So, you're saying that, before anyone starts driving, people are required to inset a CD or choose a radio station and set the volume and never adjust either once a trip is en route. Right?
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California Appeals Court Rules State Law Doesn't Prohibit Driver Use of Smartphone Maps
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So, you're saying that, before anyone starts driving, people are required to inset a CD or choose a radio station and set the volume and never adjust either once a trip is en route. Right?
I suspect what is being suggested is that there is no objective way to measure how distracted a driver is and whether or not that level of distraction actually increases the risk to themselves or anyone else.
Whereas, you can objectively measure someone's blood alcohol level, and objectively measure their MPH over a posted limit and those can be tied at least statistically to harm resulting in previous actual events caused by drivers with that level of DUI or traveling at those speeds.
common sense?
I thought Nanny Government was supposed to tell us what's best for us? For example, I get real warm and fuzzy now that I don't have to worry about what light bulbs or health insurance coverage to buy because I must be too stupid to figure all that out myself. Who needs common sense when we've got politicians?
I thought Nanny Government was supposed to tell us what's best for us? For example, I get real warm and fuzzy now that I don't have to worry about what light bulbs or health insurance coverage to buy because I must be too stupid to figure all that out myself. Who needs common sense when we've got politicians?
The issue is that such negligence can easily end the lives of multiple people. The primary aim of the law isn't to punish you for things you've done, but to discourage you from the practices that will abruptly end your life and/or innocent lives around you.
What you're saying is like saying that ignoring a stop sign and cutting someone else off is okay as long as you don't crash. Quite frankly, I actually think the opposite: you should get a ticket if nothing bad happens and you shouldn't get a ticket if you do crash, because having to fix your car plus whatever you hit is already punishment enough, I think (unless people are seriously injured or killed as a result of your negligence. That's another matter entirely.)
If you are not driving like a robot with 100% attention to the road you are breaking the law. Yes, that includes having free thinking and thinking about anything but the road ahead of you.
If we have everybody working on driver-less cars instead of coming up with useless laws, we won't need to debate about driving anymore. Because humans are not designed to be like robots. Hell in fact it's law that's preventing driverless car from progressing as fast as it can potentially be.
Law is needed, but a lot of them are needless, stupid, reactionary, knee-jerk, and creates unintended consequences. More often than not putting up some new legislation is not the best solution, if not creating more problems. Putting more walls and red-tape will not change human nature, it merely fattens up politician, lawyers and law enforcement. Work with human nature instead of against it, the world will work a lot smoother.
If we have everybody working on driver-less cars instead of coming up with useless laws, we won't need to debate about driving anymore. Because humans are not designed to be like robots. Hell in fact it's law that's preventing driverless car from progressing as fast as it can potentially be.
Law is needed, but a lot of them are needless, stupid, reactionary, knee-jerk, and creates unintended consequences. More often than not putting up some new legislation is not the best solution, if not creating more problems. Putting more walls and red-tape will not change human nature, it merely fattens up politician, lawyers and law enforcement. Work with human nature instead of against it, the world will work a lot smoother.
exactly.
correct. overzealous government thugs are a bigger problem than distracted driving.
What about driving one-handed with a Big Gulp in the other? It's not the single-handed driving that causes distraction, it is the cognitive load of being immersed in a conversation! Of course, the reactionary media and obtuse lawmakers tout silly laws that somehow imply that talking on the phone "hands free" solves the problem. It doesn't.
Does this include activating my windshield wipers, moving the turn signal stalk, or resetting my trip odometer? Who says your not supposed to interact with a dashboard?
Use a condom.
"going over the speed limit" is the very definition of NOTHING HAPPENING.
Wrong. The idea that speed is statistically correlated to "harm" is not supported by facts. The "speed kills" mantra has been repeated so often by institutions, insurance companies, and the media that some actually believe it. Speed limits are simply revenue generators for states, municipalities, and insurance companies. How do they generate statistics that purport to show a correlation between speed and accident rates? Simple. On every police accident report there are check-boxes for causal factors. Speed is one of them. If someone was exceeding the speed limit the bumbling cop ALWAYS checks "Speed", even if it actually had nothing to do with the cause of the accident. Bingo - plenty of "speed-related" accidents and deaths. Germany has a much lower per capita accident and fatality rate than the U.S., yet they have vast expanses of autobahn with NO speed limit. It was okay for me to cruise at 170mph last month when I was there, yet here in the U.S. I would be considered a dangerous criminal. Why?
smartphone = more than just a GPS. It's a world of apps / internet / etc. If you are a careless driver, chances are your phone isn't going to be used as a GPS only. That being said, if you are looking down while looking at your phone, or if you are fiddling with getting directions WHILE driving, you are putting yourself and others at risk.
I don't think the article mentioned it, but it wasn't clear how the driver was using the phone (eyes pointed towards road or not...).
Bottom Line: If you are lost, pull over and then use your phone. You waste a couple of minutes, but in those couple of minutes you probably just saved your own life and the people around you! If you need a GPS to pull over, then, please stay away from the driver's seat as much as possible!!
I tend to agree that the speeding laws are purely revenue generators (for both the police and insurance companies). I do think residential speed limits are justified since those situations are less predictable. A limited access highway on the other hand really doesn't need a speed limit or it should be at least 90-100mph if they must have one. Always seemed odd to me that we as a country tend to buy higher horsepower vehicles than the rest of the world despite having some of the slowest speed limits.
That said, I don't consider distracted driving laws to be the same. I consider it to be about as bad as driving drunk -- the potential consequences are too much.
I'd bet many more crashes have happened over the years with drivers trying to read paper maps long before the GPS or smart phone maps came along.
I do agree when driving you need to concentrate of that task alone but any service like GPS that can help you navigate without distraction must be of benefit and be able to legally use smart phone map apps is a plus, as long as they don't text and pick up the phone to make a call.
I do agree when driving you need to concentrate of that task alone but any service like GPS that can help you navigate without distraction must be of benefit and be able to legally use smart phone map apps is a plus, as long as they don't text and pick up the phone to make a call.
I like how they specify "Portable device". Sweet, I can put my iMac in the passenger seat and have 27" of distracted goodness.
Sorry but until the vast majority of the population suddenly becomes more intelligent and capable we'll have laws to protect as many of us as possible from that majority of us who just end up doing stupid stuff way too often whether they realize it or not. Yes, speeding might be fine when those who do it can actually handle themselves, but unfortunately far too many can't even park properly in a parking spot even after backing up and retrying a number ofexactly.
correct. overzealous government thugs are a bigger problem than distracted driving.
What about driving one-handed with a Big Gulp in the other? It's not the single-handed driving that causes distraction, it is the cognitive load of being immersed in a conversation! Of course, the reactionary media and obtuse lawmakers tout silly laws that somehow imply that talking on the phone "hands free" solves the problem. It doesn't.
Does this include activating my windshield wipers, moving the turn signal stalk, or resetting my trip odometer? Who says your not supposed to interact with a dashboard?
Use a condom.
"going over the speed limit" is the very definition of NOTHING HAPPENING.
Wrong. The idea that speed is statistically correlated to "harm" is not supported by facts. The "speed kills" mantra has been repeated so often by institutions, insurance companies, and the media that some actually believe it. Speed limits are simply revenue generators for states, municipalities, and insurance companies. How do they generate statistics that purport to show a correlation between speed and accident rates? Simple. On every police accident report there are check-boxes for causal factors. Speed is one of them. If someone was exceeding the speed limit the bumbling cop ALWAYS checks "Speed", even if it actually had nothing to do with the cause of the accident. Bingo - plenty of "speed-related" accidents and deaths. Germany has a much lower per capita accident and fatality rate than the U.S., yet they have vast expanses of autobahn with NO speed limit. It was okay for me to cruise at 170mph last month when I was there, yet here in the U.S. I would be considered a dangerous criminal. Why?
times. Sorry, but I certainly don't want people like that speeding, and try to not to think too much about them even going at the speed limit. Throw in some distraction into play, and, well, it only gets worse.
Terrible idea. Your idea is just punishes the crime if there is an accident. The crime is still being committed even if there is no accident. And by your definition these crimes would go unpunished. The idea should be to prevent accidents and not just punish the causers of accidents.
Really? Are you a lawyer? Or just editorializing.
If the intention of the law was to also cover Angry Birds and mapping apps, then the law would've not been so narrowly defined. It's not like those applications weren't available when the law was passed.
In fact, what's the difference between a car's built-in navigation app and a smartphone app? Nothing. Both have touchscreen and/or physical controls, and both offer voice control. In fact, the in-car apps are usually more distracting than Apple and Google's software because they are badly designed. But yet no one complains about the built-in stuff. Or what about an intense conversation in the car? Or trying to change the radio station?
My advice to all state legislatures would be to stop with the nanny state policing and reactionary legislation. If you want to advocate anti-distraction laws, then craft something reasonable and general, with a focus on ticketing for distractions which cause an accident or erratic driving behavior, not what activities might cause some hypothetical traffic violation to occur.
I wonder about this myself, but I also tend to think that trying to read one of the old fashioned fold out paper maps is such an impossible task while you're driving that only the idiot of idiots would even attempt to lookup a cross street on the back side and then try to locate square A-4 on the front side while shifting through traffic... not that I haven't tried this myself before in my younger days. I also quickly realized it was both futile and stupid so I pulled over.
Smartphones are more seductive than paper maps. They whisper to you that it'll only take two seconds and it'll be easy and so you oblige. I once tried to use Siri to help me reroute my trip to a dental appointment that I was late for when I ran into a road closure. Under the stress of trying to instruct Siri while scanning for exits and trying to think of my own alternate routes was too much. I realized I was becoming one of those distracted bozos who thinks that he's such an excellent driver that he can do whatever he d*mn well pleases behind the wheel.
I think the reason why the laws are written the way they're written is because it's actually harder to pass something of the variety that you're describing. We all want to believe that if our laws were just written in common sense then everything would be sunshine and peaches... interview me in depth about what my idea of common sense is and you may be horrified at how twisted my views are from your viewpoint.
Also, every company and interest group out there has some corner of turf that they would end up trying to protect if you try to ban distracted driving as a general concept. A few years back, I remember listening to an interview with one California lawmaker who proposed the ban on talking on your cell phone while driving and callers from the radio asked him why he didn't include texting and other forms of distracted driving. I believe he replied that it wasn't because those thoughts never came up, but because it just wasn't feasible yet.
Government simply has to treat it like mobile phone calling use: require that the mobile Maps/GPS app be fully functional with "hands-free" operation. And then the accidents will decrease, it will not eliminate distracted driving completely, but it will reduce accidents/fatalities to a much smaller percentage. Apple and Google and Microsoft can easily comply with this. Then the driver can keep his eyes on the road. (Apple already has Siri that does some of these functionality).
Does this eliminate distracted driving totally? No. But this is a FAR BETTER compromise than some moronic US Congress making an extreme legislation that Apple Maps and Google Maps usage be banned while driving.
But thats' wrong and not what he meant.
He wrote that ALL distractions (not just phones) should be punishable IF you cause or get involved in an accident.