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Drivers Refuse to Put Down Their Phones. People Keep Dying

107 points by johnny313 7y ago

iamten 7y ago
Would AI drivers text and drive?
- dundercoder 7y ago
  If you include telemetry, yes.
LinuxBender 7y ago
Haven't there been some studies that associate smart phones with addictive drugs? Something to do with dopamine dependency. If true, how do you ween people off drugs?
- thawaway1837 7y ago
  Today’s smartphones are drugs if drugs could tailor their chemical composition in order to more effectively target the individual user. In other words, potentially far more addictive than drugs.
- fenwick67 7y ago
  Facebook is basically a slot machine. Checking your notifications, almost always it's garbage but one day it could be an old friend reaching out to you. It's designed to be addictive and it's very successful.
  - amatecha 7y ago
    Nice, that's one of the most insightful and concise summaries of social media I've yet seen. Well worded.
    - sp332 7y ago
      If you want to learn more about it, the effect is usually called "intermittent reinforcement". Check out the first two episodes of https://humanetech.com/podcast/ https://humanetech.com/podcast/ (transcripts available)
- wigl 7y ago
  Studies on smart phone usage should be taken with a grain of salt because it's hard to define the spectrum of use without self-reporting. One might use their phone to watch lectures while another is watching clickbait but both can be on the same app. More like the apps themselves aspire to operate on the level of addictive drugs.
- 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
  Great comparison. Alcohol being the most commonly addictive drug. In the 50s people though 'how can I drink and drive safely'. It took a while for people to accept that... can't happen. I see far too many people thinking about texting like people thought about drinking in the 50s.
towndrunk 7y ago
As a motorcyclist I fucking hate people who drive and txt. In my state it's against the law and they don't give a fuck.
- themattress 7y ago
  The best thing that learning to ride a motorcycle taught me is “always ride like everyone is actively trying to kill you”.
  - cj 7y ago
    Which (for me) translates to making eye contact with drivers whenever at an intersection, stop sign, or looking to see if people’s heads are up on the road (or down in their lap) when passing on a freeway. Riding a motorcycle is the fastest way to realize how little attention people have on the road / surroundings when they drive.
    - themattress 7y ago
      Exactly. And daydreaming is death when you don’t have a steel cage around you.
    - techsupporter 7y ago
      > making eye contact with drivers whenever at an intersection, stop sign The number of vehicles with very dark tinting on front windows has, in my experience, increased dramatically. I do this, too, but it's getting to where I can make eye contact less than half the time. Maybe I need to bring a very bright flashlight so I can make sure I can see the driver...
      - buckminster 7y ago
        And this is illegal in many places, but seems to be enforced even less than the phone rules.
    - ericd 7y ago
      Heh very true, and that’s a big part of the reason I don’t ride anymore.
reaperducer 7y ago
Selfish people doing selfish things. Everyone thinks they're above average, that bad things will never happen to them, that they're faster and have better reflexes than everyone else. And then they kill someone.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  The odds are that any one use will not kill someone. Everyone thinks they can beat the odds one more time.
- NoPicklez 7y ago
  This is it, this is why additional training etc won't work. You need to catch and significantly penalise someone to stop them. The incentive of not killing someone isn't good enough because most of us have never experienced almost killing someone with their car, so why would it happen to me? In my opinion, you need to have penalties so harsh that it will stop drivers from using their phones. Immediate loss of license for 3-6 months etc.
fetus8 7y ago
In the last two weeks, I've seen two drivers with phones mounted on their windshields, watching what appeared to be the news while driving on the highway. Both instances were men, at least 40 or older. It shouldn't come as a shock in 2019, but I was still pretty surprised in the moment. Unfortunately, according to the article, my state has no such laws against this type of behavior.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  No laws against distracted driving? That's kind of a general catch-all, but it would fit...
  - fetus8 7y ago
    I guess the Bloomberg article is wrong...we do have laws that ban using a phone while driving for manual entry (texting, web browsing). I wonder how watching video content plays into that? https://leg.colorado.gov/content/distracted-driving-and-cell-phone-use https://leg.colorado.gov/content/distracted-driving-and-cell...
- pmcollins 7y ago
  Unpopular opinion: though a cause for concern, a video playing near a driver's windshield is far less dangerous than a driver taking their eyes off the road, looking down at their phone, context switching, and interacting with it. In my area distracted driving is epidemic -- I just assume that most of the folks rear ending each other in broad daylight are the direct result of drivers looking down at their phone.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    I agree this is an unpopular opinion - because if you want to watch a video than take the train or the bus - I read on my commute every day while I ride the train in.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  To be fair, I've played video (not in the car, for the record) that I only really had on in a background tab for the audio. Something like the recent impeachment hearings I could see pulling up CNN for without actually watching.
krilly 7y ago
I have always connected this problem with automatic cars. I haven't looked at statistical evidence, but I think this is a much bigger problem in the US than the UK and I think it's because it's much easier to drive an auto with one hand. I often see established vloggers and public figures recording themselves with a smartphone while driving and they always seem to be American. I believe there has been some adjacent research done into the safety of manual cars which has found that they can be safer since they demand more concentration to drive.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  https://www.statefarm.com/simple-insights/auto-and-vehicles/manual-vs-automatic-transmissions https://www.statefarm.com/simple-insights/auto-and-vehicles/... "Studies haven't really shown whether one is safer than the other."
  - bb123 7y ago
    I doubt that is relevant to the UK though.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      It's relevant to the hypothesis that automatic cars are safer.
- chapium 7y ago
  Lately this tends to spark outrage if the comments are enabled. Many vloggers do their carseat vlogging while parked now.
- vladvasiliu 7y ago
  I think driving an automatic might help but it's by no means necessary. I don't know what the numbers are, but around Paris, where most cars are manual, there are a lot of people texting on their phones (I'll see at least several of them on my 5 km commute in the city traffic).
- barsonme 7y ago
davidw 7y ago
Ok ok, but we shouldn't lose focus on the real threat to our cities: e-scooters!
- thrillgore 7y ago
  And vaping
minikites 7y ago
Yet another benefit to limiting the need for cars in new building developments. Plenty of pedestrians also look at their phones while walking but a collision of two pedestrians is very unlikely to be fatal.
thrwn_frthr_awy 7y ago
Abstinence based policies are not working. We need to let people hold and talk on their phone. Everyone is trying to hide their phone. Ride in a bus in the bay area and you'll see ~25-50% of people on their phone on a given day. Are there any studies of cities that allowing talking on the phone, but no texting?
- skummetmaelk 7y ago
  No, we don't need to let people hold and talk on their phone when operating a multiple ton machine at highway speeds.
  - blackearl 7y ago
    Are you going to ban talking in the car as well?
    - chapium 7y ago
      Its very different. A passenger has a stake in the safety of the vehicle and reacts to surroundings. They pause when the driver is entering a complicated intersection and sometimes remind the driver to look at the road.
      - blackearl 7y ago
        Not in my experience. They're playing with the music, on their phone, reading, hanging their feet out the window, etc. In fact if you're one of those backseat drivers "reminding me to look at the road" (as if I'm not paying attention) you can find your own transportation.
    - commandlinefan 7y ago
      Not just talking, we have to ban listening too. If somebody is listening to the radio, they're not focusing absolutely 100% of their attention on driving, so that makes them a menace. Never mind that statistics don't show that listening to the radio causes accidents (just as statistics don't show that talking on the phone causes accidents), we won't rest until everybody is miserable all the time.
post_break 7y ago
My horn usage has gone way up. Driving stick in the US you have to pay attention to be in gear at the right time. In the past 10 years I've seen it get exponentially worse as people put their heads down coming up to a red light. Laws are written but not enforced. Friends and relatives die from drunk or distracted driving and it's frustrating because even though driving is a privileged and not a right people with multiple DUIs get back behind the wheel. Honestly, texting and driving should have as strict punishments as a DUI and I know that's an unpopular stance.
- cobbzilla 7y ago
  Agreed. I saw some report that reaction times for distracted driving are actually worse than DUI. On top of that, you can avoid the vast majority of drunk drivers if you stay off the roads at night. Distracted drivers are on the road at all hours.
  - xwdv 7y ago
    This isn’t a fair comparison, you need to compare a person texting while driving with a person who is texting while drunk driving.
    - trillic 7y ago
      Hot take: I'd rather share the road with someone completely focused who's slightly above the legal limit, than someone who is sober and distracted.
      - Enginerrrd 7y ago
        >completely focused who's slightly above the legal limit This may not be possible. One of the effects of alcohol on cognition is that it increases distractability while simultaneously making you less aware of it's occurrence which is a compounding issue.
        dasil003 7y ago
pmcollins 7y ago
Texting while driving should be treated with the same severity as drunk driving. Full stop.
- drunken-serval 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure it is. At least in Wisconsin. My uncle has double digit DUIs and has never served time in jail.
hateful 7y ago
Yes, it's been illegal for years - but EVERY DAY I see people on their phones - talking, texting. My favorite move is when they're holding their phone like a waiter - it's on speaker phone, but I would consider that in no way "hands free" operation. And they are always driving recklessly (inconsistent speed, sometimes swerving). It's absolutely out of control.
- ajross 7y ago
  FWIW, the data doesn't really bear this out. Vehicle travel has been getting steadily safer in the US for decades. Obviously there are problems that need to be addressed, and those change over time, but the war is a long one and we're winning. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... That's not to say driving with a phone is safe, but it's not a crisis. We address it with the same tools we always have: law enforcement and regulation of safety technologies.
  - jeromegv 7y ago
    We're winning. This is absolutely crazy that 36 000 deaths a year in the USA is considered "winning". Like it couldn't get any better. Hey it's better than the apocalypse from 30 years ago, we are WINNING. If terrorism was 36,000 deaths every year you can bet this would be a big topic of conversation. Other data to look at, shared of accidents caused by distracted driving are way way up. Perhaps if distracted driving was going down instead of going up, we would be getting much lower than 36,000 death/year Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-are-you-a-distracted-driver-probably-heres-why/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-are-you-a-dis...
    - ajross 7y ago
      My point was that our reaction to this new problem of distracted driving should be commensurate with our reaction to the "old problems" of, I dunno, DUI or road rage or whatever. Because numerically it doesn't really make sense. By all means let's work to reduce traffic fatalities. Let's just do it in a smarter way that "OMG phones in cars" -- I mean, how about work on better civil infrastructure choices so people aren't incentivized to drive in the first place.
loggable 7y ago
There's so much emphasis on using your hands with the phone or not and with most laws that allow hands-free usage, people think that's completely safe; but it's not. No one talks about how distracting it is simply having a conversation on the phone while driving. The hands really aren't the most dangerous part of the equation. Obviously, looking at the phone rather than the road is the worst part, but no one seems to be talking about how hands-free systems aren't helping either and are probably hurting by making people think they are being safe. I also don't understand why the laws regarding cell phones and even drunk driving are so lax. Any of these should result in an immediate ban on your license for a long time. If I had a gun license and walked around shooting it, I would lose that license as well as I proved I am not responsible enough to operate it and that could result in death.
- ohples 7y ago
  > Any of these should result in an immediate ban on your license for a long time. Although I agree the reason this has (and may never) happen is that (atleast in America) we have been forced in a world where cars are basically required due to car-first development, so to take away someones license basically takes away employment opportunities, friends, and other basic necessities. People will spend a lot of time and money fighting traffic offenses, just so they don't lose there ability to drive due to the detrimental effects it has. We have to make it stupid simple to drive because we have basically made that a requirement to function in normal society. The only alternative (which I think we need to do) is to transform our transportation and development policies to make cars either optional or not needed at all.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- mywittyname 7y ago
  Drunk driving laws are far from lax. In fact, my state puts of signs bragging about how bad you're fucked if you're caught driving drunk. Twenty thousand dollars in fines and court costs plus two years in jail, inability to legally drive for several more years plus the fact you can probably never afford insurance again, is plenty harsh enough to convince rational people not to drink and drive. But, turns out alcoholics aren't rational people. So after they get out, they drive drunk, but this time they don't have insurance (and they're too broke to sue) so when they do cause an accident next time, the victim ends up needing to pony up the cash to pay for it. I have several drunk family members who've been caught drunk driving multiple times. They've been to jail, and they don't have a license, but they still drive. This is not a problem you solve by making laws harsher (unless maybe you go to Sharia law levels of harsh and execute people after some number of offenses). You have to tackle alcoholism.
thrillgore 7y ago
It might be time for a regulatory mandate here. Phones have to go offline if they're running more than 15MPH unless docked or handsfree. I can't believe i'm calling for regulation, but someone will. Question is do we get ahead of it now or before a new Congress does? I also feel like pointing out this article says there were 3,000 deaths from phone use. Well, there were 40,000 from firearms in the US https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/gun-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/gun-deaths.html. PRIORITIES!
- asdf21 7y ago
  What you mean is, suicides went up.
- steverb 7y ago
  So, how do you get the phone to know whether or not you are driving or merely a passenger?
- mindslight 7y ago
  Sorry, some of us still consider a phone to be a personal computer. Legislating that phone software mandatorily implement centralized rules, no matter how sensible the specific rules would be, is the path to further locking down these devices and general societal computational disenfranchisement.
joe_the_user 7y ago
It seems fatalities per 100 million VMT reached a minimum in 2014 (1.08) and has crept back since then [1] (to 1.19 in 2016, 1.13 in 2018), still not much above 2012 levels (1.14). I can only speculate that the decline has to do with more safer models on the road and then distracted drivers perhaps bumped things up very slightly again. I think most drivers, at least those not always distracted, notice the prevalence of distracted drivers on the road - cars that drive normally and then, say, gradually slow down to well below the speed limit and the speed of traffic. Which is to say, considering how common they are, it's remarkable these drivers don't cause many more accidents - statistics altogether seem to say they don't (correct me if I'm missing something). A factor to consider is that the "not as dangerous as you think" quality of distracted drivers comes because they do drive slowly, slowing traffic and thereby reducing accident totals (years ago, the introduction of the 55 speed limit reduced traffic fatalities a lot, see same wikipedia article). Basically, the distraction trends seems to have made driving more annoying but not that much more unsafe. Perhaps something still needs to be done but that something might just some warning bells when driver driving outside the norms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Seems like most people I observe texting seem to do so at low risk times (e.g. at stop light or in stop and go traffic). People looking at their phones in traffic in areas where "things happen" (pedestrians present, traffic entering, etc.) seem to be much rarer. There's not much opportunity to kill someone accidentally in those kinds of conditions because of the low speed which is probably why those accidents don't show in the death based statistics you're looking at.
  - joe_the_user 7y ago
    Yeah, get situations of a traffic light turning green and no body moving - it's incredibly annoying but not at all unsafe. Maybe in the future, traffic can just stop entirely and everyone will virtually work from their phones.
- 7y ago
t34543 7y ago
It is not about saving lives, and mobile phone distractions are not as bad as you think. Statistics are commonly misused. Speeding kills your pocketbook 2 explores this in depth, fact checking accident statistics in BC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzmVCSfRR38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzmVCSfRR38
- chki 7y ago
  Generically referring to the Misuse of Statistics doesn't really add something to the discussion though. Is there a specific critique of the statistics regarding texting while driving?
  - bradlys 7y ago
    I think the video shows how they are frequently misused. I wouldn't be surprised if the conclusions in the bloomberg article are also incorrect.
- joe_the_user 7y ago
  Yeah, it's remarkable that distracted drivers don't cause very many accidents but, indeed, statistics show they don't. I'm an impatient driver (when I'm not watching myself) and distracted drivers slow me and when I'm watching someone drive distractedly, it is easy for me to think that driver is about to cause an accident but that view can be biased by my desire to pass that "slow, inconsiderate jerk".
mentos 7y ago
Apple might be able to implement some sort of "It seems as though you are traveling in a car, we have disabled texting and driving." but then that has the obvious issue of preventing passengers from texting. If you were to embrace the problem, whats the safest way to let people text and drive while on their phone? Something that doesn't force them to look down off the road? Hands free voice to text sucks. Best thing I can think of is some sort of windshield heads up display and a keyboard on your steering wheel hah
- dudul 7y ago
  My wife just got a new iPhone, and it now comes with this feature where it blocks texts/calls while you're driving. It's pretty cool.
  - jeromegv 7y ago
    Anyone with iOS 12 really.
  - towndrunk 7y ago
    But.... you can disable that.
- Zigurd 7y ago
  Having been involved in applications of speech recognitions since the early 1990s, I can say that modern speech recognition and connected-speech dictation is a near-miraculous acceleration of of technological progress in that area. I can speak into my wristwatch in a noisy bar to reply to a text and get reliable transcription. Amazing!
btrettel 7y ago
As a cyclist I'm elevated above most drivers on the road. So I can see many distracted drivers who try to be more subtle about it. Distracted driving is a daily problem, but there's almost no enforcement of it. I can recall one time where I talked to a driver stopped at a stoplight about how he wasn't paying attention and couldn't stay in his lane. I told him to put down the phone and watch the road. This driver tried to change the subject, acting outraged that before he passed me I left the bike lane for less than 10 seconds to pass another cyclist. I told him that's not illegal but he wasn't having any of it. Apparently I'm just as bad as he is, which makes his distracted driving okay. Except that what I did was legal and perfectly safe, yet what he did was illegal and rather dangerous.
- WhompingWindows 7y ago
  Everyone gets defensive about their culpability on the roads...it's the same in online gaming or work. If you point out what someone's doing wrong, especially if they have no relationship to you, most self-conscious, ego-centric people will react defensively and rudely.
- wahern 7y ago
  On the occasions I've felt I needed to glance at my phone while driving, I've held it up and in front of me so I still had peripheral vision of the road. People using their phone and doing so from their lap or console, not to mention actually interacting with the phone... I can't even.... One time I switched lanes rather abruptly as the person in front of me was erratically speeding up and slowing down. (No, I wasn't tailgating; I think they were drunk or maybe having an argument.) The person in the next lane apparently got pissed that I merged so closely behind him and a few blocks later pulled up alongside me to yell. I apologized. From his perspective it was a dick move; I got it. The look of shock on his face when I apologized was priceless; he almost looked dejected. People get so self-defensive; it doesn't make any sense. It's like people turn 18 and stop growing up. Their loss, I guess. Whenever someone cuts me off or wanders into my lane, rather than getting angry I try to remind myself that that's me during an inattentive moment, which we all have regularly. We just don't realize when we have them because, well, we're distracted.
mywittyname 7y ago
I don't believe that laws are responsible for this plateau in distracted driving, but instead the fact that hands-free phone integration in new cars became pretty common six or so years ago. So now, even people buying used cars are buying cars that have hands-free usage. My two cars from 2013 the barest base models available of already cheap cars and they both have hands-free support. The graph showing the downward trend in distracted driving starting at ~2013 is solid evidence in favor of this explanation. If laws were responsible for the reductions, then the article should point out that states who didn't pass new laws also didn't see reductions in usage. I do agree that this is a problem, but misidentifying the cause of the downward trend is actively working against a solution. Perhaps we should be passing laws that mandate vehicle-phone integration standards rather than punitive traffic laws.
- WhompingWindows 7y ago
  People need to actually use the hands-free option, though. Most of my older relatives have newer cars, but none of them are tech-savvy or motivated enough to set up the hands-free mode or learn how to use it.
throwawaymath 7y ago
I have a two-pronged proposal which, though unrealistic, is technically feasible today and could probably work. 1. Force people seeking a driver's license to undergo classes, regardless of their prior self-education. In my opinion, a significant amount of irresponsible and incompetent driving stems from the early failures in parents teaching their kids properly. People not only don't learn everything they need to, but they don't respect driving as the dangerous activity it is. If someone succeeds in obtaining their license, they must then re-test every five years to maintain it, regardless of their age and driving history. 2. Augment the new mandatory classes with virtual reality lessons. The VR headsets will ostensibly drill driving skills before they're practiced in a real vehicle. But the real reason they'll be used is to force candidates to experience high fidelity simulations of hitting and killing people while in the vehicle. They will be exposed to the immediate trauma involved in hitting a family in a sedan, or killing a pedestrian who was adhering to the rules of the road. It might also be helpful to force them to watch footage of people being seriously injured and killed in vehicular collisions. This recommendation comes from two hypotheses of mine. As the article states, people overwhelmingly know distracted driving is dangerous, but they can't help themselves. I believe this is because 1) they have no way to activate empathy for the potential danger they present to others, and 2) they do not take driving seriously enough. It is treated as an innate right with loose rules, not a dangerous activity sustained only out of necessity to keep urban society functioning. Unfortunately, this proposal will never happen. I know parts of it are extreme, but I don't see an alternative for fixing such a systemic problem which isn't extreme.
- stmfreak 7y ago
  LOL, you think children listen to parents when “taught properly”? We taught our kids all the proper behaviors, for years. Loads of examples of consequences, restrictions, lectures, etc. they still grow up and make poor choices. When it comes to acquiring good judgement, for most people there is no teacher like experience.
  - throwawaymath 7y ago
    That's a good point. A lot of what you're saying is inevitable for most adolescents due to contemporaneous hormonal and neurological changes they're enduring. To combat that, we could induce accelerated experience using VR simulation.
decasia 7y ago
I know software isn't a panacea, but how hard would it be to design the cars so that if you are alone in the car (and therefore obviously the driver), mobile devices shift into hands-free-only mode? I realize if you had multiple passengers it seems like a much harder technical problem to detect whether the person using the phone is also driving.
- Zigurd 7y ago
  With technologies like Nearby it is possible to determine if you are near other individuals' devices. It is possible to infer you are in a car based on samples from phone sensors. In addition, it is possible to tell you are not driving a car based on your body movements. The kinds of apps your car insurer likes you to run have to make all these inferences already (if they don't have a hardware component independent of your phone).
  - decasia 7y ago
    That's so interesting, thanks! So it sounds like actually there could be a big technical piece of the solution to this problem, if devices already know (or could know) how to shift automatically into driving mode… If only there were the regulatory will to implement this, over and above being nudged (I guess?) by insurers…
    - decasia 7y ago
      Just found a good article about this in case anyone else is curious: "Insurers know exactly how often American drivers touch their phones" https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-distracted-driving-insurance-phone-texting-20190429-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-distracted-driving-in...
    - Zigurd 7y ago
      To be fair it's a lot more complicated. One reason you don't hear much about what insurance apps really do is that they don't really know the what all that data can tell them. Another is that it would creep you out. Each use case has different sensitivity to false positives/negatives. But, in general, if they've got your accelerometer data and location, they, whoever "they" might be, know you pretty well.
hector_vasquez 7y ago
This seems like an eminently solvable problem. My car knows when its key fob is inside it with great precision, to the point that I cannot even lock the doors while it is inside. My iPhone knows when it is itself in the car, so when I want to use it while driving, I have to dismiss a warning message, which I adeptly do with muscle memory. Seems to me if cars supported driver and passenger authentication, most illegal device usage could be stopped rather trivially.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  Couldn't the driver just authenticate as a passenger? It's not a good assumption to assume that, because there's only one cell phone in the car, it's going to be the drivers, so I don't know know an approach where the driver just can't circumvent the restriction.
  - hector_vasquez 7y ago
    The car would need to authenticate the driver as the driver, and each passenger as a passenger. Plenty of ways to do it. As an iPhone user, TouchID and FaceID come to mind.
    - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
      That could be an option, I suppose. Not looking forward to the day I can't drive my rental car because I own an Android.
- teeray 7y ago
  The problem is that many authentication mechanisms could create a dangerous skinner box for drivers that have decided to flout the laws and text anyway. If we have phone users prove they’re not driving by solving math puzzles or tapping a flashing square or something, you will have a driver that attempts to do that while driving. The same goes for doing something like putting an NFC pad in the passenger door. There will be SOME driver out there that will attempt to reach across the car while driving to unlock their phone. Allowing passengers to use devices in any capacity makes it extremely difficult to build technological solutions to this.
redbeard0x0a 7y ago
Driverless cars need to get here sooner rather than later.
- whalesalad 7y ago
  Pipe dream. Even if a driverless car was to exist.. it has to contend with millions of other vehicles all being driven by human beings. George Hotz has a killer talk about why the general approach to autonomous vehicles is flawed. I highly recommend it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IxuU5L2MEII https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IxuU5L2MEII
  - munk-a 7y ago
    I disagree, as soon as driverless cars exist being able to manually drive a car becomes a luxury and shifts from a right[1] to a privilege - when that happens unsafe driving violations should immediately revoke that right and we could quickly up the volume of self-driving cars. AI driving assistance might be the missing puzzle piece here, once it'd mature we can start forcing people on to it and once folks are on it then we can start banning full manuals and forcing full automation as we will have upped driver predictability.
whalesalad 7y ago
You gotta honk. I honk ALL THE TIME now. It’s just enough of a jolt to send a signal to everyone around you that it’s time to snap back to attention. It works marvelously. I don’t like doing it... but it really works. If the light turns green and no one has moved for a few seconds I give a little tiny honk and like clockwork you can see brake lights in every lane turn off and people begin to activate. I don’t think we can solve this with enforcement. We gotta start thinking outside the box. I have no advice... I wish I did ... but it’s an epidemic. Its a symptom of a much larger issue, I think, so we need to try and treat that instead.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Unfortunately the added honking causes huge quality of life issues, especially in urban areas and at night. Self-driving can't come soon enough.
  - throwawaymath 7y ago
    Speaking as someone who lives in Manhattan, you won't get much sympathy with this complaint. Yes, honking can be annoying, and yes it's overused (especially by trigger happy taxis). But it's the only way to actually get someone's attention sometimes. If you live in an urban area you should know what you're signing up for. People are going to honk, even if it's annoying to the rest of us living in the city.
    - pnutjam 7y ago
      A honk is also the sound a road makes when it stretches to accommodate your car between two cars that don't appear to have enough space.
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      I live in Manhattan too. "Just suck it up" isn't the correct response. You even admit that it's annoying, so why roll over and resign yourself to it? One asshole with a loud horn making lots of noise on the streets at night can easily wake up hundreds of people. How is this remotely acceptable? It has a real measured public health burden. We can and should do better; getting proper sleep is important. And by the way, the vast majority of horn use is illegal.
ummonk 7y ago
If you were only putting your life in danger rather than other people’s, using the phone while driving could actually be rational. Consider how much your life expectancy reduces by using the phone while driving vs how much time you waste due to commuting and not using the phone during that time.
partiallypro 7y ago
Sure, it's a problem, but motor vehicle deaths are down pretty substantially in the past decade. The per capita rate is down nearly 50% since the 70s. A lot of this is from safety standards, but I don't really see this as an epidemic.
- jarofghosts 7y ago
  The problem is that it's killing people that aren't in cars, see: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/us/pedestrian-cyclist-deaths-traffic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/us/pedestrian-cyclist-dea...
  - partiallypro 7y ago
    New York expanded their bike lanes a few years ago, I would bet that has had a much bigger impact.
kasane 7y ago
I no longer bike in areas without dedicated bike lanes because of this, and I'm not even sure how much safety a bike lane provides me.
- downerending 7y ago
  The answer might turn out to be that it makes bicyclists less safe. A couple of years ago I moved to a place with extensive bike lanes and other bike-friendly signage, road features, etc. Sounds awesome. But I've noticed that it significantly adds to the mental load of driving here. I'm an unusually conscientious driver, and I often encounter the feeling of hitting my multitasking ceiling at intersections, partly due to the bicycle-friendly increase in complexity. I suspect that many less careful blow through that ceiling without realizing it. I'd like to see the question studied.
  - btrettel 7y ago
    I think this is a real phenomena. Many traffic engineers don't seem to appreciate it. Earlier this year I did a small study of how often drivers yield to me, a cylist, at certain crossings. These crossings are rather confusing, but the city seems to believe that merely putting signs (sometimes multiple in basically the same spot) telling drivers to yield to cyclists is enough. It's not. Drivers nearly run over cyclists on a regular basis at these crossings. According to my statistics drivers yield to cyclists only about 61% of the time. See the slides here: http://trettel.org/pubs/2019/austin-bac-2019-10-15.pdf http://trettel.org/pubs/2019/austin-bac-2019-10-15.pdf There are multiple ways to fix this problem but Austin seems uninterested.
    - downerending 7y ago
      That's a great example of an over-complex pattern. The yield sign is awful--hard to even tell whether it's for the cars or the bicycles. Here's what worked for me, over thousands of miles of cycling back before bike lanes, etc.: 1. I rode as far right as I safely could, typically on the white line or a foot away from the curb, and always with the flow of traffic. 2. I was careful to ride in a straight line, following a completely predictable path. 3. I had a glasses-mounted rear-view mirror and kept an eye on traffic coming up behind. I never needed to, but I was always ready to bail out to the right in a split second. Towards that end, kept my bike in top shape and practiced quick stops and counter-steering. 4. Never made left turns if vehicles were present. Instead, passed through the intersection, stopped on far side, dismounted, and lifted/turned bike 90 degrees. 5. Reflective gear day and night. Never rode in poor visibility (e.g., rain storm). 6. Most importantly, always yielded to all vehicular traffic all of the time. If a car could intersect my path, I just stopped and waited, unless I could make eye contact and it was clear that they saw me and intended to wait. With that, never had a close call, nor even got honked at. Now, you might say that that's not fair, or that you don't want to ride in such a wimpy style. I understand. But I think it's the only safe(-ish) way to ride on public streets.
tarr11 7y ago
Cell phone use is a small percentage of "distracted driving". We should be careful not to conflate the two things. In 2017, 3,166 fatalities (of 37,133 total) were attributed to "distracted driving". Of those, 434 fatalities were associated with cell phone use. [0] For comparison, there were 10,874 fatalities from DUIs in 2017. [1] [0] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812700 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... [1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  The data is from police reports where there was an accident. Do you think that it's underreported, and that people would not volunteer to an officer they were using their cell phones? Your first link talks about this in the Data Limitation section. Also, and they don't note this, but people can be intoxicated and using a mobile device. I suspect their model substantially unreports DUIs where distraction was a factor. It is very easy to do a field test and chalk it up to a DUI and not investigate further. "Honestly, I think the real number of fatalities tied to cell phones is at least three times the federal figure " - https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2017/10/18/467836.htm https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2017/10/18/46...
- whalesalad 7y ago
  Those stats are kinda messed up. They have a table that separates distracted drivers from cell phone drivers, for example. Are they not the same thing? Also, in an accident where all parties are dead, how do you determine the cause?
- el_don_almighty 7y ago
  how dare you bring data to a whinge fest! My emotions don't care about your data! Or is it the other way around... facts don't care about your feelings?
mullingitover 7y ago
America's puritanical streak is a mile wide. We will ruin your life if you're doing something fun like drinking and driving, but we'll turn a blind eye if you're doing something equally reckless and dangerous like simply sending someone else a text message and not looking at the road. Texting and driving should obviously be treated the same as DUI if we're going to be logically consistent about recklessly endangering your fellow drivers and pedestrians, but I'm not optimistic about that happening.
droithomme 7y ago
Cell phone use is known to impair driving as much as being drunk, and texting more so. Penalties need to be upgraded to match those of drunk driving convictions, and enforced as strictly as drunk driving is. Including manslaughter and homicide charges when the cell phone use is involved in an incident that results in deaths.
royaltheartist 7y ago
Ban cars
codesforhugs 7y ago
What floors me about this article is that the data comes from phone users who have installed TruMotion based software. In other words they know their driving behavior is being actively tracked, and they STILL use their phones while driving. I have to think a good amount of these people are actually unable to make the choice of not using their phone while driving, presumably because the habit is so deeply ingrained.
mnm1 7y ago
How do they know when these drivers are driving vs. being a passenger? Do they rely on the driver to click a button to indicate that? Or do they just assume that anytime a cellphone is going a certain speed, the user is driving? I did not see this addressed in the article and frankly, without knowing this, their data is completely useless. For all we know, they're gathering data on passengers.
therockspush 7y ago
Ive noticed in the last month people mounting their phones on their steering wheel or dash and watching tv. Full on Korean dramas or whatnot. As bad as that is there is a special place in hell for drivers who make eye contact with the passenger they are talking to while driving.
nojvek 7y ago
Unpopular opinion: Trying to look at it from a constraint problem. 1) telling people not to use their phones. I think this is a losing fight. Why do people use their phones? Because waiting for red lights is boring. We have a 3 minute red light (1 min per direction) in one of our junctions. Almost every driver is distracted at end of 3 mins and somewhat on their phone. I don’t think phones are going away anytime soon. On the other hands I’d like cars to get a bit smarter. I’ve really been enjoying my comma Eon. It does a great job of following lanes allowing me to use my brain cycles for higher order environmental awareness about other cars. I feel a bit less guilty changing to another Spotify track on my phone. But it’s also a phone problem too. The touch interface is horrible. There is no tactile feedback. Siri voice commands are really dumb as hell. The phone could be mounted on the dash and the mobile is needs to guarantee every app can be used via voice with almost as much efficiency and accuracy as touching it. Basically what I’m saying is. Let’s fight the problem at a deeper layer.
telesilla 7y ago
Werner Herzog made this heartbreaking documentary on this topic. It has kept me from being distracted by my phone when driving since I've seen it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qf85X3extY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qf85X3extY
mkd1964 7y ago
Phones have GPS. In states where texting and driving is banned, why isn't there some way to program the phone so that it simply doesn't function if it detects a speed of over 5-10 mph? I just don't see a problem with that since it's already the law. It could then send an automated message back to the caller letting them know the owner appears to be driving and can't take your call. I'm sure many of us here are old enough to remember life before cell phones and I can guarantee you that there's almost never anything so emergent that it can't wait until you get to your destination.
middlering 7y ago
Rewritten headline: "People refuse to put down their phones. They keep dying, suffering, showing many signs of addiction, still keep refusing." Drivers are just a large subset of the population. The phone addiction is a problem with the society as a whole. The impact of this addiction is just most visible, as an externality, in drivers. I'm not defending drivers, I'm just saying that drivers are people, and this is a wider people issue, not a driver specific one. I write this as a runner, cyclist, walker, and a very occasional driver.

107 points by johnny313 7y ago

iamten 7y ago

Would AI drivers text and drive?

dundercoder 7y ago
If you include telemetry, yes.

LinuxBender 7y ago

Haven't there been some studies that associate smart phones with addictive drugs? Something to do with dopamine dependency. If true, how do you ween people off drugs?

thawaway1837 7y ago
Today’s smartphones are drugs if drugs could tailor their chemical composition in order to more effectively target the individual user. In other words, potentially far more addictive than drugs.
fenwick67 7y ago
Facebook is basically a slot machine. Checking your notifications, almost always it's garbage but one day it could be an old friend reaching out to you. It's designed to be addictive and it's very successful.
- amatecha 7y ago
  Nice, that's one of the most insightful and concise summaries of social media I've yet seen. Well worded.
  - sp332 7y ago
    If you want to learn more about it, the effect is usually called "intermittent reinforcement". Check out the first two episodes of https://humanetech.com/podcast/ https://humanetech.com/podcast/ (transcripts available)
wigl 7y ago
Studies on smart phone usage should be taken with a grain of salt because it's hard to define the spectrum of use without self-reporting. One might use their phone to watch lectures while another is watching clickbait but both can be on the same app. More like the apps themselves aspire to operate on the level of addictive drugs.
4ntonius8lock 7y ago
Great comparison. Alcohol being the most commonly addictive drug. In the 50s people though 'how can I drink and drive safely'. It took a while for people to accept that... can't happen. I see far too many people thinking about texting like people thought about drinking in the 50s.

towndrunk 7y ago

As a motorcyclist I fucking hate people who drive and txt. In my state it's against the law and they don't give a fuck.

themattress 7y ago
The best thing that learning to ride a motorcycle taught me is “always ride like everyone is actively trying to kill you”.
- cj 7y ago
  Which (for me) translates to making eye contact with drivers whenever at an intersection, stop sign, or looking to see if people’s heads are up on the road (or down in their lap) when passing on a freeway. Riding a motorcycle is the fastest way to realize how little attention people have on the road / surroundings when they drive.
  - themattress 7y ago
    Exactly. And daydreaming is death when you don’t have a steel cage around you.
  - techsupporter 7y ago
    > making eye contact with drivers whenever at an intersection, stop sign The number of vehicles with very dark tinting on front windows has, in my experience, increased dramatically. I do this, too, but it's getting to where I can make eye contact less than half the time. Maybe I need to bring a very bright flashlight so I can make sure I can see the driver...
    - buckminster 7y ago
      And this is illegal in many places, but seems to be enforced even less than the phone rules.
  - ericd 7y ago
    Heh very true, and that’s a big part of the reason I don’t ride anymore.

reaperducer 7y ago

Selfish people doing selfish things. Everyone thinks they're above average, that bad things will never happen to them, that they're faster and have better reflexes than everyone else. And then they kill someone.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
The odds are that any one use will not kill someone. Everyone thinks they can beat the odds one more time.
NoPicklez 7y ago
This is it, this is why additional training etc won't work. You need to catch and significantly penalise someone to stop them. The incentive of not killing someone isn't good enough because most of us have never experienced almost killing someone with their car, so why would it happen to me? In my opinion, you need to have penalties so harsh that it will stop drivers from using their phones. Immediate loss of license for 3-6 months etc.

fetus8 7y ago

In the last two weeks, I've seen two drivers with phones mounted on their windshields, watching what appeared to be the news while driving on the highway. Both instances were men, at least 40 or older. It shouldn't come as a shock in 2019, but I was still pretty surprised in the moment. Unfortunately, according to the article, my state has no such laws against this type of behavior.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
No laws against distracted driving? That's kind of a general catch-all, but it would fit...
- fetus8 7y ago
  I guess the Bloomberg article is wrong...we do have laws that ban using a phone while driving for manual entry (texting, web browsing). I wonder how watching video content plays into that? https://leg.colorado.gov/content/distracted-driving-and-cell-phone-use https://leg.colorado.gov/content/distracted-driving-and-cell...
pmcollins 7y ago
Unpopular opinion: though a cause for concern, a video playing near a driver's windshield is far less dangerous than a driver taking their eyes off the road, looking down at their phone, context switching, and interacting with it. In my area distracted driving is epidemic -- I just assume that most of the folks rear ending each other in broad daylight are the direct result of drivers looking down at their phone.
- munk-a 7y ago
  I agree this is an unpopular opinion - because if you want to watch a video than take the train or the bus - I read on my commute every day while I ride the train in.
ceejayoz 7y ago
To be fair, I've played video (not in the car, for the record) that I only really had on in a background tab for the audio. Something like the recent impeachment hearings I could see pulling up CNN for without actually watching.

krilly 7y ago

I have always connected this problem with automatic cars. I haven't looked at statistical evidence, but I think this is a much bigger problem in the US than the UK and I think it's because it's much easier to drive an auto with one hand. I often see established vloggers and public figures recording themselves with a smartphone while driving and they always seem to be American. I believe there has been some adjacent research done into the safety of manual cars which has found that they can be safer since they demand more concentration to drive.

ceejayoz 7y ago
https://www.statefarm.com/simple-insights/auto-and-vehicles/manual-vs-automatic-transmissions https://www.statefarm.com/simple-insights/auto-and-vehicles/... "Studies haven't really shown whether one is safer than the other."
- bb123 7y ago
  I doubt that is relevant to the UK though.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    It's relevant to the hypothesis that automatic cars are safer.
chapium 7y ago
Lately this tends to spark outrage if the comments are enabled. Many vloggers do their carseat vlogging while parked now.
vladvasiliu 7y ago
I think driving an automatic might help but it's by no means necessary. I don't know what the numbers are, but around Paris, where most cars are manual, there are a lot of people texting on their phones (I'll see at least several of them on my 5 km commute in the city traffic).
barsonme 7y ago

davidw 7y ago

Ok ok, but we shouldn't lose focus on the real threat to our cities: e-scooters!

thrillgore 7y ago
And vaping

minikites 7y ago

Yet another benefit to limiting the need for cars in new building developments. Plenty of pedestrians also look at their phones while walking but a collision of two pedestrians is very unlikely to be fatal.

thrwn_frthr_awy 7y ago

Abstinence based policies are not working. We need to let people hold and talk on their phone. Everyone is trying to hide their phone. Ride in a bus in the bay area and you'll see ~25-50% of people on their phone on a given day. Are there any studies of cities that allowing talking on the phone, but no texting?

skummetmaelk 7y ago
No, we don't need to let people hold and talk on their phone when operating a multiple ton machine at highway speeds.
- blackearl 7y ago
  Are you going to ban talking in the car as well?
  - chapium 7y ago
    Its very different. A passenger has a stake in the safety of the vehicle and reacts to surroundings. They pause when the driver is entering a complicated intersection and sometimes remind the driver to look at the road.
    - blackearl 7y ago
      Not in my experience. They're playing with the music, on their phone, reading, hanging their feet out the window, etc. In fact if you're one of those backseat drivers "reminding me to look at the road" (as if I'm not paying attention) you can find your own transportation.
  - commandlinefan 7y ago
    Not just talking, we have to ban listening too. If somebody is listening to the radio, they're not focusing absolutely 100% of their attention on driving, so that makes them a menace. Never mind that statistics don't show that listening to the radio causes accidents (just as statistics don't show that talking on the phone causes accidents), we won't rest until everybody is miserable all the time.

post_break 7y ago

My horn usage has gone way up. Driving stick in the US you have to pay attention to be in gear at the right time. In the past 10 years I've seen it get exponentially worse as people put their heads down coming up to a red light. Laws are written but not enforced. Friends and relatives die from drunk or distracted driving and it's frustrating because even though driving is a privileged and not a right people with multiple DUIs get back behind the wheel. Honestly, texting and driving should have as strict punishments as a DUI and I know that's an unpopular stance.

cobbzilla 7y ago
Agreed. I saw some report that reaction times for distracted driving are actually worse than DUI. On top of that, you can avoid the vast majority of drunk drivers if you stay off the roads at night. Distracted drivers are on the road at all hours.
- xwdv 7y ago
  This isn’t a fair comparison, you need to compare a person texting while driving with a person who is texting while drunk driving.
  - trillic 7y ago
    Hot take: I'd rather share the road with someone completely focused who's slightly above the legal limit, than someone who is sober and distracted.
    - Enginerrrd 7y ago
      >completely focused who's slightly above the legal limit This may not be possible. One of the effects of alcohol on cognition is that it increases distractability while simultaneously making you less aware of it's occurrence which is a compounding issue.
      - dasil003 7y ago

pmcollins 7y ago

Texting while driving should be treated with the same severity as drunk driving. Full stop.

drunken-serval 7y ago
I'm pretty sure it is. At least in Wisconsin. My uncle has double digit DUIs and has never served time in jail.

hateful 7y ago

Yes, it's been illegal for years - but EVERY DAY I see people on their phones - talking, texting. My favorite move is when they're holding their phone like a waiter - it's on speaker phone, but I would consider that in no way "hands free" operation. And they are always driving recklessly (inconsistent speed, sometimes swerving). It's absolutely out of control.

ajross 7y ago
FWIW, the data doesn't really bear this out. Vehicle travel has been getting steadily safer in the US for decades. Obviously there are problems that need to be addressed, and those change over time, but the war is a long one and we're winning. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... That's not to say driving with a phone is safe, but it's not a crisis. We address it with the same tools we always have: law enforcement and regulation of safety technologies.
- jeromegv 7y ago
  We're winning. This is absolutely crazy that 36 000 deaths a year in the USA is considered "winning". Like it couldn't get any better. Hey it's better than the apocalypse from 30 years ago, we are WINNING. If terrorism was 36,000 deaths every year you can bet this would be a big topic of conversation. Other data to look at, shared of accidents caused by distracted driving are way way up. Perhaps if distracted driving was going down instead of going up, we would be getting much lower than 36,000 death/year Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-are-you-a-distracted-driver-probably-heres-why/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-are-you-a-dis...
  - ajross 7y ago
    My point was that our reaction to this new problem of distracted driving should be commensurate with our reaction to the "old problems" of, I dunno, DUI or road rage or whatever. Because numerically it doesn't really make sense. By all means let's work to reduce traffic fatalities. Let's just do it in a smarter way that "OMG phones in cars" -- I mean, how about work on better civil infrastructure choices so people aren't incentivized to drive in the first place.

loggable 7y ago

There's so much emphasis on using your hands with the phone or not and with most laws that allow hands-free usage, people think that's completely safe; but it's not. No one talks about how distracting it is simply having a conversation on the phone while driving. The hands really aren't the most dangerous part of the equation. Obviously, looking at the phone rather than the road is the worst part, but no one seems to be talking about how hands-free systems aren't helping either and are probably hurting by making people think they are being safe. I also don't understand why the laws regarding cell phones and even drunk driving are so lax. Any of these should result in an immediate ban on your license for a long time. If I had a gun license and walked around shooting it, I would lose that license as well as I proved I am not responsible enough to operate it and that could result in death.

ohples 7y ago
> Any of these should result in an immediate ban on your license for a long time. Although I agree the reason this has (and may never) happen is that (atleast in America) we have been forced in a world where cars are basically required due to car-first development, so to take away someones license basically takes away employment opportunities, friends, and other basic necessities. People will spend a lot of time and money fighting traffic offenses, just so they don't lose there ability to drive due to the detrimental effects it has. We have to make it stupid simple to drive because we have basically made that a requirement to function in normal society. The only alternative (which I think we need to do) is to transform our transportation and development policies to make cars either optional or not needed at all.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
mywittyname 7y ago
Drunk driving laws are far from lax. In fact, my state puts of signs bragging about how bad you're fucked if you're caught driving drunk. Twenty thousand dollars in fines and court costs plus two years in jail, inability to legally drive for several more years plus the fact you can probably never afford insurance again, is plenty harsh enough to convince rational people not to drink and drive. But, turns out alcoholics aren't rational people. So after they get out, they drive drunk, but this time they don't have insurance (and they're too broke to sue) so when they do cause an accident next time, the victim ends up needing to pony up the cash to pay for it. I have several drunk family members who've been caught drunk driving multiple times. They've been to jail, and they don't have a license, but they still drive. This is not a problem you solve by making laws harsher (unless maybe you go to Sharia law levels of harsh and execute people after some number of offenses). You have to tackle alcoholism.

thrillgore 7y ago

It might be time for a regulatory mandate here. Phones have to go offline if they're running more than 15MPH unless docked or handsfree. I can't believe i'm calling for regulation, but someone will. Question is do we get ahead of it now or before a new Congress does? I also feel like pointing out this article says there were 3,000 deaths from phone use. Well, there were 40,000 from firearms in the US https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/gun-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/gun-deaths.html. PRIORITIES!

asdf21 7y ago
What you mean is, suicides went up.
steverb 7y ago
So, how do you get the phone to know whether or not you are driving or merely a passenger?
mindslight 7y ago
Sorry, some of us still consider a phone to be a personal computer. Legislating that phone software mandatorily implement centralized rules, no matter how sensible the specific rules would be, is the path to further locking down these devices and general societal computational disenfranchisement.

joe_the_user 7y ago

It seems fatalities per 100 million VMT reached a minimum in 2014 (1.08) and has crept back since then [1] (to 1.19 in 2016, 1.13 in 2018), still not much above 2012 levels (1.14). I can only speculate that the decline has to do with more safer models on the road and then distracted drivers perhaps bumped things up very slightly again. I think most drivers, at least those not always distracted, notice the prevalence of distracted drivers on the road - cars that drive normally and then, say, gradually slow down to well below the speed limit and the speed of traffic. Which is to say, considering how common they are, it's remarkable these drivers don't cause many more accidents - statistics altogether seem to say they don't (correct me if I'm missing something). A factor to consider is that the "not as dangerous as you think" quality of distracted drivers comes because they do drive slowly, slowing traffic and thereby reducing accident totals (years ago, the introduction of the 55 speed limit reduced traffic fatalities a lot, see same wikipedia article). Basically, the distraction trends seems to have made driving more annoying but not that much more unsafe. Perhaps something still needs to be done but that something might just some warning bells when driver driving outside the norms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Seems like most people I observe texting seem to do so at low risk times (e.g. at stop light or in stop and go traffic). People looking at their phones in traffic in areas where "things happen" (pedestrians present, traffic entering, etc.) seem to be much rarer. There's not much opportunity to kill someone accidentally in those kinds of conditions because of the low speed which is probably why those accidents don't show in the death based statistics you're looking at.
- joe_the_user 7y ago
  Yeah, get situations of a traffic light turning green and no body moving - it's incredibly annoying but not at all unsafe. Maybe in the future, traffic can just stop entirely and everyone will virtually work from their phones.
7y ago

t34543 7y ago

It is not about saving lives, and mobile phone distractions are not as bad as you think. Statistics are commonly misused. Speeding kills your pocketbook 2 explores this in depth, fact checking accident statistics in BC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzmVCSfRR38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzmVCSfRR38

chki 7y ago
Generically referring to the Misuse of Statistics doesn't really add something to the discussion though. Is there a specific critique of the statistics regarding texting while driving?
- bradlys 7y ago
  I think the video shows how they are frequently misused. I wouldn't be surprised if the conclusions in the bloomberg article are also incorrect.
joe_the_user 7y ago
Yeah, it's remarkable that distracted drivers don't cause very many accidents but, indeed, statistics show they don't. I'm an impatient driver (when I'm not watching myself) and distracted drivers slow me and when I'm watching someone drive distractedly, it is easy for me to think that driver is about to cause an accident but that view can be biased by my desire to pass that "slow, inconsiderate jerk".

mentos 7y ago

Apple might be able to implement some sort of "It seems as though you are traveling in a car, we have disabled texting and driving." but then that has the obvious issue of preventing passengers from texting. If you were to embrace the problem, whats the safest way to let people text and drive while on their phone? Something that doesn't force them to look down off the road? Hands free voice to text sucks. Best thing I can think of is some sort of windshield heads up display and a keyboard on your steering wheel hah

dudul 7y ago
My wife just got a new iPhone, and it now comes with this feature where it blocks texts/calls while you're driving. It's pretty cool.
- jeromegv 7y ago
  Anyone with iOS 12 really.
- towndrunk 7y ago
  But.... you can disable that.
Zigurd 7y ago
Having been involved in applications of speech recognitions since the early 1990s, I can say that modern speech recognition and connected-speech dictation is a near-miraculous acceleration of of technological progress in that area. I can speak into my wristwatch in a noisy bar to reply to a text and get reliable transcription. Amazing!

btrettel 7y ago

As a cyclist I'm elevated above most drivers on the road. So I can see many distracted drivers who try to be more subtle about it. Distracted driving is a daily problem, but there's almost no enforcement of it. I can recall one time where I talked to a driver stopped at a stoplight about how he wasn't paying attention and couldn't stay in his lane. I told him to put down the phone and watch the road. This driver tried to change the subject, acting outraged that before he passed me I left the bike lane for less than 10 seconds to pass another cyclist. I told him that's not illegal but he wasn't having any of it. Apparently I'm just as bad as he is, which makes his distracted driving okay. Except that what I did was legal and perfectly safe, yet what he did was illegal and rather dangerous.

WhompingWindows 7y ago
Everyone gets defensive about their culpability on the roads...it's the same in online gaming or work. If you point out what someone's doing wrong, especially if they have no relationship to you, most self-conscious, ego-centric people will react defensively and rudely.
wahern 7y ago
On the occasions I've felt I needed to glance at my phone while driving, I've held it up and in front of me so I still had peripheral vision of the road. People using their phone and doing so from their lap or console, not to mention actually interacting with the phone... I can't even.... One time I switched lanes rather abruptly as the person in front of me was erratically speeding up and slowing down. (No, I wasn't tailgating; I think they were drunk or maybe having an argument.) The person in the next lane apparently got pissed that I merged so closely behind him and a few blocks later pulled up alongside me to yell. I apologized. From his perspective it was a dick move; I got it. The look of shock on his face when I apologized was priceless; he almost looked dejected. People get so self-defensive; it doesn't make any sense. It's like people turn 18 and stop growing up. Their loss, I guess. Whenever someone cuts me off or wanders into my lane, rather than getting angry I try to remind myself that that's me during an inattentive moment, which we all have regularly. We just don't realize when we have them because, well, we're distracted.

mywittyname 7y ago

I don't believe that laws are responsible for this plateau in distracted driving, but instead the fact that hands-free phone integration in new cars became pretty common six or so years ago. So now, even people buying used cars are buying cars that have hands-free usage. My two cars from 2013 the barest base models available of already cheap cars and they both have hands-free support. The graph showing the downward trend in distracted driving starting at ~2013 is solid evidence in favor of this explanation. If laws were responsible for the reductions, then the article should point out that states who didn't pass new laws also didn't see reductions in usage. I do agree that this is a problem, but misidentifying the cause of the downward trend is actively working against a solution. Perhaps we should be passing laws that mandate vehicle-phone integration standards rather than punitive traffic laws.

WhompingWindows 7y ago
People need to actually use the hands-free option, though. Most of my older relatives have newer cars, but none of them are tech-savvy or motivated enough to set up the hands-free mode or learn how to use it.

throwawaymath 7y ago

I have a two-pronged proposal which, though unrealistic, is technically feasible today and could probably work. 1. Force people seeking a driver's license to undergo classes, regardless of their prior self-education. In my opinion, a significant amount of irresponsible and incompetent driving stems from the early failures in parents teaching their kids properly. People not only don't learn everything they need to, but they don't respect driving as the dangerous activity it is. If someone succeeds in obtaining their license, they must then re-test every five years to maintain it, regardless of their age and driving history. 2. Augment the new mandatory classes with virtual reality lessons. The VR headsets will ostensibly drill driving skills before they're practiced in a real vehicle. But the real reason they'll be used is to force candidates to experience high fidelity simulations of hitting and killing people while in the vehicle. They will be exposed to the immediate trauma involved in hitting a family in a sedan, or killing a pedestrian who was adhering to the rules of the road. It might also be helpful to force them to watch footage of people being seriously injured and killed in vehicular collisions. This recommendation comes from two hypotheses of mine. As the article states, people overwhelmingly know distracted driving is dangerous, but they can't help themselves. I believe this is because 1) they have no way to activate empathy for the potential danger they present to others, and 2) they do not take driving seriously enough. It is treated as an innate right with loose rules, not a dangerous activity sustained only out of necessity to keep urban society functioning. Unfortunately, this proposal will never happen. I know parts of it are extreme, but I don't see an alternative for fixing such a systemic problem which isn't extreme.

stmfreak 7y ago
LOL, you think children listen to parents when “taught properly”? We taught our kids all the proper behaviors, for years. Loads of examples of consequences, restrictions, lectures, etc. they still grow up and make poor choices. When it comes to acquiring good judgement, for most people there is no teacher like experience.
- throwawaymath 7y ago
  That's a good point. A lot of what you're saying is inevitable for most adolescents due to contemporaneous hormonal and neurological changes they're enduring. To combat that, we could induce accelerated experience using VR simulation.

decasia 7y ago

I know software isn't a panacea, but how hard would it be to design the cars so that if you are alone in the car (and therefore obviously the driver), mobile devices shift into hands-free-only mode? I realize if you had multiple passengers it seems like a much harder technical problem to detect whether the person using the phone is also driving.

Zigurd 7y ago
With technologies like Nearby it is possible to determine if you are near other individuals' devices. It is possible to infer you are in a car based on samples from phone sensors. In addition, it is possible to tell you are not driving a car based on your body movements. The kinds of apps your car insurer likes you to run have to make all these inferences already (if they don't have a hardware component independent of your phone).
- decasia 7y ago
  That's so interesting, thanks! So it sounds like actually there could be a big technical piece of the solution to this problem, if devices already know (or could know) how to shift automatically into driving mode… If only there were the regulatory will to implement this, over and above being nudged (I guess?) by insurers…
  - decasia 7y ago
    Just found a good article about this in case anyone else is curious: "Insurers know exactly how often American drivers touch their phones" https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-distracted-driving-insurance-phone-texting-20190429-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-distracted-driving-in...
  - Zigurd 7y ago
    To be fair it's a lot more complicated. One reason you don't hear much about what insurance apps really do is that they don't really know the what all that data can tell them. Another is that it would creep you out. Each use case has different sensitivity to false positives/negatives. But, in general, if they've got your accelerometer data and location, they, whoever "they" might be, know you pretty well.

hector_vasquez 7y ago

This seems like an eminently solvable problem. My car knows when its key fob is inside it with great precision, to the point that I cannot even lock the doors while it is inside. My iPhone knows when it is itself in the car, so when I want to use it while driving, I have to dismiss a warning message, which I adeptly do with muscle memory. Seems to me if cars supported driver and passenger authentication, most illegal device usage could be stopped rather trivially.

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
Couldn't the driver just authenticate as a passenger? It's not a good assumption to assume that, because there's only one cell phone in the car, it's going to be the drivers, so I don't know know an approach where the driver just can't circumvent the restriction.
- hector_vasquez 7y ago
  The car would need to authenticate the driver as the driver, and each passenger as a passenger. Plenty of ways to do it. As an iPhone user, TouchID and FaceID come to mind.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    That could be an option, I suppose. Not looking forward to the day I can't drive my rental car because I own an Android.
teeray 7y ago
The problem is that many authentication mechanisms could create a dangerous skinner box for drivers that have decided to flout the laws and text anyway. If we have phone users prove they’re not driving by solving math puzzles or tapping a flashing square or something, you will have a driver that attempts to do that while driving. The same goes for doing something like putting an NFC pad in the passenger door. There will be SOME driver out there that will attempt to reach across the car while driving to unlock their phone. Allowing passengers to use devices in any capacity makes it extremely difficult to build technological solutions to this.

redbeard0x0a 7y ago

Driverless cars need to get here sooner rather than later.

whalesalad 7y ago
Pipe dream. Even if a driverless car was to exist.. it has to contend with millions of other vehicles all being driven by human beings. George Hotz has a killer talk about why the general approach to autonomous vehicles is flawed. I highly recommend it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IxuU5L2MEII https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IxuU5L2MEII
- munk-a 7y ago
  I disagree, as soon as driverless cars exist being able to manually drive a car becomes a luxury and shifts from a right[1] to a privilege - when that happens unsafe driving violations should immediately revoke that right and we could quickly up the volume of self-driving cars. AI driving assistance might be the missing puzzle piece here, once it'd mature we can start forcing people on to it and once folks are on it then we can start banning full manuals and forcing full automation as we will have upped driver predictability.

whalesalad 7y ago

You gotta honk. I honk ALL THE TIME now. It’s just enough of a jolt to send a signal to everyone around you that it’s time to snap back to attention. It works marvelously. I don’t like doing it... but it really works. If the light turns green and no one has moved for a few seconds I give a little tiny honk and like clockwork you can see brake lights in every lane turn off and people begin to activate. I don’t think we can solve this with enforcement. We gotta start thinking outside the box. I have no advice... I wish I did ... but it’s an epidemic. Its a symptom of a much larger issue, I think, so we need to try and treat that instead.

CydeWeys 7y ago
Unfortunately the added honking causes huge quality of life issues, especially in urban areas and at night. Self-driving can't come soon enough.
- throwawaymath 7y ago
  Speaking as someone who lives in Manhattan, you won't get much sympathy with this complaint. Yes, honking can be annoying, and yes it's overused (especially by trigger happy taxis). But it's the only way to actually get someone's attention sometimes. If you live in an urban area you should know what you're signing up for. People are going to honk, even if it's annoying to the rest of us living in the city.
  - pnutjam 7y ago
    A honk is also the sound a road makes when it stretches to accommodate your car between two cars that don't appear to have enough space.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    I live in Manhattan too. "Just suck it up" isn't the correct response. You even admit that it's annoying, so why roll over and resign yourself to it? One asshole with a loud horn making lots of noise on the streets at night can easily wake up hundreds of people. How is this remotely acceptable? It has a real measured public health burden. We can and should do better; getting proper sleep is important. And by the way, the vast majority of horn use is illegal.

ummonk 7y ago

If you were only putting your life in danger rather than other people’s, using the phone while driving could actually be rational. Consider how much your life expectancy reduces by using the phone while driving vs how much time you waste due to commuting and not using the phone during that time.

partiallypro 7y ago

Sure, it's a problem, but motor vehicle deaths are down pretty substantially in the past decade. The per capita rate is down nearly 50% since the 70s. A lot of this is from safety standards, but I don't really see this as an epidemic.

jarofghosts 7y ago
The problem is that it's killing people that aren't in cars, see: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/us/pedestrian-cyclist-deaths-traffic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/us/pedestrian-cyclist-dea...
- partiallypro 7y ago
  New York expanded their bike lanes a few years ago, I would bet that has had a much bigger impact.

kasane 7y ago

I no longer bike in areas without dedicated bike lanes because of this, and I'm not even sure how much safety a bike lane provides me.

downerending 7y ago
The answer might turn out to be that it makes bicyclists less safe. A couple of years ago I moved to a place with extensive bike lanes and other bike-friendly signage, road features, etc. Sounds awesome. But I've noticed that it significantly adds to the mental load of driving here. I'm an unusually conscientious driver, and I often encounter the feeling of hitting my multitasking ceiling at intersections, partly due to the bicycle-friendly increase in complexity. I suspect that many less careful blow through that ceiling without realizing it. I'd like to see the question studied.
- btrettel 7y ago
  I think this is a real phenomena. Many traffic engineers don't seem to appreciate it. Earlier this year I did a small study of how often drivers yield to me, a cylist, at certain crossings. These crossings are rather confusing, but the city seems to believe that merely putting signs (sometimes multiple in basically the same spot) telling drivers to yield to cyclists is enough. It's not. Drivers nearly run over cyclists on a regular basis at these crossings. According to my statistics drivers yield to cyclists only about 61% of the time. See the slides here: http://trettel.org/pubs/2019/austin-bac-2019-10-15.pdf http://trettel.org/pubs/2019/austin-bac-2019-10-15.pdf There are multiple ways to fix this problem but Austin seems uninterested.
  - downerending 7y ago
    That's a great example of an over-complex pattern. The yield sign is awful--hard to even tell whether it's for the cars or the bicycles. Here's what worked for me, over thousands of miles of cycling back before bike lanes, etc.: 1. I rode as far right as I safely could, typically on the white line or a foot away from the curb, and always with the flow of traffic. 2. I was careful to ride in a straight line, following a completely predictable path. 3. I had a glasses-mounted rear-view mirror and kept an eye on traffic coming up behind. I never needed to, but I was always ready to bail out to the right in a split second. Towards that end, kept my bike in top shape and practiced quick stops and counter-steering. 4. Never made left turns if vehicles were present. Instead, passed through the intersection, stopped on far side, dismounted, and lifted/turned bike 90 degrees. 5. Reflective gear day and night. Never rode in poor visibility (e.g., rain storm). 6. Most importantly, always yielded to all vehicular traffic all of the time. If a car could intersect my path, I just stopped and waited, unless I could make eye contact and it was clear that they saw me and intended to wait. With that, never had a close call, nor even got honked at. Now, you might say that that's not fair, or that you don't want to ride in such a wimpy style. I understand. But I think it's the only safe(-ish) way to ride on public streets.

tarr11 7y ago

Cell phone use is a small percentage of "distracted driving". We should be careful not to conflate the two things. In 2017, 3,166 fatalities (of 37,133 total) were attributed to "distracted driving". Of those, 434 fatalities were associated with cell phone use. [0] For comparison, there were 10,874 fatalities from DUIs in 2017. [1] [0] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812700 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... [1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving

throwaway5752 7y ago
The data is from police reports where there was an accident. Do you think that it's underreported, and that people would not volunteer to an officer they were using their cell phones? Your first link talks about this in the Data Limitation section. Also, and they don't note this, but people can be intoxicated and using a mobile device. I suspect their model substantially unreports DUIs where distraction was a factor. It is very easy to do a field test and chalk it up to a DUI and not investigate further. "Honestly, I think the real number of fatalities tied to cell phones is at least three times the federal figure " - https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2017/10/18/467836.htm https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2017/10/18/46...
whalesalad 7y ago
Those stats are kinda messed up. They have a table that separates distracted drivers from cell phone drivers, for example. Are they not the same thing? Also, in an accident where all parties are dead, how do you determine the cause?
el_don_almighty 7y ago
how dare you bring data to a whinge fest! My emotions don't care about your data! Or is it the other way around... facts don't care about your feelings?

mullingitover 7y ago

America's puritanical streak is a mile wide. We will ruin your life if you're doing something fun like drinking and driving, but we'll turn a blind eye if you're doing something equally reckless and dangerous like simply sending someone else a text message and not looking at the road. Texting and driving should obviously be treated the same as DUI if we're going to be logically consistent about recklessly endangering your fellow drivers and pedestrians, but I'm not optimistic about that happening.

droithomme 7y ago

Cell phone use is known to impair driving as much as being drunk, and texting more so. Penalties need to be upgraded to match those of drunk driving convictions, and enforced as strictly as drunk driving is. Including manslaughter and homicide charges when the cell phone use is involved in an incident that results in deaths.

royaltheartist 7y ago

Ban cars

codesforhugs 7y ago

What floors me about this article is that the data comes from phone users who have installed TruMotion based software. In other words they know their driving behavior is being actively tracked, and they STILL use their phones while driving. I have to think a good amount of these people are actually unable to make the choice of not using their phone while driving, presumably because the habit is so deeply ingrained.

mnm1 7y ago

How do they know when these drivers are driving vs. being a passenger? Do they rely on the driver to click a button to indicate that? Or do they just assume that anytime a cellphone is going a certain speed, the user is driving? I did not see this addressed in the article and frankly, without knowing this, their data is completely useless. For all we know, they're gathering data on passengers.

therockspush 7y ago

Ive noticed in the last month people mounting their phones on their steering wheel or dash and watching tv. Full on Korean dramas or whatnot. As bad as that is there is a special place in hell for drivers who make eye contact with the passenger they are talking to while driving.

nojvek 7y ago

Unpopular opinion: Trying to look at it from a constraint problem. 1) telling people not to use their phones. I think this is a losing fight. Why do people use their phones? Because waiting for red lights is boring. We have a 3 minute red light (1 min per direction) in one of our junctions. Almost every driver is distracted at end of 3 mins and somewhat on their phone. I don’t think phones are going away anytime soon. On the other hands I’d like cars to get a bit smarter. I’ve really been enjoying my comma Eon. It does a great job of following lanes allowing me to use my brain cycles for higher order environmental awareness about other cars. I feel a bit less guilty changing to another Spotify track on my phone. But it’s also a phone problem too. The touch interface is horrible. There is no tactile feedback. Siri voice commands are really dumb as hell. The phone could be mounted on the dash and the mobile is needs to guarantee every app can be used via voice with almost as much efficiency and accuracy as touching it. Basically what I’m saying is. Let’s fight the problem at a deeper layer.

telesilla 7y ago

Werner Herzog made this heartbreaking documentary on this topic. It has kept me from being distracted by my phone when driving since I've seen it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qf85X3extY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qf85X3extY

mkd1964 7y ago

Phones have GPS. In states where texting and driving is banned, why isn't there some way to program the phone so that it simply doesn't function if it detects a speed of over 5-10 mph? I just don't see a problem with that since it's already the law. It could then send an automated message back to the caller letting them know the owner appears to be driving and can't take your call. I'm sure many of us here are old enough to remember life before cell phones and I can guarantee you that there's almost never anything so emergent that it can't wait until you get to your destination.

middlering 7y ago

Rewritten headline: "People refuse to put down their phones. They keep dying, suffering, showing many signs of addiction, still keep refusing." Drivers are just a large subset of the population. The phone addiction is a problem with the society as a whole. The impact of this addiction is just most visible, as an externality, in drivers. I'm not defending drivers, I'm just saying that drivers are people, and this is a wider people issue, not a driver specific one. I write this as a runner, cyclist, walker, and a very occasional driver.