UK to Close Loophole That Allows Phone Users to Take Photos or Play Games While Driving

[theluggage]

Completely agree with this law. However, with the Model 3 and autopilot on I don't see the difference between noodling with the phone or my dirty big center touch screen.

Something that needs to happen alongside punishing drivers is far stricter UI standards for in-car equipment and software. There is a lot of flagrantly stupid design - including anything that requires a driver to use a touch screen or modal interface while driving.

The "giant iPad" controls are one reason that I wouldn't look twice at a Tesla (unless you want to tell me that everything you need has a button on the steering wheel).

...but just having physical knobs and buttons isn't enough if they are all multi-function and you have to look at the display to see what "mode" they are in. With my existing built-in car audio, to (say) switch from radio to MP3, you have to turn an 'endless' rotary encoder until the right function is illuminated. Prize goes to my previous car stereo which (a) used up 20% of the facia with a massive bezel surrounding the "Super Bass Boost FX(tm)" button and crammed everything else up to fit and (b) if it lost the radio signal, triggered an alarm-clock style escalating beeping until you did something - just in case you hadn't noticed that the radio had gone quiet and (c) featured eye-piercing blue displays that completely wrecked your night vision.

My other favourite is Google Maps in turn-by-turn mode. Turn-by-turn is specifically for use while driving and - while it's up to the driver not to fiddle with the settings while driving - should never ask you to interact in mid-trip. Yet, when it detects a delay and suggests an alternate route, you get the "please press this tiny button to confirm" message. OK, so it's not like it magically knows your position and speed and could automatically detect if you'd accepted the detour... oh, wait - yes it could!

Unfortunately, it has been proven by history that "the invisible hand of the market" will happily build and sell death traps until forced to do otherwise by legislation. We do now have strict safety standards for cars - but they don't seem to have caught up with the fact that the "driver interface" is also safety-critical.

It's ok to condemn the complete morons who think they can text and drive, but it should be possible to change the channel on the radio or adjust the heating with no more than a glance away from the road.

 

[Kebabselector]

wow you must have a lot of time on your hands, or no job. I mean I see lots of crappy driving but I literally cba to download, trim, etc to report to police who probably do FA anyway

I have a job thanks, it takes 5 minutes to download a video and submit it to the police (which can easily be done at lunch). The Police do prosecute - check out https://www.youtube.com/user/CyclingMikey.

 

[Kebabselector]

I didn't even know that you could play games while driving till now.

It's been a grey area of the law to be honest. Most law seems fine until tested in court - hopefully this amendment will sort it out.

 

[unplugme71]

So technically if you started driving and you want to set your navigation on the phone you’re not allowed, but you can do that from the cars navigation system?

How do you set your navigation while driving (using built in)? Both my cars blank out any keyboard input. The only thing I can select is home.

 

[unplugme71]

It's been a grey area of the law to be honest. Most law seems fine until tested in court - hopefully this amendment will sort it out.

Laws don’t have any weight until tried in court. Otherwise it’s just text that people can choose to follow.

Until a court upholds the law do we understand how it’s applied in the future.

 

[dogslobber]

Well, state that then. But I agree our currently government is moronic. Much like your president and his government.

But the decision to ban mobile phone usage is probably one of their smartest moves.

Finally, learn not to generalise. It’s offensive and xenophobic.

I am British so don't tell me what I should and should not generalize. Also, learn what big words mean before you try to use them in wholly inappropriate and confused contexts.

 

[dogslobber]

That must have been many, many years ago if you're talking about London - Gatwick using what was then called the "urban clearway" that bypassed places like Crawley and Croydon.

There's a motorway now.

Who mentioned London? Perhaps if you were to actually drive from the outer lying counties like Dorset then you'd know what I was talking about.

 

[dogslobber]

You have pinpointed a severe failing of oure olde towne plannyres of yore. I trust our government is going to widen the UK until it is the size of the US so that we can fit in appropriately sized roads that meet your approval.

A lot of counties intentionally narrow what were wide original roads with ghost islands and middle islands. That more than anything else is what I found annoying about driving in England. That and traffic circles where any time there's a fork in the road they'd paint a circle on the road.

 

[dogslobber]

Dumbing down the brit public (even more) is a factual impossibility.

The concern here is that it's never explored why the phones use should be banned. BTW I fully support it but this is another example of ramming policy down the throat of the public without rationalizing it. These things are usually driven (no pun) by emotional context. I think back to how every gun in the UK was banned right after a couple of mass shootings. Yes, I am anti-gun but the emotion drove the decision just as I think it occurs here. You can't really have reasonable debate in England any more or you're viewed as a heretic. Perhaps that's why I escaped to the U.S.A.

 

[Colonel Blimp]

We're not a free country, all this is about really.

If your definition of “free” is being able to do whatever the hell you want, then I have a news flash for you: it hasn't been a free country ever since murder was outlawed, really.

 

[Colonel Blimp]

Nanny state socialism at work. All it does is erode freedoms one by one in the name of "safety" like so many other authoritarian regimes in the past. And yet, people never learn.

So move to Texas, which is about as far from a socialist nanny state as you can get in the Western world. Hell, you can even leave your gun out in plain view on the passenger seat, and the cop who pulls you over won’t even bat an eye (possibly depending on your skin color, of course).

But guess what, boy? Even in Texas, if the cop sees you typing your MacRumors forum comments while driving, you’ll still get fined.

 

[Colonel Blimp]

Yet again the useless brit government is behind the curve with their draconian attempts to dumb down and subjugate the brit public all the more.

So you would find the British government useful if they got ahead of the curve with their draconian attempts to dumb down and subjugate the Brit public?

 

[weckart]

A lot of counties intentionally narrow what were wide original roads with ghost islands and middle islands. That more than anything else is what I found annoying about driving in England. That and traffic circles where any time there's a fork in the road they'd paint a circle on the road.

By and large, traffic-calming measures of the sort you mention are less annoying than installing traffic lights that never seem to quite have the phasing that avoids long tailbacks and more resentful drivers. Speed bumps are also out of fashion because ambulances have to negotiate those and they cause more harm than good. Also, we have never had the amount of wide roads common in some European countries. If anything, road widening has become a thing the past few years.

As for mini-roundabouts, I love them. They speed up traffic flow no end. I could show you a Youtube clip from a Canadian driving on UK roads and marvelling how many miles he could manage without ever seeing a traffic light or a stop junction. If you hate them, you should never go to Peterborough. The whole town is festooned with them.

 

[Unsupported]

Interesting -- I wonder why phone usage wasn't just integrated in this one.

Because it's part of The Road Traffic Act 1988

In 1988 not a lot of people used mobile phones, anywhere.

80s brick phones

When the first mobile phones arrived in Britain in 1985, you needed to fork out £3000, or £7500 in today's money, for the first mobile on the UK network.

www.mobilephonehistory.co.uk

 

[theluggage]

The concern here is that it's never explored why the phones use should be banned.

If you type "effect of phone use on driving" into Google you'll find references to a metric shedload of scientific studies showing the affect of phone use on driving ability.

You could also try the International Journal of Papal Denomination Studies, the Urso-Sylvanian Scatology Review and the famous work "On The Role of Constipation in Victorian Detective Fiction". Although science sometimes comes up with results that belie common sense, the effect of holding a phone and yapping - let alone texting or indulging in the many other distractions known to modern smartphones - isn't exactly relativistic quantum mechanics. The burden of proof is always on the extraordinary claim, and the extraordinary claim in this case is that you can drive safely while tweeting.

Of course, you might reasonably ask why there isn't a similar law about performing John Cage's Clapping Music, practising Korean finger-wrestling or knitting rainbow-coloured Covid masks for health workers while driving - but if any of those practices suddenly became an epidemic on the scale of cellphone use and was in danger of becoming an accepted norm, specific legislation might be necessary.

In any case -what's the problem? People are being asked to go without their smartphone fix for an hour or two at a time - oh the humanity!

 

[beanbaguk]

I am British so don't tell me what I should and should not generalize. Also, learn what big words mean before you try to use them in wholly inappropriate and confused contexts.

In past times you would have been labelled a traitor.

Moreover, what I said was neither inappropriate or confused; You can be xenophobic against your own people.

 

[davidjytang]

I can't imagine stopping on the motorway and turning my engine off just to switch my destination, it feels a bit dumb 🤷‍♂️ and probably more dangerous

I guess the proper way would be to get off highway and set your satnav and then go. Honestly I don't know how the police would enforce regulation on this.

 

[JoeG4]

I guess the proper way would be to get off highway and set your satnav and then go. Honestly I don't know how the police would enforce regulation on this.

On both of my cars if you hold the voice command button on the steering wheel for a moment, it prompts siri. You'd just tell siri where you want to go and bob's your uncle!

I don't get it.

Most built-in car navigation systems will take voice commands too. My 2015 jeep had that, and the nav unit in there came out in like 2008 lol. I could tell it to route me to an address and it was actually pretty decent about doing that.

In the worst-case scenario where that doesn't work, I get off the freeway and find the nearest safe space to park. It's not really that big a deal.

My favorite thing about siri is you can use that to control your music too - even with spotify. I can just be like "play e-40 on spotify!" and it'll do that. Or "play the rolling stones" and it'll play it on apple music. That's so much easier than flipping around on my phone looking for something.

 

[Colonel Blimp]

On both of my cars if you hold the voice command button on the steering wheel for a moment, it prompts siri. You'd just tell siri where you want to go and bob's your uncle!

Me: “Hey Siri, give me directions to…”
Siri: “You’ll have to unlock your iPhone first, but I don’t recommend doing that while driving.”

I kid you not.

(This is with the iPhone mounted on the dashboard and connected to the car via Bluetooth.)

Mind you, I do not consider that Siri’s imbecility excuses the idiocy of fiddling with a device while driving.

 

[JoeG4]

I used to have that problem with spotify. One day I was annoyed enough that I did it while sitting in my driveway so I could unlock my iphone. Turned out I needed to allow permissions for something. The dialog popped up as soon as I unlocked the phone. I just never got it when I triggered siri from the phone itself, only when I triggered it via the button in the car!

I'd recommend giving that a try.