7 ms·
First came the Breathalyzer, now meet the roadside police “textalyzer”
- pjc50 11y agoA whole new form of intrusive search! With added presumption of guilt!
- rocky1138 11y agoI love this cereal box sort of advertising. I often find myself adding "now in tablet form!" to random things I read.
- tehwebguy 11y agoCan't tell if the guys making and marketing this are human cancer or genius capitalists.
- jyunderwood 11y agoWhy not request the data via a warrant?
- schismsubv 11y agoThey're treating it precisely like the breathalyzer. You can refuse either and they will get a warrant for the search. In the meantime, your license and freedom will be revoked, because US law says driving is a granted freedom, not a right.
- cmdrfred 11y ago> granted freedom Feel that? It's Thomas Jefferson spinning in his grave.
- gambiting 11y agoWhy not a mandatory gastroscopy to see if the driver has recently eaten? In many countries eating while driving is just as illegal as talking over the phone. Surely we want to have the full image of what was happening before the accident here?
- tomtoise 11y agoCurious to know if it's even possible to know whether a driver has manually sent a text message / composed it via voice / given it to the passenger to compose text. At least with breathalyzing, it's binary. You're either drunk or you're not, there's no middle ground or room for interpretation.
- corin_ 11y agoBreathalyzing is binary but "being too drunk to drive safely" isn't, they just made testing binary for the law's sake. It's possible to be under the limit for a test yet still have enough alcohol in you to slightly impair your driving if you're not used to drinking, it's also possible to be able to drink quite a bit over the limit and still be sober enough to drive safely, but the law just looks at averages and picks a spot to make it binary.
- forgetsusername 11y ago>they just made testing binary for the law's sake In Canada, I think, penalties are doled out based on a few ranges of blood alcohol content.
- jdmichal 11y agoLaws are state specific in the US, but some do have levels below the federally-mandated .08% with lesser penalties.
- bryanlarsen 11y agoFrom the article: "Further analysis, which might require a warrant, could be necessary to determine whether such usage was via hands-free dashboard technology and to confirm the original finding." As the other commenter noted, "to drunk to drive" has way more room for interpretation than "sent a text before an accident", yet the law seems to have arrived at a reasonable compromise. Note that sending a text message via voice and is still distracted driving, and some studies show that it's just about as dangerous. It's currently legal, but some jurisdictions are contemplating banning that too.
- Guildpact 11y agoSeems like this would be hard to prove, often my girlfriend will be using my phone while I am driving, how would this tell who was using it? I don't think there is a way. This means if the driver was the sole person in the car you could do this, otherwise it would be ambiguous.
- jrs235 11y agoYep. But guess what? The police can and probably still will write you a ticket for it even though the evidence is shaky at best. Why? Because you'll still have to appear in court to fight it if you wish to fight it and they are banking that you will just pay the fine to make it go away. How many people can take a few days off of work to go to court to fight a ticket without employment repercussions? The State is indirectly using Business (employers) to enslave and indebt the population.
- Klathmon 11y agoor voice composition, i use software on my phone that came preinstalled to tell it to send a text message to my wife without even looking at it (I've actually used it on my motorcycle through my bluetooth helmet!)
- leetrout 11y agoI do the same with Siri. Read & compose texts with both hands on the bars and eyes on the road. I actually prefer it to trying to read something 10:1. I have the iPhone 6+ in a ram mount just in front of the instrument cluster so I could attempt to read it if the screen would consistently respond to my gloved finger.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jlgaddis 11y agoI really should figure out how to do this. My phone is typically either in the dedicated compartment in the "Infotainment Center" or in the saddlebags. I almost always have my music playing (via Bluetooth) but I can control that (skip songs, adjust volume, etc., via controls on my hand grips). Because my phone is always paired via Bluetooth, I do get the audible alert played through the stereo system when I receive an SMS message -- and the ringtone and notification on my display when I receive a phone call -- but I can't hear or read my messages through it. After thinking about it for a moment, I don't think Siri would be able to "hear" me, though, regardless of where my phone was (I don't have a Bluetooth earpiece or anything like that and I don't wear a helmet). I'm gonna look into it, though.
- Olscore 11y agoSets a bad precedent. Next they'll be analyzing receipts and purchases an hour or two before to determine if you were at a bar, working too late (tired), or whatever. Submit your health data as well, maybe your decision making was impaired by poor diet and lack of exercise.
- s_q_b 11y agoThey already analyze bar receipts.
- privong 11y ago> They already analyze bar receipts. Do you have a source for this? It wouldn't surprise me, but it's the first I've heard of it.
- s_q_b 11y agoOne example: Bar Receipts are used to Indict Suspect in Fatal 2013 Hit-And-Run. >>Investigators interviewed witnesses and obtained bar receipts to determine when, where and how much McIvor had been drinking, said Sgt. Tony Landato, a Mesa police spokesman. http://www.azcentral.com/community/mesa/articles/20140206mesa-bar-receipts-used-indict-suspect-fatal-hit-run.html http://www.azcentral.com/community/mesa/articles/20140206mes...
- Ironchefpython 11y ago> Sets a bad precedent. Uh... you know they can already lock you in a cage for days or draw your blood or forcibly probe your anus, right? I think that it's a little too late for precedent.
- Karunamon 11y agoSo what would the evidentiary standard be in cases like this? As far as I know, no mobile device out there differentiates between a text sent via hands free vs one entered on the keyboard, so all this device could do is tell whether a text was sent, not how, which makes it nigh useless since "I was using handsfree" is unfalsifiable.
- cm3 11y agoWith all the proactive wiretapping and data accumulation, why don't they just ask the ISP/cell-provider for the data instead? There's zero chance of me disputing that they messed with the phone and created fake entries to bust me for causing an accident. The cynic in me thinks these are benefits they would lose if excellent public transport was available more readily than personal vehicle transportation. Therefore, why would they be in favor of more people using public transport.
- VLM 11y agoIts a good PR campaign that they're not monitoring all our communications, therefore they need our cooperation to physically hand over the device, so we'll think thats they only way to be monitored. Of course they are monitoring the network, every byte.
- cm3 11y agoThe cooperation bit is funny, because if you have no choice by law, unless you like to spend your time with judges and maybe in a cell, how is it cooperation?
- schismsubv 11y agoWe have this odd fixation in the US (and perhaps elsewhere) that we believe we are powerful and smart enough to prevent all badness - Make It Never Happen Again. Never mind that smoking causes two orders of magnitude more deaths annually in the US, 3400 people die from distracted* driving! It could be your daughter next! What's happened to critical thinking and moderate stances? Why can't people be reasonable any more? To echo a sentiment I first read here (the provenance of which I am unsure), "Our increased reliance on laws to regulate behavior is a measure of how uncivilized we’ve become". *- Distractions also include: pets, sandwiches, passengers, and beautiful people.
- digitalengineer 11y agoIt's called The Nanny State: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanny_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanny_state
- leetrout 11y agoVery very good point about the other distractions. I've read stories in the news of people getting distracted driving tickets for eating a burger while driving. The only thing about your argument (and I come from this side as a motorcyclist) is the odds of 2nd hand smoke killing me is pretty low. But the danger in which you put everyone else around you is magnitudes higher by distracted driving.
- schismsubv 11y agoWhile I understand your concern, you are, statistically speaking (and according to the CDC), still 12x more likely to die from secondhand smoke than you are from another motorist's distracted driving. The CDC states that smoking causes 480,000 deaths annually, 41,000 of which are from secondhand smoke. Dying from someone hitting you while they swill a triple mocha may sound scarier than dying from cancer, but dying is dying.
- bryanlarsen 11y agoWhy does the fact that smoking cause 480,000 deaths have any relation to trying to prevent 3,400 needless deaths?
- VLM 11y ago"the person's license or permit to drive and any non-resident operating privilege shall be immediately suspended and subsequently revoked should the driver refuse to acquiesce to such field test." Wow. Driving without owning and carrying a smartphone means you lose your license because you're refusing to give up a smartphone for search. On the other hand I can get a burner bottom tier pay as you go Android for my mom and MiL, toss it in her glove compartment, and tell her to give it to the cop to keep her license if she gets in an accident. Both aren't interested in smartphones and my MiL refuses to carry any sort of phone. I've illegally driven without a smartphone a couple times when I've forgotten it at home. Interestingly the punishment for driving without carrying your license (wallet left at home, etc) is lower, or used to be lower, than the proposed punishment for driving without a smartphone.
- cm3 11y agoThe optimist in me thinks autonomous vehicles will solve this and put the burden on the web service and car if anything.
- runlevel1 11y agoIn Riley v. California, the Supreme Court decided unanimously to limit the ability of law enforcement to search cell phones while making arrests, requiring police to obtain a search warrant before examining the data contained in an arrestee’s device. IANAL, but I presume this sidesteps that by: 1. Pinky-swearing that they won't look at the individual's other data. 2. Coercing consent to a search by threatening to take away their license. 3. Performing the search before arresting so as not to get into "search incident to arrest" (SITA) territory. Seems dubious at best.
- mariodiana 11y agoPart of what bothers me is this notion that "texting while driving impairs a driver to the level of .08 blood alcohol level." (This quote comes from the NYS Senate bill mentioned in the article.) If that's the case, can we expect that the punishment for texting while driving will be similar to the punishment for DUI? If not, why not? If you ask me, this is just a lot of hysteria being put in the service of revenue generation and more money for our government's corporate partners. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2015/s6325/amendment/a https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2015/s6325/amendm...
- falcolas 11y agoI can only assume that for this software to work, you will have to unlock your phone. Even if this software does only what it "promises" to do, what is preventing a hypothetically corrupt officer to use one of their other tools (such as the CelleBrite UFED) to dump the entire contents of the phone while it's in their custody, or compromise it with a state sponsored virus? Seems like too big a loophole, with no real benefits. Could I store my smartphone in the trunk to avoid such a compelled search? Probably not, as I think about it, since they could allege I put it there after the accident took place.
- jlgaddis 11y ago> Could I store my smartphone in the trunk to avoid such a compelled search? Probably not, as I think about it, since they could allege I put it there after the accident took place. I think their argument would be that even if the phone were in the trunk, you could still have been using it via Bluetooth.
- jlgaddis 11y agoWhat happens if you simply don't have a phone with you? I often leave my phone at home when going on short (say, 30 minutes, tops) trips: to the grocery store, post office, bank, etc. Statistically, I'm way more likely to be involved in a crash on one of these short trips close to my home, I've heard. Let's say that I was. How would the police know if I legitimately didn't have my phone with me or was refusing to hand it over? Short of searching both my person and my vehicle (which now gets us into other legal territory), they wouldn't know. Could I then face possible repercussions for _NOT_ having my phone with me? (i.e. "He admitted to owning a mobile phone but, when asked, refused to present it for inspection.")