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Phone Addicts Are the New Drunk Drivers

292 points by zdosb 8y ago

chris_mc 8y ago
I was driving about 3mph in traffic texting my wife and did 3500 dollars damage to my car. I'm glad I learned my lesson the easy way instead of killing someone. Don't text and drive no matter what, it's easy to pull over if it's necessary!
- Someone1234 8y ago
  Sorry that happened. Thanks for sharing. What damage on your vehicle caused the high cost of repairs? Just surprisingly high for a 3~ MpH impact.
  - matwood 8y ago
    A lot of cars today have body panels that have to be replaced instead of repaired. Add in any sort of special paint color and a single panel can run $1k to make like new. Side swipe something that runs across a few panels and it can quickly add up.
    - yardie 8y ago
      I backed out a parking spot and into some guy speeding through the lot. Me, a bit of rubber on the bumper that I wiped off with a magic eraser. Him, front quarter panel and both passenger doors had to be replaced. I was pissed off about the unfairness of it all. That him driving reckless and me being in the wrong place made me at fault for thousands of dollars in damage. I'm not surprised to see a car accident with wildly different results on both vehicles.
      - Someone1234 8y ago
        Aren't you at fault though even per your own version? You pulled into a driving lane that the other vehicle was already in. Your justification for why you shouldn't be at fault is that he was "speeding" but there's no set speed limit in a parking lot, and you're meant to verify it is clear before locomotion. Plus if you witnessed them "speeding" you would have known you were pulling out in front of them, which makes you in the wrong anyway. If you didn't know they were oncoming you couldn't have known they were "speeding." It doesn't make basic logical sense that you could have both known they were speeding AND pulled out into them, because to know that you would have had eyes on their car.
        yardie 8y ago
        Yes, I’m at fault simply for backing out into the lane as far as the insurer is concerned. I’m also at fault for not having eyes in superposition. I can’t simultaneously see out of my rear left and rear right. All to say, you weren’t there and don’t know what happened. And I’ll leave it at that.
        dredmorbius 8y ago
        In many states, parking lots have a 5-15 mph speed limit. In California, the alleyway limit typically applies. There is also the basic speed law: drive no faster than is safe. https://www.mycaliforniapermit.com/california-teen-driver-education/rules-of-the-road/ https://www.mycaliforniapermit.com/california-teen-driver-ed... https://www.quora.com/Why-does-California-bother-having-a-5-mph-speed-limit-in-California-parking-lots-if-very-few-people-choose-to-follow-them https://www.quora.com/Why-does-California-bother-having-a-5-...
    - dajohnson89 8y ago
      In addition, bumpers (front and rear) are designed to pop off quite easily, to deflect force away from the vehicle. the way they crinkle up and come off, full replacement often makes sense.
  - chris_mc 8y ago
    bumper, hood, radiator, connecting parts, paint matching on a 7 year old car, etc. Not a big deal, I just wanted to tell people my story so people realize even doing it in a parking lot or neighborhood can probably kill if it is possible for me to crash that hard in bumper to bumper traffic.
- btrettel 8y ago
  One time when I was walking on the sidewalk I saw a college age kid texting while driving with his windows open. I yelled something like "EYES ON THE ROAD!!!" He was startled and nearly crashed. Not recommended, but I think he learned his lesson too...
cryofan 8y ago
the establishment is always looking for a propaganda hook to exploit for more revenue
nostromo 8y ago
This is taken as an obvious truth, but when you look at actual collision data, there seems to be no effect whatsoever. In fact, our roads have continued to become safer in the 10 or so years since the release of the iPhone.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  Could you supply said data? Also, in what way is it safer? Less collisions? Less damage? Less fatalities?
  - 0x0000000 8y ago
    Small nit you may not be aware of: use 'fewer' for nouns which can be counted (collisions, fatalities), and 'less' for nouns which can't (damage).
    - ben509 8y ago
      That's purely the personal preference of one curmudgeon from 1770. "The OED shows that less has been used of countables since the time of King Alfred the Great -- he used it that way in one of his own translations from Latin -- more than a thousand years ago (in about 888). So essentially less has been used of countables in English for just about as long as there has been a written English language." http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003775.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003775.h...
    - ClassyJacket 8y ago
      Stop nitpicking this. There's nothing unclear or ambiguous about 'less'. It refers to a smaller quantity of something. There's no reason not to use it. This is just pointless grammar Nazism.
      - aaronmcs 8y ago
        Not interested in weighing in on less/fewer, but not sure architects of genocide is the comparison we want for grammar sticklers, even if it's become a common turn of phrase. Cheapens the real thing, doesn't it?
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
This is "old man yells at cloud" area, but seriously - why can we not just leave our phones in our pocket until we get to our destination? What's that important?
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Its tempting to glance at the text and see if they're expecting you/changed plans. It's urgent because you need to make an exit decision soon depending on the answer. Its pointless to pull over because that takes longer than making a mistake about the exit. Its a drug, the potential to optimize your plans on the fly is so attractive that even folks that swear they'd never text and drive, do it the moment it has utility?
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    >see if they're expecting you/changed plans Where is this culture where it's acceptable to change plans on a guest that is driving to your house while they are driving?
    - makerofspoons 8y ago
      Welcome to being in your 20s in the USA.
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      E.g. you leave for the group lunch before they decided where its going to be (you were working at home and it'll be somewhere downtown). Going to 'somebody's house' has all but disappeared from modern culture, for most of the population. Maybe at Christmas.
  - zamalek 8y ago
    Even though my car doesn't support Android Auto, I still have it set to auto-launch on my phone. If you attempt to close Auto with the auto-launch set up, it simply re-launches. > see if they're expecting you/changed plans This is impossible with Android Auto, you can't read or send texts (without voice, which doesn't work properly in my car). It auto-responds telling people to phone me if it is time-sensitive (like changed plans). If they don't call back I'll arrive late, big whoop, at least I'm not arriving in a body bag. If they have a problem with me being late, they changed plans last-minute. None of which has happened to me. > do it the moment it has utility? It never has utility.
FlyingSideKick 8y ago
I worked at T-Mobile and did some work on this very subject our studies showed that people are so addicted that unless there is a threat of jail time or drivers license suspension people will not put down their phones.
- petschge 8y ago
  The deterrence effect of punishment relies on two factors: severity of the punishment when caught and the probability of getting caught. You can only up the former so much before a single stupid mistake ruins your life. But we could increase deterrence a lot by increasing the second factor. Just think about it: You a $5 fine stop you from using your phone? Right now probably not. But if it cost you $5 EVERY TIME you used your phone in the car you'd stop rather quickly.
- 7952 8y ago
  It would be interesting to see if painting lurid stripes on the car as a punishment would help. Or require the driver to have warning sign attached in prominent places. Make it as embarrassing as possible.
  - henryfjordan 8y ago
    Some states have different license plate designs for people convicted of drunk driving. Make a phone-themed one!
  - dvtrn 8y ago
    Can we do this for other driving offenses? Like drivers who don't signal lane changes or drive slowly in the passing lane? I'm all about publicly shaming drivers into doing better. </sarcasm>
    - ben509 8y ago
      If you regularly act a certain way in public, you haven't got much ground to complain about the shame of pointing out how you act in public.
  - 8y ago
LesZedCB 8y ago
this new world of connectedness really has some major downsides. distracted driving. instagram killing natural spaces from lack of crowd control. decreased mental wellbeing and increased suicide rates. facebook privacy concerns. somebody needs to tackle these social crises, since the incentive is not there for the companies to address it themselves.
yardie 8y ago
In this day and age of really great machine learning I find that most people refuse to use voice services unless they are forced to do so (usually because of injury). Trying to tap out a message at 80km/h on a 5" screen is pretty fucking futile. But most distracted drivers will attempt to do it anyway. Here's a neat trick, just say, "Hey Siri* Send a message to $firstname $lastname's $phone. Tell them I'm [on my way, 5 minutes away, picking up milk, buying pizza]" * Or whatever platform you use. I'm an iOS user.
- itg 8y ago
  I tried, but Siri is still really bad at speech recognition whenever I try it.
  - LeoPanthera 8y ago
    If your accent doesn't match the country you are in, change Siri's language to your native one. As a British person living in the USA, if I don't set Siri to British, she has a terrible time understanding me, but it works fine on British mode.
    - ben509 8y ago
      Not always; if you set it to Scotland, the phone just complains that it can't understand you either in angrily incomprehensible brogue.
  - duderific 8y ago
    I think it's gotten quite a bit better over the last couple of iterations. I use it all the time and works well for most simple tasks.
- toast0 8y ago
  Trying to use voice input is more distracting to me than typing. And it's easier to take a break in the middle of typing. Not to mention that voice input almost never works, and i end up typing anyway, which means I'm distracted and angry. Native californian, I mumble, but otherwise no speech pathology; but maybe i try to enunciate too hard because the computer doesn't understand me.
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kldavis4 8y ago
I wonder if there is not some technological solution that can be built into smartphones to prevent this from happening. I realize that they are doing double duty as GPS & music, but imagine if your phone could detect that you are in the driver's seat and the car is moving and disable any application but the GPS. I know this would be hard, but it doesn't seem like it would be "self-driving car" hard and would have immediate societal benefit.
- LeoPanthera 8y ago
  Apple's CarPlay heavily restricts what you can do while moving - you can only browse through lists that are short, and you can't type anything. These functions are replaced with talking to Siri, which it is assumed you can do with your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.
bonaldi 8y ago
I ride a bike in London traffic and you can tell which drivers are on phones from quite some distance. I think when police stop them they are mystified as to how they got caught - they genuinely don’t realise just how all-over-the-place they are.
btrettel 8y ago
I'm a cyclist. Over the past 5 years or so I've learned to check inside of people's cars to see if they have a phone in their hands. If they do, I try to keep as much distance between myself and them as possible. Until we change the incentives, distracted driving is very likely to remain a problem. Right now there's a lot of talk but very little action. I live in Austin, and I've spoken with the police about distracted driving after nearly being hit by a driver who ran a red light because they were distracted by their phone. (I spoke with them afterward.) The police tell me that they periodically do distracted driving enforcement operations, but only in school zones so that they get double fines. I've never seen a single distracted driving enforcement operation in Austin, but I've gone through cyclist stop sign enforcement twice. It would be interesting to see the statistics here. How many people are ticketed for distracted driving every year?
- devoply 8y ago
  It's trivial to mandate a phone be designed so that it can't be used in a moving car or for a certain amount of time since it has experienced significant acceleration. In fact you could ban certain apps like txting and calling during these times. I guess you could even mandate tech to help the phone figure out where in the car the person is sitting and only disable their phone.
  - aqme28 8y ago
    It would be hard to filter out the false positives. I'm almost always a passenger or riding a train. Locking out my phone during either of those situations would be a problem.
    - btrettel 8y ago
      I can recall a girl playing Pokemon Go on a train. The app seemed to detect the motion and asked her if she was driving every 10 minutes or so.
      - slavik81 8y ago
helloguillecl 8y ago
I am seeing users on their mobiles very frequently when I see through the back mirror while driving in the city where I live. I assume this is mostly WhatsApp use. Phone and software makers have an unique opportunity to save lives on the road by taking measures to prevent this terrible behaviour. They'll be rewarded by getting some of the public trust back, and seeing they are optimizing around public good as opposed to eyeballs. A good example is Android Auto, which prevents the driver from typing on the car's screen while driving.
- delfinom 8y ago
  The problem is always differentiating between driver and passenger.
  - helloguillecl 8y ago
    I was thinking the same thing, but for example, you could put black boxes recording phone usage for the police to access in case of an accident or random pull-over.
- ygra 8y ago
  How does it distinguish driver from passenger?
mjevans 8y ago
I think there's a legitimate difference between a quick glance at a mobile and actually trying to //compose// something on it. Even speech to text can be poor enough that if it isn't dead simple it should wait until stopped. Edit: If you disagree maybe you would like to reply with how and thus form an actual discussion? I'm suggesting the split second shift of focus equivalent to changing a radio-station or disc track is equally as distracting as a quick glance at something and indicating that I /agree/ anything past that should be a zero-motion dependent event.
- ygra 8y ago
  No, there isn't. Have your phone read messages aloud when in the car, but just reading something is not really that much better than trying to answer. Any time your eyes leave the road/mirrors you have a chance to miss something crucial. And yes, interacting with the entertainment system is just as bad, that's why there are steering wheels with controls to change the track, to enable the driver to do so without taking their eyes off the road. Around here you get a fine and a slowly-decaying record of doing something dangerous for any usage of a phone while in a car with the engine running. That might seem too harsh, but I really think it isn't. If you've endangered someone or damaged something while doing so it's also an immediate ban from driving for a month. The only sad thing is that police has to catch you doing this and that's rare.
  - mjevans 8y ago
    If the police are able to catch someone, then by definition they were distracted. If a driver can see law enforcement (which should be clearly marked as such, not some stealth car) then the distraction is only in the minds of others, as enough attention is being put on the road to avoid accidents and other issues.
lobster45 8y ago
Having the self driving features on a car such as Tesla auto pilot has really made this problem worse. People rely on their cars to stop in time, although this is not always the case
- matz1 8y ago
  Self driving features is the solution of the phone addicts.
deleted 8y ago
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heroHACK17 8y ago
Texting while driving and drunk driving should be treated as the SAME offense.
- mjevans 8y ago
  It's possible to go from composition to focused in the span of time it takes to move the hand (and eyes) from the phone back to driving mode. It isn't possible to become 'not drunk' that quickly. I rank drunk driving as worse than dealing with screaming kids as worse than writing something at a red-light as worse than just reading a preview on the screen for a measured quantity of time when in a situation that is safe enough to mentally relax and not be at 100% focus is at-hand.
  - DonaldPShimoda 8y ago
    > It's possible to go from composition to focused in the span of time it takes to move the hand (and eyes) from the phone back to driving mode. And yet it takes even less time to irreversibly ruin somebody else's life because you weren't paying attention when it mattered. Whatever is happening on your phone is not more important than other people's lives. Don't use your phone while your car is in motion — period.
  - jahewson 8y ago
    The article suggest that this isn't true. You can't regain situational awareness instantaneously: > The researchers specifically found that cell phone users are: > - 9 percent slower to deploy the brakes > - 19 percent slower to return to normal speed after braking
    - mjevans 8y ago
      That isn't relevant to the context I'm talking about. Any kind of actual composition of text should only happen while stopped; E.G. at a red light (and ideally NOT while first in line).
mindslight 8y ago
During the T9 days, was texting while driving statistically safer, or merely not a problem due to general low adoption/addiction? It feels like touchscreens in general are horrible input devices, which we compensate for by devoting an awful lot of attention to using them. I'm not asking because I'm personally interested in "safe" ways to text and drive or whatever, just really to contextualize. It also seems highly relevant to the crop of cars being released with touchscreens and soft controls for what have traditionally been tactile interfaces.
- cnasc 8y ago
  > During the T9 days, was texting while driving statistically safer I have fond memories of being in high school and texting one-handed in class on my Blackberry without looking. Not quite as ideal as T9 for one-handed use, but I was essentially stupid for the few moments I spent doing that. My brain was elsewhere. The problem with distracted driving isn't purely vision (although that's a factor). The mental context-switch is a huge problem.
mig4ng 8y ago
This is extremely bad. In Portugal I don't cross the road if the person is using a phone, unless they fully stop of course. Yet this is a problem so big that even people walking cross roads with their faces glued to their phones. It happened to me more than once almost getting into an accident, both while walking or driving because the other party is distracted by a smartphone instead of paying attention to driving or walking. People cross road like complete maniacs while using smartphones, luckily I have quick response time to brake the car, but there are other people that might not have such luck. I am afraid that in the future when my response time increases this might become a problem, even if I lower the velocity. I never use my phone while driving, not even in stop signs or red lights. Yet it is so socially acceptable to do it these days it's disgusting. I hate this so much I make an simple website to try to raise awareness[1]. I haven't dedicated much time promoting it because it was just a small side project to experiment with TailwindCSS, but I might as this problem affects even my family... [1] https://github.com/mig4ng/2min.pink https://github.com/mig4ng/2min.pink
- nothrabannosir 8y ago
  > this is a problem so big that even people walking cross roads with their faces glued to their phones. I see this comparison a lot, and I just want to clarify: when you are distracted as a pedestrian, you're risking your life. When you are distracted as a driver, you're risking other people's lives. Getting behind a wheel drunk is considerably more dangerous to society than going home on foot. Phone use equivalently so. I have far more patience with people risking their own lives, rather than those of others.
  - vonmoltke 8y ago
    > I see this comparison a lot, and I just want to clarify: when you are distracted as a pedestrian, you're risking your life. When you are distracted as a driver, you're risking other people's lives. You are letting distracted pedestrians off too lightly. They are not just risking their own lives; they are risking the lives of motorists, cyclists, and other pedestrians by potentially forcing motorists and cyclists into erratic evasive maneuvers to avoid them. Ditto for drunk pedestrians. We should not be giving them a pass just because drunk/distracted drivers are more dangerous.
pcurve 8y ago
Human drivers are becoming less road worthy. Full autonomous drive can't come soon enough.
sxates 8y ago
Here's my test for phone addiction (for men): If you are pissing into a urinal and need to look at your phone during those 15 seconds, you have a problem. And I see this a lot. A scary game: when in stop and go traffic, have a look at the person behind you. Are their eyes on the road, or their lap? In my experience, 7 out of 10 are looking at their lap, with a quick glance up every 5 seconds or so. I spend plenty of time on my phone, but geez, have some phone free moments every now and then.
- rconti 8y ago
  I do the former, but not the latter. Turns out, one of them is dangerous.
  - underwater 8y ago
    But why? When I see people doing this I figure they have zero self control. How had is it to put the phone away for 30 seconds?
- everly 8y ago
  I don't think your test is all that good. If I'm out with friends, I try to consciously avoid using my phone when we're together so that I'm present and so that they know I value their presence. Those 15 seconds at the urinal are often the best time to check notifications before getting back to phone-free socializing. Agree with your other points though.
  - Dumblydorr 8y ago
    Why do notifications need to be checked?
    - everly 8y ago
      To see if any are important enough to require action?
    - mikestew 8y ago
oarabbus_ 8y ago
I was hit on the highway by a phone user who almost killed me and my parents. Speed differential was 55mph. That is, we were completely stopped on the highway and she drove for something like a quarter mile and hit us, leaving me with nerve damage and severe lower back pain. Luckily rehab went stellar and although I have some residual burning/stinging nerve damage, I can walk, run, play sports, go to the gym - you wouldn't even have known that I spent some time in a neck brace, cast, and back pain so back I could hardly leave my bed (but it also hurt just as bad to lay in bed) after almost being killed by the distracted driver. Oh yeah, the concussion too. That was pretty rough as well.
- magnetic 8y ago
  How did you know she was distracted by her phone? I'm asking not because I don't believe you, but because my wife got rear ended about a week ago, and when the person got out of his car, he had his cell phone in his hand, but that's what you'd expect after a collision (calling family/insurance/police/etc). Did you have to go through a discovery process or? What happened to the distracted driver?
  - oarabbus_ 8y ago
    To add to it - the driver was ALSO drunk (well, above the legal limit) and also, get this, a nurse. I was told by my lawyer that the police investigation concluded that she was guilty of DUI but that due her statements the cell phone was implicated as the reason. She was above .08 barely, but she was presumably not drunk enough to drive for a quarter mile or more without looking up at the road.
tlynchpin 8y ago
I had just started actually reading TFA because this topic interests me, I was skimming past some infographic of "phone addicts spend x% not looking at the road" when - pop! - a little distraction popped up in the bottom right corner offering "hey <domainname> wanna chat". A distraction, a creepy "personalized" one no less, on an article about distractions. Too meta for me, I ctrl-w'd outta there.
- aembleton 8y ago
  It got me too. I've now disabled JS for that site in uMatrix.
silveira 8y ago
tl;dr: I was hit by a driver using his phone, I was found guilty. Last week I was changing lane in a very slow traffic traffic jam, I turn the left sign, the driver completely stops. I assume this as he giving me space to enter, I slowly enter. He then starts driving forward slowly, he starts approaching, I'm puzzled. I realize he is driving with his phone on his face. Completely unaware that I'm in his lane. He hits. We talk, he starts saying I jumped in front of him, I just tell him he did not see me because he was on the phone. He agrees and he apologizes. We exchange information and go back home. It was only some scratches in our cars. Later I do the insurance claim (we both had the same insurance company), and I discover that in his report he omits about the phone. I now I have to prove that he was one the phone and I have not jumped with my car in front of him. I could not prove that. I do have a front dashcam but only a very good and specifically placed dashcam would capture such proof. The insurance found me guilty. I don't know what was the lesson here, maybe always get a police report. Contacting the police at the moment had not crossed my head because it was was not a big deal, the driver sounded reasonable (apart from the fact he was using the phone while driving), and there was something going on that was causing the traffic jam and required the police in the first place.
- btrettel 8y ago
  Sorry to hear about this. I ride a bike with a helmet cam and I started narrating observations unlikely to be caught by camera. I'll often say something like "distracted driver" when a distracted driver is nearby. It's not perfect, but it might help in situations like this. I have found from experience that reading off people's license plate numbers tends to make them nervous, but that hasn't stopped me from doing it.
- deleted 8y ago
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gedy 8y ago
My neighbor was killed walking on sidewalk in a parking lot. Driver was staring at phone in his lap and missed turn, plowed directly into him. Put your goddamn phone away... and trying to "hide it" in your lap is worse than just holding it up in windshield.
- casefields 8y ago
  Unintended consequences strikes again.
xyproto 8y ago
In a few years, non-automatically-driven cars will be the New Drunk Drivers.
bluedino 8y ago
DUI and driving while using your phone should have equal punishment. I’m not advocating drinking and driving, but phone use is “no harm, no foul” right now. On the other hand you can drive without crashing into anyone but if you’ve had two glasses of wine with dinner, you can get charged with a crime.
- maccio92 8y ago
  Cellphone use while driving is a primary offense in Ohio, meaning you can get pulled over solely got that and receive a citation
  - jeffdavis 8y ago
    A citation is nothing. A couple drinks will put you in jail, cost you your license for a while, maybe your job, and thousands of dollars.
    - Pharmakon 8y ago
      My wife got her start as an attorney in the U.S. and her first criminal cases as defense counsel were for drunk divers. It ended up driving (no pun) her away from defense work, because these guys were inveterate offenders and never got more than a slap on the wrist. The penalties on the books for DUI and the penalties actually administered are often miles apart. That may have changed in the last decade though, I can’t say.
      - koolba 8y ago
        What do you consider a slap on the wrist? Everyone I know that’s had a DUI lost their license for a min amount of time with exponential increases for repeat offenders (one month, then two years, then 10 years). And that’s only the ones that weren’t involved in a collision.
        deleted 8y ago
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tjstankus 8y ago
As a motorcyclist, this has become my primary concern on the roads in the past few years. I constantly and actively check for drivers using their phones. If I can see their eyes or heads glancing up and down, I get far away. If they're having trouble staying in their lane, I get far away. At night, if their faces are illuminated in a blue glow, they're holding their phones and I get far away. I use those techniques in addition to all the other safety measures you get taught by the MSF. If I didn't love riding so much, I'd quit. Seriously. It's more dangerous than it's ever been. You have to be so diligent. But on two wheels, an open road without distracted drivers is still as glorious as it has ever been.
jeffdavis 8y ago
Matthew Walker's book Why We Sleep makes a clear case that drowsy driving is worse than drink driving, too. So that would mean drunk driving is actually the third leading cause of impaired driving damage. Why is the third cause villified, but not the first two?
- fenwick67 8y ago
  > So that would mean drunk driving is actually the third leading cause of impaired driving damage. That's a hard "citation needed" claim you're making.
heroHACK17 8y ago
Additionally, imposing strict consequences (like a ban from driving, loss of license, etc.) for phone addicts kills two birds with one stone: not only does it save lives, it has the potential to remove A LOT of people from their cars and onto public transportation which would drastically alleviate traffic congestion.
wcarron 8y ago
As others have said, as a motorcyclist, my number one concern on the road is a person using their mobile device while driving. I am less worried about road rage (which is still a top concern for me) than distracted drivers. I see it literally hundreds of times a day. People are driving their cars at over 70mph while texting. They use instagram and facebook at stoplights. They text or call while driving too fast down residential roads. They cause traffic delays because they don't accelerate at a green light for many seconds after the car in front of them has. I have seen them hit other cars and narrowly miss pedestrians in crosswalks, completely oblivious half the time that they nearly murdered someone. If I pull up next to them and tell them to put their phone down by pantomime, half the time they flip me off, laugh, or lay on their horn. They do not think they are doing anything wrong and that I am the asshole for telling them to put the phone down. Distracted drivers are murderers. Distracted drivers are guilty of reckless endangerment. Distracted drivers need to be punished with prejudice. It is statistically more dangerous than driving intoxicated.
- i_am_proteus 8y ago
  Amen, brother. I used to be on a white R1200RS and I'd get mistaken for CHP in California. It was amusing to see them try to hide their phones when I'd honk at them. A lot less amusing when they'd wander into my lane, oblivious. Every single close call I've had in the last year of riding has been from a motorist operating a cell phone. I'm nearly of a mind to roll a helmet cam and start a Twitter account with footage of these people, along with their plates and a CHP tag. I haven't done it yet because that would take my riding focus away from steering the safest path. But it seems like it's gotten worse lately, and there doesn't seem to be much enforcement.
  - btrettel 8y ago
    I ride a bicycle with a helmet cam and I don't think the helmet cam has made me ride any less safe. It's quite rare that I'll look somewhere for the specific purpose of recording something. I'd fully recommend it to motorcyclists and bicyclists. The helmet cam also has been quite useful for "post-mortems" of close calls. I can replay the video and think about what I should have done differently.
matz1 8y ago
Good thing we are on the verge of realization of self driving car.
davidrupp 8y ago
Driving my car (phone in pocket, do-not-disturb on): Yesterday: Passed a college-aged kid on a (edit: motorized) scooter, no helmet, going about 45 mph, reading his phone. Today: Passed a middle-school-aged kid (edit: on a bicycle), with a helmet, going about 3 mph, reading his phone. Not sure which earns his Darwin Award first. It's a problem, either way.
- johnthedebs 8y ago
  I don’t know if I follow, are you saying the second example is a problem? If you are, it’s not clear to me why that is. And are you sure the scooter was going 45mph? That seems unrealistically fast given that even on my bike (which is probably much more stable) achieving 20+mph in NYC is pretty uncommon.
  - davidrupp 8y ago
    (edit: "Scooter" is overloaded. Think "Vespa", not "Razor".) I didn't have a radar gun on him, no. But I was doing about 50 passing him, so ...
  - davidrupp 8y ago
    And yes, the kid on his bike is a problem. More of a problem, in some ways. This was in my neighborhood, so speeds were low all around. But I had to time passing him very carefully, and I was very aware of how much he was weaving around the road, however slowly. And this kid will be on a scooter next. Then in a car. And having his phone available at all times will be even more second-nature to him. Maybe he'll get lucky, and truly autonomous vehicles will be a thing before he gets himself killed or badly injured. Maybe.
nl 8y ago
Isn't using a phone while driving illegal in most countries now? Here in Australia you can only touch one if it is in one of those GPS holder things, with ~$400 fines for non-compliance. The police put a few plain clothed ppl at traffic lights and raise thousands. Sure it's revenue raising, but the message gets out pretty quickly.
- markmark 8y ago
  Not sure how quickly that message is getting out, mobile phone use while driving is very common here. It's _really_ noticeable when you're on a motorbike, your view is clearer, but also being a little higher you can see the phone on people's laps as they drive along looking down at them.
  - nl 8y ago
    I'm a cyclist. I know how bad it is, but ppl know that they are doing the wrong thing now at least.
blang 8y ago
I wonder if this could be solved (or at least made drastically better) with insurance incentives + technology. Idea would be reward drivers willing to ditch their phones while driving entirely, by having drastically reduced car insurance rates. I'm not sure how it would work, but there would be a system in the car that would verify there is no active phone. Clearly there are a lot of details to be worked out both on the technological, insurances pricing, and privacy sides, but it feels like this could be a way forward.
carapace 8y ago
Cars and phones already have the sensors and comms to be able to curb this behavior, at least some of the time. Your car and phone "know" (potentially) when you're using them at the same time. Is there a technological fix? And if so, do we want to use it?
sethhochberg 8y ago
Its disappointing to see that so many voices in this discussion are focused on self-driving cars and the like as the savoir solutions - I always wish there would be some discussion of ways to help people be less reliant on cars, so they spend less time driving, are less likely to get distracted while doing it, and everybody is both safer _and_ living in a less car-centric world. We are - realistically - decades away from outright bans on human-operated vehicles at any real scale... so why not try to reign in the ever-expanding sprawl and car-centric planning that encourages/requires such widespread use of vehicles by distracted people, drunk people, etc in the first place? If its not alcohol, its phones. If its not phones, its makeup, or breakfast, or a fight with a passenger... more people who can walk, take transit, bike, etc means fewer deadly distractions or impairments.
auber 8y ago
I was driving on the freeway with my girlfriend and we saw a guy driving next to us who was literally holding the phone right in front of his face video chatting with someone. Not looking down, but looking straight and level into the huge phone he was holding in front of his face. It was so unusual that we looked at each other in disbelief. I was in San Jose and there was a young woman who was behind me. We were stopped in a turn lane waiting for the green. This girl literally engaged in this unprotected left turn while looking straight downward into her lap. like, completely 90 degrees neck bent downwards without looking up whatsoever. She was half way through the turn, half fucking way, before I laid on my horn. She knew exactly who that horn was for and she bolted upright with a very pouty look on her face. She could have easily killed someone. Everyone seems to agree that this is a serious and deadly problem. Therefore I think it is justified to discuss the problem in as much of an open fashion as possible, not overlooking any patterns or aspects of the problem that might help to solve it, no matter how unpopular. The fact of the matter is that 90 percent of the time I see someone looking straight down into their laps while operating 2000 pounds of metal, they are a young female. Girls have a problem with phones. Nobody would argue with me if I said that guys have a problem with high speeds, as the insurance companies know. And I’m sorry but girls have a problem with phones. It’s just true. It might help to put on a PSA targeting them. But the ultimate solution is to just not let young people drive. It doesn’t make any sense to let these children drive. 90 percent of the time I observe a car doing something dangerous and I am able to see inside, it’s a young person. Letting people drive at 16 is fucking retarded. And some enforcement of drunk driving would be nice too. The few times I’ve been at bars, I saw people streaming out the back at closing, all of them drunk with keys in their hands. Nobody does anything.
senectus1 8y ago
I have Personalised licence plates that read "AFK". It used to be a nerdy geek joke... but these days I see it as a bit of a statement on my and (what others) driving habits should be.
Tiktaalik 8y ago
Peculiar to blame the phone for killing people and not the several ton object that crashes into them. Of course people should stay off their phones, but there are plenty of ways that people can make mistakes driving, and the best way to make pedestrians safe is to limit their interactions with cars. We need to fundamentally back away from the automobile oriented design of our cities. This is the real solution, not doubling down on car infrastructure and hoping that some vaporware self driving software will save us.
dingo_bat 8y ago
The one time I've been in any sort of accident was when I was fumbling around with maps on my old Nokia C5. The front tire grazed the sidewalk, and the tire basically disintegrated after a few kilometers. Since then, I'm very particular about not using the phone at all. I've tried to use Google assistant to do things like change tracks, or start navigation, but it's not reliable enough yet.
mailslot 8y ago
I’m wondering if these aren’t the same people. The ones that, if not texting, are driving while putting on makeup, ogling every lady in a dress, turning into oncoming traffic, popping ambien, or driving drunk. It seems like a personality type that’s generally careless and self important. Texting isn’t much more distracting than the thousands of other unsafe things people do.
908087 8y ago
Many here who work for companies like Facebook probably have blood on your hands as a results of your pursuits to "increase engagement".
dmckeon 8y ago
1) front and rear-facing dash cams to defend against damage claims 2) configure cars to track phone usage, time-stamped, and downloadable thru the OBD port. If driver is sole occupant, some use of phone would be provable. No good for off-line activity, like games. Obvious privacy issues like other OBD data. 3) Pedestrians need an app for the “self-walking phone” with sub-1-meter location accuracy that flashes green man, or yellow or red hand when phone-obsessed user is about to step off curb into cross-walk or traffic.
- helloguillecl 8y ago
  2) Actually the black box could be in the phone itself. Could be actually be implemented in existing phones via software upgrade.
fqwefqwef341 8y ago
In The Netherlands, even texting while riding your bicycle will likely be outlawed in a few months [1]. Personally I think this is overreach, akin to forbidding pedestrians to use their phone while walking the sidewalk: they're risking (mostly) their own life, not endangering the lives of others. (Yes, I got hit by a distracted bicyclist once in my life, and many many more close calls.) [1] https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/fiets/vraag-en-antwoord/mag-ik-bellen-en-naar-muziek-luisteren-op-de-fiets https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/fiets/vraag-en-antw...

292 points by zdosb 8y ago

I was driving about 3mph in traffic texting my wife and did 3500 dollars damage to my car. I'm glad I learned my lesson the easy way instead of killing someone. Don't text and drive no matter what, it's easy to pull over if it's necessary!

Someone1234 8y ago
Sorry that happened. Thanks for sharing. What damage on your vehicle caused the high cost of repairs? Just surprisingly high for a 3~ MpH impact.
- matwood 8y ago
  A lot of cars today have body panels that have to be replaced instead of repaired. Add in any sort of special paint color and a single panel can run $1k to make like new. Side swipe something that runs across a few panels and it can quickly add up.
  - yardie 8y ago
    I backed out a parking spot and into some guy speeding through the lot. Me, a bit of rubber on the bumper that I wiped off with a magic eraser. Him, front quarter panel and both passenger doors had to be replaced. I was pissed off about the unfairness of it all. That him driving reckless and me being in the wrong place made me at fault for thousands of dollars in damage. I'm not surprised to see a car accident with wildly different results on both vehicles.
    - Someone1234 8y ago
      Aren't you at fault though even per your own version? You pulled into a driving lane that the other vehicle was already in. Your justification for why you shouldn't be at fault is that he was "speeding" but there's no set speed limit in a parking lot, and you're meant to verify it is clear before locomotion. Plus if you witnessed them "speeding" you would have known you were pulling out in front of them, which makes you in the wrong anyway. If you didn't know they were oncoming you couldn't have known they were "speeding." It doesn't make basic logical sense that you could have both known they were speeding AND pulled out into them, because to know that you would have had eyes on their car.
      - yardie 8y ago
        Yes, I’m at fault simply for backing out into the lane as far as the insurer is concerned. I’m also at fault for not having eyes in superposition. I can’t simultaneously see out of my rear left and rear right. All to say, you weren’t there and don’t know what happened. And I’ll leave it at that.
      - dredmorbius 8y ago
        In many states, parking lots have a 5-15 mph speed limit. In California, the alleyway limit typically applies. There is also the basic speed law: drive no faster than is safe. https://www.mycaliforniapermit.com/california-teen-driver-education/rules-of-the-road/ https://www.mycaliforniapermit.com/california-teen-driver-ed... https://www.quora.com/Why-does-California-bother-having-a-5-mph-speed-limit-in-California-parking-lots-if-very-few-people-choose-to-follow-them https://www.quora.com/Why-does-California-bother-having-a-5-...
  - dajohnson89 8y ago
    In addition, bumpers (front and rear) are designed to pop off quite easily, to deflect force away from the vehicle. the way they crinkle up and come off, full replacement often makes sense.
- chris_mc 8y ago
  bumper, hood, radiator, connecting parts, paint matching on a 7 year old car, etc. Not a big deal, I just wanted to tell people my story so people realize even doing it in a parking lot or neighborhood can probably kill if it is possible for me to crash that hard in bumper to bumper traffic.
btrettel 8y ago
One time when I was walking on the sidewalk I saw a college age kid texting while driving with his windows open. I yelled something like "EYES ON THE ROAD!!!" He was startled and nearly crashed. Not recommended, but I think he learned his lesson too...

cryofan 8y ago

the establishment is always looking for a propaganda hook to exploit for more revenue

nostromo 8y ago

This is taken as an obvious truth, but when you look at actual collision data, there seems to be no effect whatsoever. In fact, our roads have continued to become safer in the 10 or so years since the release of the iPhone.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
Could you supply said data? Also, in what way is it safer? Less collisions? Less damage? Less fatalities?
- 0x0000000 8y ago
  Small nit you may not be aware of: use 'fewer' for nouns which can be counted (collisions, fatalities), and 'less' for nouns which can't (damage).
  - ben509 8y ago
    That's purely the personal preference of one curmudgeon from 1770. "The OED shows that less has been used of countables since the time of King Alfred the Great -- he used it that way in one of his own translations from Latin -- more than a thousand years ago (in about 888). So essentially less has been used of countables in English for just about as long as there has been a written English language." http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003775.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003775.h...
  - ClassyJacket 8y ago
    Stop nitpicking this. There's nothing unclear or ambiguous about 'less'. It refers to a smaller quantity of something. There's no reason not to use it. This is just pointless grammar Nazism.
    - aaronmcs 8y ago
      Not interested in weighing in on less/fewer, but not sure architects of genocide is the comparison we want for grammar sticklers, even if it's become a common turn of phrase. Cheapens the real thing, doesn't it?

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

This is "old man yells at cloud" area, but seriously - why can we not just leave our phones in our pocket until we get to our destination? What's that important?

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
Its tempting to glance at the text and see if they're expecting you/changed plans. It's urgent because you need to make an exit decision soon depending on the answer. Its pointless to pull over because that takes longer than making a mistake about the exit. Its a drug, the potential to optimize your plans on the fly is so attractive that even folks that swear they'd never text and drive, do it the moment it has utility?
- whatshisface 8y ago
  >see if they're expecting you/changed plans Where is this culture where it's acceptable to change plans on a guest that is driving to your house while they are driving?
  - makerofspoons 8y ago
    Welcome to being in your 20s in the USA.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    E.g. you leave for the group lunch before they decided where its going to be (you were working at home and it'll be somewhere downtown). Going to 'somebody's house' has all but disappeared from modern culture, for most of the population. Maybe at Christmas.
- zamalek 8y ago
  Even though my car doesn't support Android Auto, I still have it set to auto-launch on my phone. If you attempt to close Auto with the auto-launch set up, it simply re-launches. > see if they're expecting you/changed plans This is impossible with Android Auto, you can't read or send texts (without voice, which doesn't work properly in my car). It auto-responds telling people to phone me if it is time-sensitive (like changed plans). If they don't call back I'll arrive late, big whoop, at least I'm not arriving in a body bag. If they have a problem with me being late, they changed plans last-minute. None of which has happened to me. > do it the moment it has utility? It never has utility.

FlyingSideKick 8y ago

I worked at T-Mobile and did some work on this very subject our studies showed that people are so addicted that unless there is a threat of jail time or drivers license suspension people will not put down their phones.

petschge 8y ago
The deterrence effect of punishment relies on two factors: severity of the punishment when caught and the probability of getting caught. You can only up the former so much before a single stupid mistake ruins your life. But we could increase deterrence a lot by increasing the second factor. Just think about it: You a $5 fine stop you from using your phone? Right now probably not. But if it cost you $5 EVERY TIME you used your phone in the car you'd stop rather quickly.
7952 8y ago
It would be interesting to see if painting lurid stripes on the car as a punishment would help. Or require the driver to have warning sign attached in prominent places. Make it as embarrassing as possible.
- henryfjordan 8y ago
  Some states have different license plate designs for people convicted of drunk driving. Make a phone-themed one!
- dvtrn 8y ago
  Can we do this for other driving offenses? Like drivers who don't signal lane changes or drive slowly in the passing lane? I'm all about publicly shaming drivers into doing better. </sarcasm>
  - ben509 8y ago
    If you regularly act a certain way in public, you haven't got much ground to complain about the shame of pointing out how you act in public.
- 8y ago

LesZedCB 8y ago

this new world of connectedness really has some major downsides. distracted driving. instagram killing natural spaces from lack of crowd control. decreased mental wellbeing and increased suicide rates. facebook privacy concerns. somebody needs to tackle these social crises, since the incentive is not there for the companies to address it themselves.

yardie 8y ago

In this day and age of really great machine learning I find that most people refuse to use voice services unless they are forced to do so (usually because of injury). Trying to tap out a message at 80km/h on a 5" screen is pretty fucking futile. But most distracted drivers will attempt to do it anyway. Here's a neat trick, just say, "Hey Siri* Send a message to $firstname $lastname's $phone. Tell them I'm [on my way, 5 minutes away, picking up milk, buying pizza]" * Or whatever platform you use. I'm an iOS user.

itg 8y ago
I tried, but Siri is still really bad at speech recognition whenever I try it.
- LeoPanthera 8y ago
  If your accent doesn't match the country you are in, change Siri's language to your native one. As a British person living in the USA, if I don't set Siri to British, she has a terrible time understanding me, but it works fine on British mode.
  - ben509 8y ago
    Not always; if you set it to Scotland, the phone just complains that it can't understand you either in angrily incomprehensible brogue.
- duderific 8y ago
  I think it's gotten quite a bit better over the last couple of iterations. I use it all the time and works well for most simple tasks.
toast0 8y ago
Trying to use voice input is more distracting to me than typing. And it's easier to take a break in the middle of typing. Not to mention that voice input almost never works, and i end up typing anyway, which means I'm distracted and angry. Native californian, I mumble, but otherwise no speech pathology; but maybe i try to enunciate too hard because the computer doesn't understand me.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

kldavis4 8y ago

I wonder if there is not some technological solution that can be built into smartphones to prevent this from happening. I realize that they are doing double duty as GPS & music, but imagine if your phone could detect that you are in the driver's seat and the car is moving and disable any application but the GPS. I know this would be hard, but it doesn't seem like it would be "self-driving car" hard and would have immediate societal benefit.

LeoPanthera 8y ago
Apple's CarPlay heavily restricts what you can do while moving - you can only browse through lists that are short, and you can't type anything. These functions are replaced with talking to Siri, which it is assumed you can do with your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.

bonaldi 8y ago

I ride a bike in London traffic and you can tell which drivers are on phones from quite some distance. I think when police stop them they are mystified as to how they got caught - they genuinely don’t realise just how all-over-the-place they are.

btrettel 8y ago

I'm a cyclist. Over the past 5 years or so I've learned to check inside of people's cars to see if they have a phone in their hands. If they do, I try to keep as much distance between myself and them as possible. Until we change the incentives, distracted driving is very likely to remain a problem. Right now there's a lot of talk but very little action. I live in Austin, and I've spoken with the police about distracted driving after nearly being hit by a driver who ran a red light because they were distracted by their phone. (I spoke with them afterward.) The police tell me that they periodically do distracted driving enforcement operations, but only in school zones so that they get double fines. I've never seen a single distracted driving enforcement operation in Austin, but I've gone through cyclist stop sign enforcement twice. It would be interesting to see the statistics here. How many people are ticketed for distracted driving every year?

devoply 8y ago
It's trivial to mandate a phone be designed so that it can't be used in a moving car or for a certain amount of time since it has experienced significant acceleration. In fact you could ban certain apps like txting and calling during these times. I guess you could even mandate tech to help the phone figure out where in the car the person is sitting and only disable their phone.
- aqme28 8y ago
  It would be hard to filter out the false positives. I'm almost always a passenger or riding a train. Locking out my phone during either of those situations would be a problem.
  - btrettel 8y ago
    I can recall a girl playing Pokemon Go on a train. The app seemed to detect the motion and asked her if she was driving every 10 minutes or so.
    - slavik81 8y ago

helloguillecl 8y ago

I am seeing users on their mobiles very frequently when I see through the back mirror while driving in the city where I live. I assume this is mostly WhatsApp use. Phone and software makers have an unique opportunity to save lives on the road by taking measures to prevent this terrible behaviour. They'll be rewarded by getting some of the public trust back, and seeing they are optimizing around public good as opposed to eyeballs. A good example is Android Auto, which prevents the driver from typing on the car's screen while driving.

delfinom 8y ago
The problem is always differentiating between driver and passenger.
- helloguillecl 8y ago
  I was thinking the same thing, but for example, you could put black boxes recording phone usage for the police to access in case of an accident or random pull-over.
ygra 8y ago
How does it distinguish driver from passenger?

mjevans 8y ago

I think there's a legitimate difference between a quick glance at a mobile and actually trying to //compose// something on it. Even speech to text can be poor enough that if it isn't dead simple it should wait until stopped. Edit: If you disagree maybe you would like to reply with how and thus form an actual discussion? I'm suggesting the split second shift of focus equivalent to changing a radio-station or disc track is equally as distracting as a quick glance at something and indicating that I /agree/ anything past that should be a zero-motion dependent event.

ygra 8y ago
No, there isn't. Have your phone read messages aloud when in the car, but just reading something is not really that much better than trying to answer. Any time your eyes leave the road/mirrors you have a chance to miss something crucial. And yes, interacting with the entertainment system is just as bad, that's why there are steering wheels with controls to change the track, to enable the driver to do so without taking their eyes off the road. Around here you get a fine and a slowly-decaying record of doing something dangerous for any usage of a phone while in a car with the engine running. That might seem too harsh, but I really think it isn't. If you've endangered someone or damaged something while doing so it's also an immediate ban from driving for a month. The only sad thing is that police has to catch you doing this and that's rare.
- mjevans 8y ago
  If the police are able to catch someone, then by definition they were distracted. If a driver can see law enforcement (which should be clearly marked as such, not some stealth car) then the distraction is only in the minds of others, as enough attention is being put on the road to avoid accidents and other issues.

lobster45 8y ago

Having the self driving features on a car such as Tesla auto pilot has really made this problem worse. People rely on their cars to stop in time, although this is not always the case

matz1 8y ago
Self driving features is the solution of the phone addicts.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

heroHACK17 8y ago

Texting while driving and drunk driving should be treated as the SAME offense.

mjevans 8y ago
It's possible to go from composition to focused in the span of time it takes to move the hand (and eyes) from the phone back to driving mode. It isn't possible to become 'not drunk' that quickly. I rank drunk driving as worse than dealing with screaming kids as worse than writing something at a red-light as worse than just reading a preview on the screen for a measured quantity of time when in a situation that is safe enough to mentally relax and not be at 100% focus is at-hand.
- DonaldPShimoda 8y ago
  > It's possible to go from composition to focused in the span of time it takes to move the hand (and eyes) from the phone back to driving mode. And yet it takes even less time to irreversibly ruin somebody else's life because you weren't paying attention when it mattered. Whatever is happening on your phone is not more important than other people's lives. Don't use your phone while your car is in motion — period.
- jahewson 8y ago
  The article suggest that this isn't true. You can't regain situational awareness instantaneously: > The researchers specifically found that cell phone users are: > - 9 percent slower to deploy the brakes > - 19 percent slower to return to normal speed after braking
  - mjevans 8y ago
    That isn't relevant to the context I'm talking about. Any kind of actual composition of text should only happen while stopped; E.G. at a red light (and ideally NOT while first in line).

mindslight 8y ago

During the T9 days, was texting while driving statistically safer, or merely not a problem due to general low adoption/addiction? It feels like touchscreens in general are horrible input devices, which we compensate for by devoting an awful lot of attention to using them. I'm not asking because I'm personally interested in "safe" ways to text and drive or whatever, just really to contextualize. It also seems highly relevant to the crop of cars being released with touchscreens and soft controls for what have traditionally been tactile interfaces.

cnasc 8y ago
> During the T9 days, was texting while driving statistically safer I have fond memories of being in high school and texting one-handed in class on my Blackberry without looking. Not quite as ideal as T9 for one-handed use, but I was essentially stupid for the few moments I spent doing that. My brain was elsewhere. The problem with distracted driving isn't purely vision (although that's a factor). The mental context-switch is a huge problem.

mig4ng 8y ago

This is extremely bad. In Portugal I don't cross the road if the person is using a phone, unless they fully stop of course. Yet this is a problem so big that even people walking cross roads with their faces glued to their phones. It happened to me more than once almost getting into an accident, both while walking or driving because the other party is distracted by a smartphone instead of paying attention to driving or walking. People cross road like complete maniacs while using smartphones, luckily I have quick response time to brake the car, but there are other people that might not have such luck. I am afraid that in the future when my response time increases this might become a problem, even if I lower the velocity. I never use my phone while driving, not even in stop signs or red lights. Yet it is so socially acceptable to do it these days it's disgusting. I hate this so much I make an simple website to try to raise awareness[1]. I haven't dedicated much time promoting it because it was just a small side project to experiment with TailwindCSS, but I might as this problem affects even my family... [1] https://github.com/mig4ng/2min.pink https://github.com/mig4ng/2min.pink

nothrabannosir 8y ago
> this is a problem so big that even people walking cross roads with their faces glued to their phones. I see this comparison a lot, and I just want to clarify: when you are distracted as a pedestrian, you're risking your life. When you are distracted as a driver, you're risking other people's lives. Getting behind a wheel drunk is considerably more dangerous to society than going home on foot. Phone use equivalently so. I have far more patience with people risking their own lives, rather than those of others.
- vonmoltke 8y ago
  > I see this comparison a lot, and I just want to clarify: when you are distracted as a pedestrian, you're risking your life. When you are distracted as a driver, you're risking other people's lives. You are letting distracted pedestrians off too lightly. They are not just risking their own lives; they are risking the lives of motorists, cyclists, and other pedestrians by potentially forcing motorists and cyclists into erratic evasive maneuvers to avoid them. Ditto for drunk pedestrians. We should not be giving them a pass just because drunk/distracted drivers are more dangerous.

pcurve 8y ago

Human drivers are becoming less road worthy. Full autonomous drive can't come soon enough.

sxates 8y ago

Here's my test for phone addiction (for men): If you are pissing into a urinal and need to look at your phone during those 15 seconds, you have a problem. And I see this a lot. A scary game: when in stop and go traffic, have a look at the person behind you. Are their eyes on the road, or their lap? In my experience, 7 out of 10 are looking at their lap, with a quick glance up every 5 seconds or so. I spend plenty of time on my phone, but geez, have some phone free moments every now and then.

rconti 8y ago
I do the former, but not the latter. Turns out, one of them is dangerous.
- underwater 8y ago
  But why? When I see people doing this I figure they have zero self control. How had is it to put the phone away for 30 seconds?
everly 8y ago
I don't think your test is all that good. If I'm out with friends, I try to consciously avoid using my phone when we're together so that I'm present and so that they know I value their presence. Those 15 seconds at the urinal are often the best time to check notifications before getting back to phone-free socializing. Agree with your other points though.
- Dumblydorr 8y ago
  Why do notifications need to be checked?
  - everly 8y ago
    To see if any are important enough to require action?
  - mikestew 8y ago

oarabbus_ 8y ago

I was hit on the highway by a phone user who almost killed me and my parents. Speed differential was 55mph. That is, we were completely stopped on the highway and she drove for something like a quarter mile and hit us, leaving me with nerve damage and severe lower back pain. Luckily rehab went stellar and although I have some residual burning/stinging nerve damage, I can walk, run, play sports, go to the gym - you wouldn't even have known that I spent some time in a neck brace, cast, and back pain so back I could hardly leave my bed (but it also hurt just as bad to lay in bed) after almost being killed by the distracted driver. Oh yeah, the concussion too. That was pretty rough as well.

magnetic 8y ago
How did you know she was distracted by her phone? I'm asking not because I don't believe you, but because my wife got rear ended about a week ago, and when the person got out of his car, he had his cell phone in his hand, but that's what you'd expect after a collision (calling family/insurance/police/etc). Did you have to go through a discovery process or? What happened to the distracted driver?
- oarabbus_ 8y ago
  To add to it - the driver was ALSO drunk (well, above the legal limit) and also, get this, a nurse. I was told by my lawyer that the police investigation concluded that she was guilty of DUI but that due her statements the cell phone was implicated as the reason. She was above .08 barely, but she was presumably not drunk enough to drive for a quarter mile or more without looking up at the road.

tlynchpin 8y ago

I had just started actually reading TFA because this topic interests me, I was skimming past some infographic of "phone addicts spend x% not looking at the road" when - pop! - a little distraction popped up in the bottom right corner offering "hey <domainname> wanna chat". A distraction, a creepy "personalized" one no less, on an article about distractions. Too meta for me, I ctrl-w'd outta there.

aembleton 8y ago
It got me too. I've now disabled JS for that site in uMatrix.

silveira 8y ago

tl;dr: I was hit by a driver using his phone, I was found guilty. Last week I was changing lane in a very slow traffic traffic jam, I turn the left sign, the driver completely stops. I assume this as he giving me space to enter, I slowly enter. He then starts driving forward slowly, he starts approaching, I'm puzzled. I realize he is driving with his phone on his face. Completely unaware that I'm in his lane. He hits. We talk, he starts saying I jumped in front of him, I just tell him he did not see me because he was on the phone. He agrees and he apologizes. We exchange information and go back home. It was only some scratches in our cars. Later I do the insurance claim (we both had the same insurance company), and I discover that in his report he omits about the phone. I now I have to prove that he was one the phone and I have not jumped with my car in front of him. I could not prove that. I do have a front dashcam but only a very good and specifically placed dashcam would capture such proof. The insurance found me guilty. I don't know what was the lesson here, maybe always get a police report. Contacting the police at the moment had not crossed my head because it was was not a big deal, the driver sounded reasonable (apart from the fact he was using the phone while driving), and there was something going on that was causing the traffic jam and required the police in the first place.

btrettel 8y ago
Sorry to hear about this. I ride a bike with a helmet cam and I started narrating observations unlikely to be caught by camera. I'll often say something like "distracted driver" when a distracted driver is nearby. It's not perfect, but it might help in situations like this. I have found from experience that reading off people's license plate numbers tends to make them nervous, but that hasn't stopped me from doing it.
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gedy 8y ago

My neighbor was killed walking on sidewalk in a parking lot. Driver was staring at phone in his lap and missed turn, plowed directly into him. Put your goddamn phone away... and trying to "hide it" in your lap is worse than just holding it up in windshield.

casefields 8y ago
Unintended consequences strikes again.

xyproto 8y ago

In a few years, non-automatically-driven cars will be the New Drunk Drivers.

bluedino 8y ago

DUI and driving while using your phone should have equal punishment. I’m not advocating drinking and driving, but phone use is “no harm, no foul” right now. On the other hand you can drive without crashing into anyone but if you’ve had two glasses of wine with dinner, you can get charged with a crime.

maccio92 8y ago
Cellphone use while driving is a primary offense in Ohio, meaning you can get pulled over solely got that and receive a citation
- jeffdavis 8y ago
  A citation is nothing. A couple drinks will put you in jail, cost you your license for a while, maybe your job, and thousands of dollars.
  - Pharmakon 8y ago
    My wife got her start as an attorney in the U.S. and her first criminal cases as defense counsel were for drunk divers. It ended up driving (no pun) her away from defense work, because these guys were inveterate offenders and never got more than a slap on the wrist. The penalties on the books for DUI and the penalties actually administered are often miles apart. That may have changed in the last decade though, I can’t say.
    - koolba 8y ago
      What do you consider a slap on the wrist? Everyone I know that’s had a DUI lost their license for a min amount of time with exponential increases for repeat offenders (one month, then two years, then 10 years). And that’s only the ones that weren’t involved in a collision.
      - deleted 8y ago
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tjstankus 8y ago

As a motorcyclist, this has become my primary concern on the roads in the past few years. I constantly and actively check for drivers using their phones. If I can see their eyes or heads glancing up and down, I get far away. If they're having trouble staying in their lane, I get far away. At night, if their faces are illuminated in a blue glow, they're holding their phones and I get far away. I use those techniques in addition to all the other safety measures you get taught by the MSF. If I didn't love riding so much, I'd quit. Seriously. It's more dangerous than it's ever been. You have to be so diligent. But on two wheels, an open road without distracted drivers is still as glorious as it has ever been.

jeffdavis 8y ago

Matthew Walker's book Why We Sleep makes a clear case that drowsy driving is worse than drink driving, too. So that would mean drunk driving is actually the third leading cause of impaired driving damage. Why is the third cause villified, but not the first two?

fenwick67 8y ago
> So that would mean drunk driving is actually the third leading cause of impaired driving damage. That's a hard "citation needed" claim you're making.

heroHACK17 8y ago

Additionally, imposing strict consequences (like a ban from driving, loss of license, etc.) for phone addicts kills two birds with one stone: not only does it save lives, it has the potential to remove A LOT of people from their cars and onto public transportation which would drastically alleviate traffic congestion.

wcarron 8y ago

As others have said, as a motorcyclist, my number one concern on the road is a person using their mobile device while driving. I am less worried about road rage (which is still a top concern for me) than distracted drivers. I see it literally hundreds of times a day. People are driving their cars at over 70mph while texting. They use instagram and facebook at stoplights. They text or call while driving too fast down residential roads. They cause traffic delays because they don't accelerate at a green light for many seconds after the car in front of them has. I have seen them hit other cars and narrowly miss pedestrians in crosswalks, completely oblivious half the time that they nearly murdered someone. If I pull up next to them and tell them to put their phone down by pantomime, half the time they flip me off, laugh, or lay on their horn. They do not think they are doing anything wrong and that I am the asshole for telling them to put the phone down. Distracted drivers are murderers. Distracted drivers are guilty of reckless endangerment. Distracted drivers need to be punished with prejudice. It is statistically more dangerous than driving intoxicated.

i_am_proteus 8y ago
Amen, brother. I used to be on a white R1200RS and I'd get mistaken for CHP in California. It was amusing to see them try to hide their phones when I'd honk at them. A lot less amusing when they'd wander into my lane, oblivious. Every single close call I've had in the last year of riding has been from a motorist operating a cell phone. I'm nearly of a mind to roll a helmet cam and start a Twitter account with footage of these people, along with their plates and a CHP tag. I haven't done it yet because that would take my riding focus away from steering the safest path. But it seems like it's gotten worse lately, and there doesn't seem to be much enforcement.
- btrettel 8y ago
  I ride a bicycle with a helmet cam and I don't think the helmet cam has made me ride any less safe. It's quite rare that I'll look somewhere for the specific purpose of recording something. I'd fully recommend it to motorcyclists and bicyclists. The helmet cam also has been quite useful for "post-mortems" of close calls. I can replay the video and think about what I should have done differently.

matz1 8y ago

Good thing we are on the verge of realization of self driving car.

davidrupp 8y ago

Driving my car (phone in pocket, do-not-disturb on): Yesterday: Passed a college-aged kid on a (edit: motorized) scooter, no helmet, going about 45 mph, reading his phone. Today: Passed a middle-school-aged kid (edit: on a bicycle), with a helmet, going about 3 mph, reading his phone. Not sure which earns his Darwin Award first. It's a problem, either way.

johnthedebs 8y ago
I don’t know if I follow, are you saying the second example is a problem? If you are, it’s not clear to me why that is. And are you sure the scooter was going 45mph? That seems unrealistically fast given that even on my bike (which is probably much more stable) achieving 20+mph in NYC is pretty uncommon.
- davidrupp 8y ago
  (edit: "Scooter" is overloaded. Think "Vespa", not "Razor".) I didn't have a radar gun on him, no. But I was doing about 50 passing him, so ...
- davidrupp 8y ago
  And yes, the kid on his bike is a problem. More of a problem, in some ways. This was in my neighborhood, so speeds were low all around. But I had to time passing him very carefully, and I was very aware of how much he was weaving around the road, however slowly. And this kid will be on a scooter next. Then in a car. And having his phone available at all times will be even more second-nature to him. Maybe he'll get lucky, and truly autonomous vehicles will be a thing before he gets himself killed or badly injured. Maybe.

nl 8y ago

Isn't using a phone while driving illegal in most countries now? Here in Australia you can only touch one if it is in one of those GPS holder things, with ~$400 fines for non-compliance. The police put a few plain clothed ppl at traffic lights and raise thousands. Sure it's revenue raising, but the message gets out pretty quickly.

markmark 8y ago
Not sure how quickly that message is getting out, mobile phone use while driving is very common here. It's _really_ noticeable when you're on a motorbike, your view is clearer, but also being a little higher you can see the phone on people's laps as they drive along looking down at them.
- nl 8y ago
  I'm a cyclist. I know how bad it is, but ppl know that they are doing the wrong thing now at least.

blang 8y ago

I wonder if this could be solved (or at least made drastically better) with insurance incentives + technology. Idea would be reward drivers willing to ditch their phones while driving entirely, by having drastically reduced car insurance rates. I'm not sure how it would work, but there would be a system in the car that would verify there is no active phone. Clearly there are a lot of details to be worked out both on the technological, insurances pricing, and privacy sides, but it feels like this could be a way forward.

carapace 8y ago

Cars and phones already have the sensors and comms to be able to curb this behavior, at least some of the time. Your car and phone "know" (potentially) when you're using them at the same time. Is there a technological fix? And if so, do we want to use it?

sethhochberg 8y ago

Its disappointing to see that so many voices in this discussion are focused on self-driving cars and the like as the savoir solutions - I always wish there would be some discussion of ways to help people be less reliant on cars, so they spend less time driving, are less likely to get distracted while doing it, and everybody is both safer _and_ living in a less car-centric world. We are - realistically - decades away from outright bans on human-operated vehicles at any real scale... so why not try to reign in the ever-expanding sprawl and car-centric planning that encourages/requires such widespread use of vehicles by distracted people, drunk people, etc in the first place? If its not alcohol, its phones. If its not phones, its makeup, or breakfast, or a fight with a passenger... more people who can walk, take transit, bike, etc means fewer deadly distractions or impairments.

auber 8y ago

I was driving on the freeway with my girlfriend and we saw a guy driving next to us who was literally holding the phone right in front of his face video chatting with someone. Not looking down, but looking straight and level into the huge phone he was holding in front of his face. It was so unusual that we looked at each other in disbelief. I was in San Jose and there was a young woman who was behind me. We were stopped in a turn lane waiting for the green. This girl literally engaged in this unprotected left turn while looking straight downward into her lap. like, completely 90 degrees neck bent downwards without looking up whatsoever. She was half way through the turn, half fucking way, before I laid on my horn. She knew exactly who that horn was for and she bolted upright with a very pouty look on her face. She could have easily killed someone. Everyone seems to agree that this is a serious and deadly problem. Therefore I think it is justified to discuss the problem in as much of an open fashion as possible, not overlooking any patterns or aspects of the problem that might help to solve it, no matter how unpopular. The fact of the matter is that 90 percent of the time I see someone looking straight down into their laps while operating 2000 pounds of metal, they are a young female. Girls have a problem with phones. Nobody would argue with me if I said that guys have a problem with high speeds, as the insurance companies know. And I’m sorry but girls have a problem with phones. It’s just true. It might help to put on a PSA targeting them. But the ultimate solution is to just not let young people drive. It doesn’t make any sense to let these children drive. 90 percent of the time I observe a car doing something dangerous and I am able to see inside, it’s a young person. Letting people drive at 16 is fucking retarded. And some enforcement of drunk driving would be nice too. The few times I’ve been at bars, I saw people streaming out the back at closing, all of them drunk with keys in their hands. Nobody does anything.

senectus1 8y ago

I have Personalised licence plates that read "AFK". It used to be a nerdy geek joke... but these days I see it as a bit of a statement on my and (what others) driving habits should be.

Tiktaalik 8y ago

Peculiar to blame the phone for killing people and not the several ton object that crashes into them. Of course people should stay off their phones, but there are plenty of ways that people can make mistakes driving, and the best way to make pedestrians safe is to limit their interactions with cars. We need to fundamentally back away from the automobile oriented design of our cities. This is the real solution, not doubling down on car infrastructure and hoping that some vaporware self driving software will save us.

dingo_bat 8y ago

The one time I've been in any sort of accident was when I was fumbling around with maps on my old Nokia C5. The front tire grazed the sidewalk, and the tire basically disintegrated after a few kilometers. Since then, I'm very particular about not using the phone at all. I've tried to use Google assistant to do things like change tracks, or start navigation, but it's not reliable enough yet.

mailslot 8y ago

I’m wondering if these aren’t the same people. The ones that, if not texting, are driving while putting on makeup, ogling every lady in a dress, turning into oncoming traffic, popping ambien, or driving drunk. It seems like a personality type that’s generally careless and self important. Texting isn’t much more distracting than the thousands of other unsafe things people do.

908087 8y ago

Many here who work for companies like Facebook probably have blood on your hands as a results of your pursuits to "increase engagement".

dmckeon 8y ago

1) front and rear-facing dash cams to defend against damage claims 2) configure cars to track phone usage, time-stamped, and downloadable thru the OBD port. If driver is sole occupant, some use of phone would be provable. No good for off-line activity, like games. Obvious privacy issues like other OBD data. 3) Pedestrians need an app for the “self-walking phone” with sub-1-meter location accuracy that flashes green man, or yellow or red hand when phone-obsessed user is about to step off curb into cross-walk or traffic.

helloguillecl 8y ago
2) Actually the black box could be in the phone itself. Could be actually be implemented in existing phones via software upgrade.

fqwefqwef341 8y ago

In The Netherlands, even texting while riding your bicycle will likely be outlawed in a few months [1]. Personally I think this is overreach, akin to forbidding pedestrians to use their phone while walking the sidewalk: they're risking (mostly) their own life, not endangering the lives of others. (Yes, I got hit by a distracted bicyclist once in my life, and many many more close calls.) [1] https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/fiets/vraag-en-antwoord/mag-ik-bellen-en-naar-muziek-luisteren-op-de-fiets https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/fiets/vraag-en-antw...