fix phone-use deaths by telling people it's bad, or showing them the effects of how distracting it is to functionally driving. If you try and implement technological features that make it annoying to use the phone while driving, most folks will disable this, taking great pains to do so.
It's not even that people think that they're immune to distraction, or even that they don't think it's dangerous - folks just don't like driving, and they like/need their phones, and even with death and huge fines as consequences, they'll do the 'bad thing' on statistically overwhelming scale.
The better fix is to automate driving so that folks can do most anything and not have that be a safety factor.
Ryan Fenton
Re:Good luck 'fixing' that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that I can think of three counter-examples: Seat Belts, Drunk Driving, and smoking. In each of these cases, we've made significant strides in changing the behvariour of the general population, and dramatically reducing the number of people injured or killed by these issues. None of these involved technical solutions, and instead were achieved through public education/advertising, changes to laws, and eventually changing expectations such that the problematic behaviours become socially unacceptable.
So yeah, can we change public behaviour? Sure, we've done it before, we can do it again. The best bet is to start doing this through kids, since they're the ones that are likely going to nag their parents to leave the phone alone.
Infotainment too (Score:5, Insightful)
We've also had a steady rise in the complexity and abundance of infotainment systems that needlessly complicate the few tasks you legitimately need to attend to while driving.
Tactile knobs have been replaced with menus and buttons to adjust the temperature. I can't use feel and peripheral vision like on my old car to adjust heat, vents, or volume. Worse yet, the buttons that remain are a smooth surface that I can't even make out without looking at them. Form over function.
AAA has shed some light on this as of late, but until car makers reverse course, it is just going to get worse and worse.
'Smartphones' are CANCEROUS (Score:2)
Plenty of Laws, Lack of Enforcement (Score:2)
Please do not interfere with Darwin (Score:2)
Confession (Score:2)
I drive around 50K miles a year. Nearly all of that time, except when I am transporting my children, I am utilizing the phone. Yet, in spite of that fact, I have had no significant accidents. And the deer I hit, was when I was not using my phone. But it's Pennsylvania, so deer sometimes fall from the sky in front of cars. If you're from PA, you understand.
Re: (Score:2)
Either way it doesn't end well for the deer.
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Only half the story (Score:2)
Considering all of the safety systems introduced into cars, the crashes must've also increased in severity, to result in fatalities.
Also, is there any significant increase in states where marijuana was legalized?
Drivers getting worse and not because of phone use (Score:2)
Simple technology fix (Score:2)
NO texts in or out until you are not moving for 1 minute.
Same for browser or wi-fi connection.
Voice and 911 would continue to work.
Might be simple hardware fix.
But the FCC would have to do the specs.
How do we know, if we aren't counting? (Score:4, Interesting)
Smartphones son't kill... (Score:2)
People do.
Seriously, every auto fatality involves a car, but not every fatality involves a smartphone.
Let's ban cars, that will fix the problem!
Correlation does not equal causation. (Score:2)
Correlation does not equal causation.
Cell phone accident (Score:3)
Smart Phones Kill Stupid People (Score:3, Interesting)
Think of it as evolution in action.
Re:Stupid People Die, It's a Fact of Life (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't care if they kill themselves, it's when they hurt others that we have a problem.
Re:Stupid People Die, It's a Fact of Life (Score:4, Insightful)
We've done a great job of reducing risk to manageable levels.
However, reducing risk to zero is unnecessary and astoundingly Orweillein. Stupid people dying is a fact of life and keeping them from killing themselves especially in this day and age of padded safe everything is probably not the best course of action.
Your observation would be relevant, if not for the innocent smart people being harmed and killed.
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Re:Should we be worried about guns? (Score:5, Informative)
Guns are more dangerous than phones. Why all this concern over phones? Consider the essential purpose of each item. A gun is meant to kill. It should be banned. A phone is meant to help. It shouldn't be a concern.
Guns: 30,000+ deaths per year (22,000 of those deaths are due to suicide.)
Cars: 40,000+ deaths per year (and you do this activity every day.)
Alcohol: 80,000+ deaths per year.
Cigarettes: 400,000+ deaths per year.
Wake me when you're ready to start talking about banning the real killers.
Re:Should we be worried about guns? (Score:5, Funny)
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I WOULD RATHER WALK.
I'd rather be in a wheeled steel cage with airbags and crumple zones, personally. Especially once the death machines you speak of start roaming,
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"Thinking" human drivers suck also. Whether the auto-driving tech is "AI" or not matters little, as long as it works and gets better with time.
Hacking is probably a bigger threat than lackluster bot driving skills. But it can affect regular cars also, because they already depend on lots of software.
Re:Can't Be Blamed For My Choices (Score:5, Insightful)
Safe Following distance is 2 seconds + the average interval when you look up from your phone to glance at the road.
If you are not following the vehicle ahead to allow this much time to react, then it IS your fault.