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I'd say distracted driving and driver age are greater factors than police stops, and there isn't much you can do about that. It is very difficult to see a driv

I'd say distracted driving and driver age are greater factors than police stops, and there isn't much you can do about that. It is very difficult to see a driver using a cellphone from a long distance. It is somewhat easy to determine the speed of a vehicle at distance. It is also easy to see drunk driving at a distance. But eyes glancing down at a phone held in a lap? Hard. It would be prohibitively expensive to field a force large enough to issue enough citations for distracted driving to make a difference due to a fear of getting caught. People can drive "normally", in a straight line at a set, reasonable, speed for long periods of time while looking at their phones--until it is too late. So officers would need some method of getting close to many vehicles to peer inside as they are driving. The report the article links to shows that fatalities are up, but crashes where speed was a factor are down by 2%. Alcohol involvement was flat. Age is a factor in fatalities not because older drivers are more dangerous but because they are more physically vulnerable to fatal injury in the fewer crashes they are involved in. Until age 85 drivers are involved in many fewer crashes than 16-24 year olds. >in the <16 age group (down 10%), the 16-24 age group (down 8%), the 25-34 age group (down 3%), the 35-44 age group (up 3%), the 45-54 age group (up 1%), the 55-64 age group (up 4%), and the 65 and older age group (up 8%); So deaths will naturally increase as the US population ages. Other increases are pedestrian, cyclist, and motorcyclist deaths-- which I wager are due to being distracted by cellphones more than speeding. The largest increase is rural/suburban "local/collector" (low-speed) roads. This is almost certainly due to the epidemic of phone usage: not noticing cars slowing down for turns, stop signs, sharp turns, pedestrians. Last month my firetruck was hit by a distracted driver who was looking at his cellphone. A miles-long straight road on a clear night with no traffic and the driver had been staring at his cellphone for so long that he didn't start braking until the entire cabin of his car was bathed in red flashing light. We were parked, lights on, in the right hand lane of a roadway as we were responding to a driver who had run off the road, hit a barrier, and spun to a stop in the roadway-- because he was distracted by his cellphone: https://imgur.com/a/3qFWNaE https://imgur.com/a/3qFWNaE

hasbot 4y ago
> The largest increase is rural/suburban "local/collector" (low-speed) roads. This is almost certainly due to the epidemic of phone usage: not noticing cars slowing down for turns, stop signs, sharp turns, pedestrians. Maybe, but I see more speeding than I see phone use. I've noticed on the narrow and windy rural/suburban roads near me that some cars are going so fast that they have difficulty managing the turns and go into the oncoming lane. There is a reason the speed limit is 25 or 35mph - factoring in the width of the road, the curves, the driveways, and side streets, that is the safe traveling speed.

hasbot 4y ago

> The largest increase is rural/suburban "local/collector" (low-speed) roads. This is almost certainly due to the epidemic of phone usage: not noticing cars slowing down for turns, stop signs, sharp turns, pedestrians. Maybe, but I see more speeding than I see phone use. I've noticed on the narrow and windy rural/suburban roads near me that some cars are going so fast that they have difficulty managing the turns and go into the oncoming lane. There is a reason the speed limit is 25 or 35mph - factoring in the width of the road, the curves, the driveways, and side streets, that is the safe traveling speed.