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"But if the behavior has addictive qualities, can drivers really be expected to police themselves?" the article asks, nearly at it's end. Not answering it, of
by msabalau 10y ago
"But if the behavior has addictive qualities, can drivers really be expected to police themselves?" the article asks, nearly at it's end. Not answering it, of course, because if drivers actually are responsible for their actions, the rest of the story in meaningless.
- jdavis703 10y agoAlcohol also has addicting qualities. I'm pretty sure we allow alcohol-consuming motorists to consume their preferred beverages and just expect them to self-regulate. It would be extremely laughable if someone argued to ban bars and liquor stores, that are say within 500 meters of a road to prevent abuses.
- db48x 10y agoYea, that's just one step down the path to a world where meaningless and unscientific personality tests (which is all of them) are used to dictate who is allowed to do what, all in the name of safety. I would much rather have the liberty rather than the illusion of safety. Another way to look at it is that, to quote Heinlein, ignorance is it's own death penalty. In principle the people dumb enough to drive while texting will kill themselves faster than people who aren't so dumb. On the other hand the risk of collateral damage is pretty high, so it could be ineffective. Having the police issue citations for it is not very effective, but probably worth it. Not an easy problem to solve, and one that's only going to get worse. I think that the only technical solution that might fix it would be truly self-driving cars, and you have to expect that to be pretty far off. Even if they were available right now it would take at least a decade to get good enough market penetration to really reduce the risk.