I'm my experience cops are too distracted with their own cell phone call/phone to their ear to bother pulling someone over for using a hands free device.
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Siri, texting, and traffic violations?
- Thread starter armandxp
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If only Police Officers were as honest as you make them out to be!
Here in Ireland, it's crazy how many Garda you see driving whilst on their mobile phones!
Could you please be more specific? Very interested to see what leeway they're giving officers...
Driving home today, I received an important text that I needed to reply to. I used the Siri eye's free function on my car to respond. This is probably the second time, I've used that function. I then thought, if a police officer pulls me over and looks at my messages, it would show that I was texting while driving, even though I physically wasn't using the phone. Is this the same as being distracted from watching the road, even though your not taking your eyes off the road? Could there be a symbol imposed on the text message, showing your not typing and driving?
Could this be a new way to get a ticket, or do you think you could explain your way out of this one. Will it eventually cause lawsuits with Apple or the car manufacturer, for having this option available to use, even though it could cause you to incur a fine by using it? Crazy thoughts, but I'd love to hear other's perspective on this.
My hour drive home from work every day leaves me to think about these things...
There was a study a couple months back, I'll see if I can find it again, that concluded that even using voice recognition to text message was as bad as actually typing them in terms of attention and accident risk.
I'd say judges are probably aware of such studies and will probably not cut someone a break if they said they were using voice recognition, but that's just my opinion. You can pull over and respond to that emergency text message, but I hate to sound like a nanny and I am guilty of it sometimes to as well. From what I understand most states write their cell phone laws to be pretty ambiguous and boiling down many times to breaking the law just by "using" your cell phone, whether you were dialing, checking GPS, or text messaging, certainly this varies by state and municipality though. I'd say something with a time stamp on it like a text message, regardless of method, is pretty incriminating.
statute here in NJ states emergency services are exempt from the cell phone laws while on duty.
"39:4-97.4 Inapplicability of act to certain officials. 2.The prohibitions set forth in this act shall not be applicable to any of the following persons while in the actual performance of their official duties: a law enforcement officer; a member of a paid, part-paid, or volunteer fire department or company; or an operator of an authorized emergency vehicle."
Pretty much my point. I never get pulled over (knock on wood), and I'm a very cautious and responsible driver, but I believe that Siri in the car is going to be scrutinized as soon as someone sues for it being distracting.
No, you didn't need to reply while driving, you wanted to.
You don't have to come here and comment on what I need and want. Trust me, I know the difference.
You don't have to come here and comment on what I need and want. Trust me, I know the difference.
This debate could be argued all day, it all comes down to how good you can multitask.
If you can use Siri to do it whilst keeping great attention on the road etc you're fine.
However if you aren't good at focussing on 2 things at once and you had an accident. I don't think the judge or worst case scenario, victims family, will buy your story of, " I Needed to reply to an important message"
I'm converted, I used to use my phone, non hands free app the time until I got busted. I had to do a course in order to keep points from my licence.
I've done courses before but nothing compared to this one, there was a panel, 4 people, all I can remember was 2 of them, one was a retired Traffic cop who showed us photos of him at crash sites, the sites were horrific at the highest level, cars literally wrapped around trees and you look and think, the poor sod in there didn't walk away!
But it was the lady, who worked for victim support (VS), she was the one who brought me to tears, I'll quote what she told me, not word for word obviously!
VS: I worked with a lady once, and this is how her story went! At 4pm Sarah was cleaning her house, her husband and 6 month old son had left in the early hours of the morning, heading to her mother in laws, Sarah couldn't go due to being heavily pregnant, she didn't feel too good that day! As she was cleaning, she hears a knock on the door, Sarah being your typical lady went to the window to see who was at her door, when looking through the window she noticed a police officer standing.
Sarah opened the door and the conversation went something like this:
police officer, (PO): "Mrs Fletcher?
Sarah: Yes
Police: Please can I come in
Sarah: Yes, come in, how can I help?
Police: Can you sit down please? . . . . Mrs Fletcher, we've reason to believe that your husband and child have been involved in a road traffic accident today!
Sarah: No, it couldn't be them, they only left a while ago, no, you must be wrong!
Police: Mrs Fletcher, we've reason to believe that your husband and child have been involved in a road traffic accident today, I need you to come with me to identify the bodies.
Sarah continued to go on that it wasn't her husband and even tried ringing him, but could only reach his answer phone! However she went with the officer to help him with his enquiry.
By the time Sarah got to the morgue, things had start to kick in. The police officer and Sarah walked into a waiting room, where there was a window, and through that window was 2 metal tables, 1 which could clearly be seen was an adult and the other a small child!
At this point Sarah freaked out "Get my fu*king son off that table! It's to cold for him to be on there! I want him off that table and put with his dad, it's far too cold!"
The man who worked in the morgue came out, looked at the police officer and said, have you informed Mrs Fletcher? To which the police officer burst into tears and walked out!
Sarah screamed "Has he told me what? That my husband and son is dead? Yes he fuxking has!
The man replied: Mrs Fletcher, we need you to identify 2 people, one we believe to be your husband and the other who we believe is your 6 month old child! However, we need you to identify your child from his feet!
Why Sarah asked, where is the rest of him?
At this point the victim support lady, stood there crying, said: "How do you explain to a mother, that the reason they are identifying their 6 month old child by their feet is because they were in such a horrific accident that the child literally smashed into a thousand pieces, a fireman literally hosed all flesh and blood down a drain? How do you explain this?
As you can imagine, this was a massive eye opener for me!