15 ms·

Phones track everything but their role in car wrecks

136 points by strict9 3y ago

shiandow 3y ago
> The police can access cellphone records but the process is cumbersome and privacy laws require a subpoena. So in short, the phone company keeps records as does the phone and an increasing number of cars. However the author apparently feels that the police shouldn't even have to ask. Frankly that is an insane take. With the amount of information being (secretly) kept about us by our own devices we risk putting the entire population under constant surveillance if we don't improve protections against law enforcement hacking devices.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hooverd 3y ago
  Pitting pedestrian safety against general purpose computing is a weird move by pedestrian safety activists.
  - andy99 3y ago
    It's an alignment of incentives. Interests who are against privacy align themselves with causes they would benefit from less privacy. See "think of the children"
    - amrocha 3y ago
      Do you genuinely think that if you kill someone because you were driving on your phone, that information should be hard to access to an investigator? Like, I understand that privacy is important. I agree that it is. But if you choose to drive a deadly machine, then you agree to give up a degree of that privacy. All cars have license plates, identifying who it belongs to. Car drivers are subject to document checks by road security personnel. Car drivers are subject to alcohol tests if they're suspected of being drunk. What makes phone usage more sacred than any of those things? I'm not saying all your phone data becomes public if you're in a crash, the same way that an alcohol test doesn't tell the cops where, what, and with who you were drinking with. How is society in any way worse, if phones recorded usage in the past 24 hours, and drivers had to provide that data if implicated in a crash?
      - dylan604 3y ago
        If there's a tool that an officer can use that retrieves this information, I'd have a problem with that. If the phone is demanded as evidence with proper warrant/subpoena, then sure. However, in the cases of a car wreck, I think confiscating the phone as evidence does seem warranted. And admitting that has me in a weird state. With such little consequences for blatantly being distracted, it will not stop. But looking at history, draconian punishment is not a deterrent in other aspects. Addicts are going to do whatever for their fix. Admitting phone addiction exists is probably something too though.
        hooverd 3y ago
        Personally, I don't think calling for expanding the surveillance state helps this cause vs advocating for proper pedestrian infrastructure and road design. We've made it really easy to speed and give no heed to pedestrians and other forms of infrastructure.
        dylan604 3y ago
        I'm thinking bigger than just pedestrians. Distracted drivers are not only affecting pedestrians. Not many pedestrians on open highways.
        amrocha 3y ago
        I don't know what world you live in that a license plate on your car is ok in terms of privacy, but a phone that reports whether you were using it while driving is a surveillance state.
        owl57 3y ago
        You seem to be insisting that such a feature can be mandated without collateral damage for a lot of phone users, including people who never use a phone while driving or even don't drive at all.
        3y ago
- acdha 3y ago
  This is discussed in the article, and you’re making a much more provocative claim which the author does not advance. They specifically mention civil liberties as a concern and the one proposal specifically mentioned would involve cameras identifying drivers visibly using their phones, which requires no hacking whatsoever. The obvious measure would be standardizing the process of police asking drivers about phone use in every crash, which again has no civil liberties concerns. It also seems like Apple and Google should have a roll as trusted third parties. The phone could save a short activity log (basically the same things screen time apps record: was the device unlocked, active, last touch event, etc.) any time car play is active or the accelerometer records hard deceleration with a secure way to share that with the police so you can be confident all you’re giving them is evidence that you weren’t looking at Tik Tok 20s before the collision.
s3p 3y ago
1. https://archive.is/kKTVS https://archive.is/kKTVS 2. ...and should they? If a crash happens, and someone was on their phone, it would be pretty obvious that they were at fault. I just have a really hard time thinking that more device-related tracking would be better for society. Also, the mention of cameras at the end of the article is another concern for me. I really don't think this country is better off with more internet connected cameras that are actively being used to surveil the populous. There have to be better ways to win the hearts and minds of people and convince them to not use their phones. Turning into a surveillance state doesn't seem to be the best way to do that IMO.
- jjulius 3y ago
  >If a crash happens, and someone was on their phone, it would be pretty obvious that they were at fault. Accidents are so circumstantial that it's not always going to be "pretty obvious" someone involved was on their phone. Nor does being on your phone when involved in an accident necessarily mean that you caused it.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Accidents can also be caused by someone who didn't crash. If you have to take evasive action because of someone else you might crash. (in some cases you crashing is the best result for you)
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    I know someone who was rear-ended by someone who was reportedly on his phone. The person I know also admitted to me that they were on their phone but that didn't make it into the police report. So, not only were they on their phone and reportedly didn't cause the collision, nobody even asked if they were on their phone and therefore nobody found out, presumably because they didn't cause the collision.
    - FireBeyond 3y ago
      My step daughter was in a collision in the middle of an intersection. No cameras, no witnesses, no other vehicles than the two. Police come along, ask her a bare minimum of questions. "Did you have a green light?" "Yes, I did." "Okay." Walk over to the other driver, and talk to him, come back less than three minutes later. "The other driver said he definitely had a green light. I am issuing you a citation for failure to obey a traffic control signal." That fell apart very quickly when we appealed it to court. "Definitely" in a statement adds nothing to the reasonable doubt equation.
photoGrant 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
jdksmdbtbdnmsm 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ijhuygft776 3y ago
> But they still aren’t being used to track one of the biggest public health threats: crashes caused by drivers distracted by the phones. I have seen cases where they went back and look at phone use history after accidents.... not sure how often they do it though.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  Is there a reasonable process for police in US/Canada to actually get that info, doesn't seem to be the case? > The police can access cellphone records but the process is cumbersome and privacy laws require a subpoena. I wish it was just a default step in figuring out fault nowadays. An not handing over that data should put that driver at a disadvantage.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    The process being somewhat inconvenient ("cumbersome" is overstating it) is intentional. It's one of the few protections we have from abuse by law enforcement in the US. I'm glad we have at least that.
    - barbazoo 3y ago
      Does that process yield phone usage data or "just" calls/texts?
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        It depends on what data the police are asking for in the warrant. Any data that exists is fair game.
        barbazoo 3y ago
        How would they get phone usage data though? Even I wouldn't know how to get that info off my own phone other than abstract "screen time" metrics.
snakeyjake 3y ago
Anecdotally, I have personally witnessed an incomprehensible rise in the amount of motor vehicle crashes in the past 15 years and the single greatest contributing factor seems to be smartphone distraction. Just last fall I responded to a late-night crash where a drunk driver lost control and pinballed across the highway hitting both barriers and coming to a rest on the shoulder when a second vehicle whose driver was looking at their phone failed to notice the gigantic fire engine with flashing lights blocking the right lane of the three-lane road and braked just late enough to crash into our engine. We found the phone, still playing a video, in the driver's side footwell.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pvg 3y ago
  NYT piece recently considered this as a possible factor in the increase of night time pedestrian deaths: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/11/upshot/nighttime-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/11/upshot/nightt...
- floren 3y ago
  The number of times I look over and see the driver of the next car watching a goddamn video on their goddamn phone... Mind blowing.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Before cell phones existed, I commonly saw equally mind-blowing things including people putting on makeup, eating bowls of soup, and such while driving. I'm not sure that things have really changed all that much, big picture.
    - AlexandrB 3y ago
      Most people aren't carrying bowls of soup with them everywhere. Bowls of soup also don't send you unprompted notifications. Things have changed a lot. The biggest thing that changed is how common this kind of driving is.
CharlesW 3y ago
It seems bizarre that I can't choose to use the CarPlay user experience on my phone while I'm driving in my DumbCar. This seems like such obvious, low-hanging fruit.
- elromulous 3y ago
  It's not the "apple way". Android let you enable Android auto on phone, but iirc the feature went away.
- sigmoid10 3y ago
  It's still illegal to use your phone while driving in most countries. So by allowing you to use CarPlay on your phone while not connected to a car's media system, that could be interpreted as enticing phone usage while driving and thus open them up to potential lawsuits. The irony is that so many people disregard the law anyways that it would actually end up making roads safer. But Apple wont risk offending lawmakers for that.
  - buran77 3y ago
    > that could be interpreted as enticing phone usage while driving This can't be true. Zooming the screen from the accessibility settings probably gets you half way there already. Every navigation app is enticing you to use it while driving. Touchscreens are enticing/forcing users to take the eyes off the road. The mere existence of the phone is enticing a driver to use it. CarPlay "mode" would just be a slightly different GUI for what you can already do with the phone whether legally (by the passenger, or while stationary) or illegally (while driving). Every app in the phone is also accessible from the home screen. At most Apple would have to issue a warning every time to use it correctly, like many cars already do.
    - sigmoid10 3y ago
      >Zooming the screen from the accessibility settings probably gets you half way there already It gets you there all the way. If some cop wants to screw you over, that's more than he needs. Taking your eyes of the road to look at some small smartphone is not just illegal, it's dangerous. People die because of it every day. Most cops just don't give a fuck because almost everyone does it. Doesn't make it legal though. That's also why all navigation apps tell you not to use them while driving. But while these apps have other legit uses, CarPlay literally only exists to be used while driving. So it makes no sense to offer it without integration into a car's systems that allow you (in theory) to use it without looking down. If someone screws this up it's the car maker's fault.
mattgreenrocks 3y ago
It's unique in that it's an addiction that enough people have that it's considered entirely normal. And that normalcy means it's not seen as a big problem to fix, it's just "how it is." Until people decide that reality is better than the unreality of phones, this kind of willful ignorance will continue.
- reaperducer 3y ago
  Wait until the price of Apple's Vision Pro comes down a bit. You'll see people driving with AR goggles on, watching movies or worse.
  - wussboy 3y ago
    Using Vision Pro to watch a movie while they drive home, then sitting at the couch all evening playing a driving game.
  - mattgreenrocks 3y ago
    Yup, I'm bullish on the Vision Pro from a purely entrepreneurial standpoint, and not a fan of it from a social perspective. But willing to be wrong on the latter, so might as well watch as it plays out.
- snazz 3y ago
  > Until people decide that reality is better than the unreality of phones, this kind of willful ignorance will continue. The adoption rate of other entertainment tech like television and video games makes me think that the trend you identify might just be human nature to some extent (with the help of consumerism). I’m not sure people will in fact choose “reality” over entertainment in large enough numbers to reverse that trend.
- dazzlefruit 3y ago
  I don't use my phone when reality is better. Consider that some people's lives suck most of the time.
  - 3y ago
P_I_Staker 3y ago
What is the real value here? Man years in prisons equal a better society. Is anyone willing to reconsider how insane driving is in general for the average person? It's one of the few areas where society basically demands we take on massive liabilities in order to live our basic lives. Then we also like to pretend it's a "privilege", and not necessary. My employer almost called the cops on me, because I didn't drive in one day and used uber. Starting to get some real second thoughts about this culture. It seems we have taken an insane shift in perspective. In 1970 all car crashes were accidents, but in the 2020s, none are; and someone has to be obliterated. Tackling "drunk drunk" driving eg. 10 beers, 0.10+ bac, etc. is one thing. All these calls to lock up more people for longer seem to be taking us down a crazy road... and they continue to use the same rules for other substances, even though the chemical testing doesn't work, and the number of cases are low (ie. not a lot of crashes happening).
- freshchilled 3y ago
  > My employer almost called the cops on me, because I didn't drive in one day and used uber. What was their reasoning behind this? Unknown car at a secure facility?
  - owl57 3y ago
    I'd guess there are places where refusing to drive suggests you're drunk.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      That's a hell of an assumption from my car wouldn't start. Or my wife's car wouldn't start so I let her take mine. Or any number of reasons before jumping to that conclusion. Why even jump to a conclusion, and just let the person tell them why, to even WTF does it matter?
      - P_I_Staker 3y ago
        That's not to mention the reasons that could relate to not wanting to tell you. For instance, they could be complying with those great license bans everyone things are so swell. Or they could suffer from medical problems that would also make them responsible if they hurt someone. Do you want to make everyone that has a severely limiting disability have to constantly explain themselves? Or maybe their fucking car is in the shop.
andersa 3y ago
Why would someone be using their phone while driving? Is this something I'm too European to understand? Literally never occured to me to do that, and I haven't ever been in a car where someone did it. Obvious exceptions being to look at a message while stopped at a traffic light or other safe location, or having the navigation app open with the phone fixed to the dashboard and otherwise not interacting with it.
- rdoherty 3y ago
  At least around me in CA I see folks every day looking at their phones while driving. I believe license requirements and overall driving safety is much higher in Europe vs the US. I have friends from Europe who are shocked at how easy it is to get a license in the US.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  "The EU mean percentages of car drivers self-reporting different mobile phone uses at least once while driving in the past 30 days are: 47.7% talked on a hands-free mobile phone, 28.6% talked on hand-held mobile phone, and 24.2% texted." So it's just you I'm afraid.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  > Is this something I'm too European to understand? My guess is: yes. I'm almost too "I look at the car, not the driver" to understand but I have actually seen this as a passenger in America. I drive myself places.
- rideontime 3y ago
  > Obvious exceptions being to look at a message while stopped at a traffic light This exception is "obvious" until you've sat through an entire cycle because the car in front of you didn't notice the light turning green.
  - binarymax 3y ago
    That's one thing that horns are for. Granted I hate using it, and other people hate it too, but I've gotten pretty good at a friendly beep-beep instead of a lean on honk.
synlatexc 3y ago
Why not display a Recent Phone Use option when both side buttons of an Apple device is pressed? * slide to power off * Medical ID * SOS Emergency Call * Recent Phone Use Report would be high-level -- has phone been unlocked in last 30 minutes, if so, timestamps showing when it was unlocked, for how long, how many finger taps occurred, etc. That would give law enforcement a quick indication of whether phone was in use. Of course if there are passengers it could be contested. For more detail, they'd have to subpoena as they do now.
- rideontime 3y ago
  I hate people who use their phones while driving as much as the next person, but I would not buy a phone that divulged my personal information in this way.
  - astrange 3y ago
    That's kind of describing Digital Wellbeing/Screen Time.
    - rideontime 3y ago
      Which I have to unlock my phone to view.
      - astrange 3y ago
        I learned from that Alaska incident that a lot of people just don't lock their phone.
  - acdha 3y ago
    That is not divulging personal information in any case and the privilege of driving requires some compromises there. For example, having a medical condition actually is a private matter but the state has a compelling public safety interest to require you to disclose conditions which affect your ability to drive safely.
jmyeet 3y ago
Using your phone is demonstrably less safe than not. What I find most interesting is how skewed human psychology can be to risk. People have phobias about all sorts of things eg flying. Flying on a commercial airplane is demonstrably safer than driving. So why isn't there a more prevalent fear of driving? Some will point to the illusion of control. I can buy that to some degree. Phone use by driving should make people more fearful of driving. Even if you personally don't use your phone while driving, other people do. And that increases your own risk. Yet that doesn't seem to be the case. What makes this worse is that everything from marketing to public relations to politics is built around stoking irrational fears that aren't based in fact. A classic example is child abduction even though in reality in the United States ~8 children are actually abducted every year. Figures like "800,000 per year" are heavily inflated with custody disputes.
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  > Flying on a commercial airplane is demonstrably safer than driving Can you give me some stats on this? I was under the impression that it's maybe a little bit safer in terms of distance traveled. But the people who think their driving is 50% safer than the average person's don't care about this. And this is probably near 100% of people who drive.
  - alamortsubite 3y ago
    Number of deaths per passenger-mile is 750x higher for driving than flying in the U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  People have no sense of actual risk and how it affects them. They fixate on emotional rather than rational assessments that perverts their understanding of risk and above all believe they are personally invincible.
whoswho 3y ago
I’ve been saying that hands-free phones in cars have been a massive massive mistake, but people laughed. Well they’re not laughing when their children are involved. /gruesome
- jacquesm 3y ago
  If only they were hands free. Plenty of people just use their phone as if they're sitting on their couch while driving.
jacquesm 3y ago
It's one of my pet peeves. I see people with their phones in front of their faces on pretty much every road trip I make. And that's in spite of a 140 euro fine here where I live.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
Werner Herzog's "From One Second to the Next" [0,1] should be mandatory watching for all drivers. [0] https://www.netflix.com/title/70302184 https://www.netflix.com/title/70302184 [1] https://vimeo.com/369894528 https://vimeo.com/369894528
bastawhiz 3y ago
I ride a motorcycle ~daily. I'm acutely aware of drivers on their phones. Probably one in six drivers that I see are holding their phone, looking at their phone, or otherwise distracted by their phone. Besides being aware of what folks are doing around me, I routinely use my shoulder checks to peek at whether the drivers adjacent to me are distracted so I can be more prepared if they do something stupid. The fix for this is easy: pull people over. When I was a teenager, cops met their quotas by watching for people with a phone (back then folks were talking, not typing). This is a big part of what drove people to get bluetooth earpieces: you wouldn't get pulled over for having one and talking on the phone (and cars didn't have microphones yet, so there wasn't another option). People will be pissed that they're getting pulled over for using their phone while driving. But if there's no expectation of punishment for breaking the law, people will continue breaking the law. And texting and driving is breaking the law. And if I can spot half a dozen people texting and driving on my way to the gym, cops can definitely spot folks texting. Hell, if I could apply for the special cop job of "pull people over for texting" and nothing else, I'd do it purely out of resentment for distracted driving.
- hmottestad 3y ago
  They pull people over in Norway and give them hefty fines (~1000 USD). We don’t have any statistics for number of car accidents where the driver was “probably” using their phone, so it’s hard to say if it works. So same issue was the article brings up. I feel that the media is partially to blame too. They like to victimise drivers who are caught using their phones, or driving over the speed limit for that matter. Or maybe it’s just my point of view.
- browningstreet 3y ago
  I can guess with a very high probability that a driver in front of me is on their phone just by the way they move in their lane. I hate driving behind distracted drivers -- they tend to do things suddenly (stop, steer, or crash).
  - prirun 3y ago
    Don't forget about the back though: I had a driver slam into me while stopped at a light. She wrecked 4 cars including her own and sent me to the hospital with a $25K ER bill. Took 2 years to resolve that. I get so sick of hearing people say "It's okay: my car lets me talk hands free!" It isn't just the hands that are a problem ... it's your brain being disengaged that's the problem. No hands-free phone fixes that. The bottom line is, no one should be using their phone and driving. If you have to use the phone, pull over.
robotguy 3y ago
At my last job, subsidiary of a pretty large corporation, it was not only against company policy to use a phone while driving on-the-clock , it was forbidden to text or even call someone if you knew they were driving. Not very enforceable, but at least it established the intent.
ChainOfFools 3y ago
I wonder if anyone has done any studies about lack of turn signal use being tied to phone in the hand that normally operates the turn signal. The amount of added background commute stress caused by almost everyone on the road ignoring their turn signal these days is infuriating. It makes everything take longer, and every delay gets magnified multiple times by multiple people in a causal chain not doing it. This increases stress, road rage, increases commute times, gridlock, everything connected with driving decision that involves meshing with the moves of the cars around you, which now defaults to the worst case defensive scenario- i.e. that everyone who, say, could swerve into your lane when you try to merge, is likely to do so, so you wait multiple times longer to get on to a highway or turn onto a two or three lane thoroughfare, than you would have to if people would just perform what has to be the simplest yet most beneficial gesture of productive cooperation. Even navigating a 7-Eleven parking lot turns into a needlessly guessing game. And yet if you try to raise the subject among casual friends, even in a joking manner, they look at you like you're some kind of anachronistic Barney Fife character.
- osi 3y ago
  that’s been a problem longer than phones. worse, maybe, but not new.
nicepplonly 3y ago
Phones are easy to blame here, but nobody wants to talk about speeding and dangerous driving, which seems to have become totally normalized. People treat speed limits as a minimum speed suggestion. There's also close to no enforcement of traffic laws from what I've seen, yet lots of people are outraged about too many bicycles (even though the number of people killed by bicycles is a tiny fraction of those killed by cars).
- bitexploder 3y ago
  Speed limits aren’t the problem.
  - nicepplonly 3y ago
    Do you also believe the laws of physics are just an opinion? If physics is an opinion, then I believe that F = ma, which means that more of m and a means more F, which means more injuries and death.
    - c0pium 3y ago
      Speed limits aren’t the problem because people ignore them and drive by feeling. The correct solution is not more enforcement but rather better design to reduce the speed that feels right. Narrower lanes, chicanes, barriers between pedestrians and vehicles, roundabouts instead of stop signs, the usual playbook that people ignore because it’s expensive. More enforcement is what we tried with drugs, how’d that go?
      - jf22 3y ago
        I agree with you, but there are a great deal of drug use metrics that have declined over time so maybe choose a different analogy.
        c0pium 3y ago
        If you look into what those metric changes are related to, you’ll find that it’s almost entirely uncorrelated with stiffer incarceration and zero tolerance policies, which was my point.
devin 3y ago
I would expand this to include the incredibly distracting and cumbersome touchscreen crap that infests modern vehicles.
- smallerfish 3y ago
  And the half-assed UI that's there in the name of the name of safety - whose idea was "safety pause"?
gumby 3y ago
I refuse (I'm polite about it) to allow people on my zoom meetings who are calling in from their car unless they are parked. But I am frequently on zoom mtgs run by other people who don't seem to care. Even when I just call someone on the phone (not that often these days) and find they're in the car I always ask, "Hey, should I just call you later?" and, perhaps surprisingly, people will usually say "yeah, we can talk XXX". This is common when they will get to their destination in not so long a time. I'm nore likely to get a "naah, I'll be on the road for a couple of hours so let's just talk now" than I am, "I'll be driving for another 10 minutes so let's just talk now"
- mattgreenrocks 3y ago
  Even when the link is handy, the stupid Zoom UI is horrible to use from a car. I park myself in a meeting before driving and then use CarPlay mute/unmute as needed. It works ok. If I lose the call, it's impossible to get back in, as I need to use the phone.
  - gumby 3y ago
    I am uncomfortable with someone being distracted by what’s going on in a meeting while maneuvering a multi-ton device around other people.
tonymet 3y ago
> Several ideas ... without stepping on civil liberties. One idea... would involve using roadside cameras Maybe the initial version of this camera that requires human intervention will barely abide by the already overreaching law, but face-reading cameras everywhere will soon be abused. Despite talk about authoritarianism we rarely discuss its cultural roots. Notice how the article puts the burden on authorities & companies to add more surveillance and penalties for people to improve their behavior. Every ill in society can be fixed with enough surveillance, by this reasoning. People often worry that we will become like the 20th century authoritarian states (e.g the 3rd Reich, GDR , USSR, etc) and I tell them that we've far surpassed their surveillance and control capacity. So let's not keep adding to it, shall we?
intrasight 3y ago
It makes no sense to me that we don't have, in the US, cameras everywhere giving tickets like they do in Europe. I assume that it's just a matter of time before we get over our collective stupidity. But it's also possible that personal driving will become illegal (only robo-cars allowed) before that happens.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  When we put cameras up usually groups try and take them down for the worst reasons, e.g. a “never mind fatalities went down, we are now burdening the low income community with tickets” sort of irrational emotionally driven argument.
- nojvek 3y ago
  Seeing how many hidden speed cameras there are in Australia to catch someone going slightly over on a plain straight road with steep fines, no thank you! I very much like that US treats me as an adult when driving. I am fine with cops pulling me over. I just legit hate the idea cameras always watching me waiting for me to make the tiniest mistake and chew up a significant chunk of my monthly income. Speed and red light cameras are a big business raking in millions per camera.
trklausss 3y ago
My experience with phone and driving is it would be much better if Siri was remotely useful… Half of the times doesn’t understand what I ask, can’t take me somewhere when I ask her to, and can’t read the top hit of a search when asked a question, only answering with “Can’t show you the result while in the car”. I got to stop to reconfigure more often than not. Transcription of messages is utterly broken when having conversations in different languages with different people. Why is it still bad with so many advances in LLMs and machine learning?
6figurelenins 3y ago
I'd like to remind everyone clamoring for law enforcement that the person who arrests you will be driving to jail at 70 miles per hour, in a 35 mph zone, while using a laptop.
rufaia0147 3y ago
[dead]

136 points by strict9 3y ago

> The police can access cellphone records but the process is cumbersome and privacy laws require a subpoena. So in short, the phone company keeps records as does the phone and an increasing number of cars. However the author apparently feels that the police shouldn't even have to ask. Frankly that is an insane take. With the amount of information being (secretly) kept about us by our own devices we risk putting the entire population under constant surveillance if we don't improve protections against law enforcement hacking devices.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hooverd 3y ago
Pitting pedestrian safety against general purpose computing is a weird move by pedestrian safety activists.
- andy99 3y ago
  It's an alignment of incentives. Interests who are against privacy align themselves with causes they would benefit from less privacy. See "think of the children"
  - amrocha 3y ago
    Do you genuinely think that if you kill someone because you were driving on your phone, that information should be hard to access to an investigator? Like, I understand that privacy is important. I agree that it is. But if you choose to drive a deadly machine, then you agree to give up a degree of that privacy. All cars have license plates, identifying who it belongs to. Car drivers are subject to document checks by road security personnel. Car drivers are subject to alcohol tests if they're suspected of being drunk. What makes phone usage more sacred than any of those things? I'm not saying all your phone data becomes public if you're in a crash, the same way that an alcohol test doesn't tell the cops where, what, and with who you were drinking with. How is society in any way worse, if phones recorded usage in the past 24 hours, and drivers had to provide that data if implicated in a crash?
    - dylan604 3y ago
      If there's a tool that an officer can use that retrieves this information, I'd have a problem with that. If the phone is demanded as evidence with proper warrant/subpoena, then sure. However, in the cases of a car wreck, I think confiscating the phone as evidence does seem warranted. And admitting that has me in a weird state. With such little consequences for blatantly being distracted, it will not stop. But looking at history, draconian punishment is not a deterrent in other aspects. Addicts are going to do whatever for their fix. Admitting phone addiction exists is probably something too though.
      - hooverd 3y ago
        Personally, I don't think calling for expanding the surveillance state helps this cause vs advocating for proper pedestrian infrastructure and road design. We've made it really easy to speed and give no heed to pedestrians and other forms of infrastructure.
        dylan604 3y ago
        I'm thinking bigger than just pedestrians. Distracted drivers are not only affecting pedestrians. Not many pedestrians on open highways.
        amrocha 3y ago
        I don't know what world you live in that a license plate on your car is ok in terms of privacy, but a phone that reports whether you were using it while driving is a surveillance state.
        owl57 3y ago
        You seem to be insisting that such a feature can be mandated without collateral damage for a lot of phone users, including people who never use a phone while driving or even don't drive at all.
        3y ago
acdha 3y ago
This is discussed in the article, and you’re making a much more provocative claim which the author does not advance. They specifically mention civil liberties as a concern and the one proposal specifically mentioned would involve cameras identifying drivers visibly using their phones, which requires no hacking whatsoever. The obvious measure would be standardizing the process of police asking drivers about phone use in every crash, which again has no civil liberties concerns. It also seems like Apple and Google should have a roll as trusted third parties. The phone could save a short activity log (basically the same things screen time apps record: was the device unlocked, active, last touch event, etc.) any time car play is active or the accelerometer records hard deceleration with a secure way to share that with the police so you can be confident all you’re giving them is evidence that you weren’t looking at Tik Tok 20s before the collision.

s3p 3y ago

1. https://archive.is/kKTVS https://archive.is/kKTVS 2. ...and should they? If a crash happens, and someone was on their phone, it would be pretty obvious that they were at fault. I just have a really hard time thinking that more device-related tracking would be better for society. Also, the mention of cameras at the end of the article is another concern for me. I really don't think this country is better off with more internet connected cameras that are actively being used to surveil the populous. There have to be better ways to win the hearts and minds of people and convince them to not use their phones. Turning into a surveillance state doesn't seem to be the best way to do that IMO.

jjulius 3y ago
>If a crash happens, and someone was on their phone, it would be pretty obvious that they were at fault. Accidents are so circumstantial that it's not always going to be "pretty obvious" someone involved was on their phone. Nor does being on your phone when involved in an accident necessarily mean that you caused it.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Accidents can also be caused by someone who didn't crash. If you have to take evasive action because of someone else you might crash. (in some cases you crashing is the best result for you)
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  I know someone who was rear-ended by someone who was reportedly on his phone. The person I know also admitted to me that they were on their phone but that didn't make it into the police report. So, not only were they on their phone and reportedly didn't cause the collision, nobody even asked if they were on their phone and therefore nobody found out, presumably because they didn't cause the collision.
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    My step daughter was in a collision in the middle of an intersection. No cameras, no witnesses, no other vehicles than the two. Police come along, ask her a bare minimum of questions. "Did you have a green light?" "Yes, I did." "Okay." Walk over to the other driver, and talk to him, come back less than three minutes later. "The other driver said he definitely had a green light. I am issuing you a citation for failure to obey a traffic control signal." That fell apart very quickly when we appealed it to court. "Definitely" in a statement adds nothing to the reasonable doubt equation.

photoGrant 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

jdksmdbtbdnmsm 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

ijhuygft776 3y ago

> But they still aren’t being used to track one of the biggest public health threats: crashes caused by drivers distracted by the phones. I have seen cases where they went back and look at phone use history after accidents.... not sure how often they do it though.

barbazoo 3y ago
Is there a reasonable process for police in US/Canada to actually get that info, doesn't seem to be the case? > The police can access cellphone records but the process is cumbersome and privacy laws require a subpoena. I wish it was just a default step in figuring out fault nowadays. An not handing over that data should put that driver at a disadvantage.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  The process being somewhat inconvenient ("cumbersome" is overstating it) is intentional. It's one of the few protections we have from abuse by law enforcement in the US. I'm glad we have at least that.
  - barbazoo 3y ago
    Does that process yield phone usage data or "just" calls/texts?
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      It depends on what data the police are asking for in the warrant. Any data that exists is fair game.
      - barbazoo 3y ago
        How would they get phone usage data though? Even I wouldn't know how to get that info off my own phone other than abstract "screen time" metrics.

snakeyjake 3y ago

Anecdotally, I have personally witnessed an incomprehensible rise in the amount of motor vehicle crashes in the past 15 years and the single greatest contributing factor seems to be smartphone distraction. Just last fall I responded to a late-night crash where a drunk driver lost control and pinballed across the highway hitting both barriers and coming to a rest on the shoulder when a second vehicle whose driver was looking at their phone failed to notice the gigantic fire engine with flashing lights blocking the right lane of the three-lane road and braked just late enough to crash into our engine. We found the phone, still playing a video, in the driver's side footwell.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pvg 3y ago
NYT piece recently considered this as a possible factor in the increase of night time pedestrian deaths: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/11/upshot/nighttime-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/11/upshot/nightt...
floren 3y ago
The number of times I look over and see the driver of the next car watching a goddamn video on their goddamn phone... Mind blowing.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Before cell phones existed, I commonly saw equally mind-blowing things including people putting on makeup, eating bowls of soup, and such while driving. I'm not sure that things have really changed all that much, big picture.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    Most people aren't carrying bowls of soup with them everywhere. Bowls of soup also don't send you unprompted notifications. Things have changed a lot. The biggest thing that changed is how common this kind of driving is.

CharlesW 3y ago

It seems bizarre that I can't choose to use the CarPlay user experience on my phone while I'm driving in my DumbCar. This seems like such obvious, low-hanging fruit.

elromulous 3y ago
It's not the "apple way". Android let you enable Android auto on phone, but iirc the feature went away.
sigmoid10 3y ago
It's still illegal to use your phone while driving in most countries. So by allowing you to use CarPlay on your phone while not connected to a car's media system, that could be interpreted as enticing phone usage while driving and thus open them up to potential lawsuits. The irony is that so many people disregard the law anyways that it would actually end up making roads safer. But Apple wont risk offending lawmakers for that.
- buran77 3y ago
  > that could be interpreted as enticing phone usage while driving This can't be true. Zooming the screen from the accessibility settings probably gets you half way there already. Every navigation app is enticing you to use it while driving. Touchscreens are enticing/forcing users to take the eyes off the road. The mere existence of the phone is enticing a driver to use it. CarPlay "mode" would just be a slightly different GUI for what you can already do with the phone whether legally (by the passenger, or while stationary) or illegally (while driving). Every app in the phone is also accessible from the home screen. At most Apple would have to issue a warning every time to use it correctly, like many cars already do.
  - sigmoid10 3y ago
    >Zooming the screen from the accessibility settings probably gets you half way there already It gets you there all the way. If some cop wants to screw you over, that's more than he needs. Taking your eyes of the road to look at some small smartphone is not just illegal, it's dangerous. People die because of it every day. Most cops just don't give a fuck because almost everyone does it. Doesn't make it legal though. That's also why all navigation apps tell you not to use them while driving. But while these apps have other legit uses, CarPlay literally only exists to be used while driving. So it makes no sense to offer it without integration into a car's systems that allow you (in theory) to use it without looking down. If someone screws this up it's the car maker's fault.

mattgreenrocks 3y ago

It's unique in that it's an addiction that enough people have that it's considered entirely normal. And that normalcy means it's not seen as a big problem to fix, it's just "how it is." Until people decide that reality is better than the unreality of phones, this kind of willful ignorance will continue.

reaperducer 3y ago
Wait until the price of Apple's Vision Pro comes down a bit. You'll see people driving with AR goggles on, watching movies or worse.
- wussboy 3y ago
  Using Vision Pro to watch a movie while they drive home, then sitting at the couch all evening playing a driving game.
- mattgreenrocks 3y ago
  Yup, I'm bullish on the Vision Pro from a purely entrepreneurial standpoint, and not a fan of it from a social perspective. But willing to be wrong on the latter, so might as well watch as it plays out.
snazz 3y ago
> Until people decide that reality is better than the unreality of phones, this kind of willful ignorance will continue. The adoption rate of other entertainment tech like television and video games makes me think that the trend you identify might just be human nature to some extent (with the help of consumerism). I’m not sure people will in fact choose “reality” over entertainment in large enough numbers to reverse that trend.
dazzlefruit 3y ago
I don't use my phone when reality is better. Consider that some people's lives suck most of the time.
- 3y ago

P_I_Staker 3y ago

What is the real value here? Man years in prisons equal a better society. Is anyone willing to reconsider how insane driving is in general for the average person? It's one of the few areas where society basically demands we take on massive liabilities in order to live our basic lives. Then we also like to pretend it's a "privilege", and not necessary. My employer almost called the cops on me, because I didn't drive in one day and used uber. Starting to get some real second thoughts about this culture. It seems we have taken an insane shift in perspective. In 1970 all car crashes were accidents, but in the 2020s, none are; and someone has to be obliterated. Tackling "drunk drunk" driving eg. 10 beers, 0.10+ bac, etc. is one thing. All these calls to lock up more people for longer seem to be taking us down a crazy road... and they continue to use the same rules for other substances, even though the chemical testing doesn't work, and the number of cases are low (ie. not a lot of crashes happening).

freshchilled 3y ago
> My employer almost called the cops on me, because I didn't drive in one day and used uber. What was their reasoning behind this? Unknown car at a secure facility?
- owl57 3y ago
  I'd guess there are places where refusing to drive suggests you're drunk.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    That's a hell of an assumption from my car wouldn't start. Or my wife's car wouldn't start so I let her take mine. Or any number of reasons before jumping to that conclusion. Why even jump to a conclusion, and just let the person tell them why, to even WTF does it matter?
    - P_I_Staker 3y ago
      That's not to mention the reasons that could relate to not wanting to tell you. For instance, they could be complying with those great license bans everyone things are so swell. Or they could suffer from medical problems that would also make them responsible if they hurt someone. Do you want to make everyone that has a severely limiting disability have to constantly explain themselves? Or maybe their fucking car is in the shop.

andersa 3y ago

Why would someone be using their phone while driving? Is this something I'm too European to understand? Literally never occured to me to do that, and I haven't ever been in a car where someone did it. Obvious exceptions being to look at a message while stopped at a traffic light or other safe location, or having the navigation app open with the phone fixed to the dashboard and otherwise not interacting with it.

rdoherty 3y ago
At least around me in CA I see folks every day looking at their phones while driving. I believe license requirements and overall driving safety is much higher in Europe vs the US. I have friends from Europe who are shocked at how easy it is to get a license in the US.
Symbiote 3y ago
"The EU mean percentages of car drivers self-reporting different mobile phone uses at least once while driving in the past 30 days are: 47.7% talked on a hands-free mobile phone, 28.6% talked on hand-held mobile phone, and 24.2% texted." So it's just you I'm afraid.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
> Is this something I'm too European to understand? My guess is: yes. I'm almost too "I look at the car, not the driver" to understand but I have actually seen this as a passenger in America. I drive myself places.
rideontime 3y ago
> Obvious exceptions being to look at a message while stopped at a traffic light This exception is "obvious" until you've sat through an entire cycle because the car in front of you didn't notice the light turning green.
- binarymax 3y ago
  That's one thing that horns are for. Granted I hate using it, and other people hate it too, but I've gotten pretty good at a friendly beep-beep instead of a lean on honk.

synlatexc 3y ago

Why not display a Recent Phone Use option when both side buttons of an Apple device is pressed? * slide to power off * Medical ID * SOS Emergency Call * Recent Phone Use Report would be high-level -- has phone been unlocked in last 30 minutes, if so, timestamps showing when it was unlocked, for how long, how many finger taps occurred, etc. That would give law enforcement a quick indication of whether phone was in use. Of course if there are passengers it could be contested. For more detail, they'd have to subpoena as they do now.

rideontime 3y ago
I hate people who use their phones while driving as much as the next person, but I would not buy a phone that divulged my personal information in this way.
- astrange 3y ago
  That's kind of describing Digital Wellbeing/Screen Time.
  - rideontime 3y ago
    Which I have to unlock my phone to view.
    - astrange 3y ago
      I learned from that Alaska incident that a lot of people just don't lock their phone.
- acdha 3y ago
  That is not divulging personal information in any case and the privilege of driving requires some compromises there. For example, having a medical condition actually is a private matter but the state has a compelling public safety interest to require you to disclose conditions which affect your ability to drive safely.

jmyeet 3y ago

Using your phone is demonstrably less safe than not. What I find most interesting is how skewed human psychology can be to risk. People have phobias about all sorts of things eg flying. Flying on a commercial airplane is demonstrably safer than driving. So why isn't there a more prevalent fear of driving? Some will point to the illusion of control. I can buy that to some degree. Phone use by driving should make people more fearful of driving. Even if you personally don't use your phone while driving, other people do. And that increases your own risk. Yet that doesn't seem to be the case. What makes this worse is that everything from marketing to public relations to politics is built around stoking irrational fears that aren't based in fact. A classic example is child abduction even though in reality in the United States ~8 children are actually abducted every year. Figures like "800,000 per year" are heavily inflated with custody disputes.

pcthrowaway 3y ago
> Flying on a commercial airplane is demonstrably safer than driving Can you give me some stats on this? I was under the impression that it's maybe a little bit safer in terms of distance traveled. But the people who think their driving is 50% safer than the average person's don't care about this. And this is probably near 100% of people who drive.
- alamortsubite 3y ago
  Number of deaths per passenger-mile is 750x higher for driving than flying in the U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...
kjkjadksj 3y ago
People have no sense of actual risk and how it affects them. They fixate on emotional rather than rational assessments that perverts their understanding of risk and above all believe they are personally invincible.

whoswho 3y ago

I’ve been saying that hands-free phones in cars have been a massive massive mistake, but people laughed. Well they’re not laughing when their children are involved. /gruesome

jacquesm 3y ago
If only they were hands free. Plenty of people just use their phone as if they're sitting on their couch while driving.

jacquesm 3y ago

It's one of my pet peeves. I see people with their phones in front of their faces on pretty much every road trip I make. And that's in spite of a 140 euro fine here where I live.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

Werner Herzog's "From One Second to the Next" [0,1] should be mandatory watching for all drivers. [0] https://www.netflix.com/title/70302184 https://www.netflix.com/title/70302184 [1] https://vimeo.com/369894528 https://vimeo.com/369894528

bastawhiz 3y ago

I ride a motorcycle ~daily. I'm acutely aware of drivers on their phones. Probably one in six drivers that I see are holding their phone, looking at their phone, or otherwise distracted by their phone. Besides being aware of what folks are doing around me, I routinely use my shoulder checks to peek at whether the drivers adjacent to me are distracted so I can be more prepared if they do something stupid. The fix for this is easy: pull people over. When I was a teenager, cops met their quotas by watching for people with a phone (back then folks were talking, not typing). This is a big part of what drove people to get bluetooth earpieces: you wouldn't get pulled over for having one and talking on the phone (and cars didn't have microphones yet, so there wasn't another option). People will be pissed that they're getting pulled over for using their phone while driving. But if there's no expectation of punishment for breaking the law, people will continue breaking the law. And texting and driving is breaking the law. And if I can spot half a dozen people texting and driving on my way to the gym, cops can definitely spot folks texting. Hell, if I could apply for the special cop job of "pull people over for texting" and nothing else, I'd do it purely out of resentment for distracted driving.

hmottestad 3y ago
They pull people over in Norway and give them hefty fines (~1000 USD). We don’t have any statistics for number of car accidents where the driver was “probably” using their phone, so it’s hard to say if it works. So same issue was the article brings up. I feel that the media is partially to blame too. They like to victimise drivers who are caught using their phones, or driving over the speed limit for that matter. Or maybe it’s just my point of view.
browningstreet 3y ago
I can guess with a very high probability that a driver in front of me is on their phone just by the way they move in their lane. I hate driving behind distracted drivers -- they tend to do things suddenly (stop, steer, or crash).
- prirun 3y ago
  Don't forget about the back though: I had a driver slam into me while stopped at a light. She wrecked 4 cars including her own and sent me to the hospital with a $25K ER bill. Took 2 years to resolve that. I get so sick of hearing people say "It's okay: my car lets me talk hands free!" It isn't just the hands that are a problem ... it's your brain being disengaged that's the problem. No hands-free phone fixes that. The bottom line is, no one should be using their phone and driving. If you have to use the phone, pull over.

robotguy 3y ago

At my last job, subsidiary of a pretty large corporation, it was not only against company policy to use a phone while driving on-the-clock , it was forbidden to text or even call someone if you knew they were driving. Not very enforceable, but at least it established the intent.

ChainOfFools 3y ago

I wonder if anyone has done any studies about lack of turn signal use being tied to phone in the hand that normally operates the turn signal. The amount of added background commute stress caused by almost everyone on the road ignoring their turn signal these days is infuriating. It makes everything take longer, and every delay gets magnified multiple times by multiple people in a causal chain not doing it. This increases stress, road rage, increases commute times, gridlock, everything connected with driving decision that involves meshing with the moves of the cars around you, which now defaults to the worst case defensive scenario- i.e. that everyone who, say, could swerve into your lane when you try to merge, is likely to do so, so you wait multiple times longer to get on to a highway or turn onto a two or three lane thoroughfare, than you would have to if people would just perform what has to be the simplest yet most beneficial gesture of productive cooperation. Even navigating a 7-Eleven parking lot turns into a needlessly guessing game. And yet if you try to raise the subject among casual friends, even in a joking manner, they look at you like you're some kind of anachronistic Barney Fife character.

osi 3y ago
that’s been a problem longer than phones. worse, maybe, but not new.

nicepplonly 3y ago

Phones are easy to blame here, but nobody wants to talk about speeding and dangerous driving, which seems to have become totally normalized. People treat speed limits as a minimum speed suggestion. There's also close to no enforcement of traffic laws from what I've seen, yet lots of people are outraged about too many bicycles (even though the number of people killed by bicycles is a tiny fraction of those killed by cars).

bitexploder 3y ago
Speed limits aren’t the problem.
- nicepplonly 3y ago
  Do you also believe the laws of physics are just an opinion? If physics is an opinion, then I believe that F = ma, which means that more of m and a means more F, which means more injuries and death.
  - c0pium 3y ago
    Speed limits aren’t the problem because people ignore them and drive by feeling. The correct solution is not more enforcement but rather better design to reduce the speed that feels right. Narrower lanes, chicanes, barriers between pedestrians and vehicles, roundabouts instead of stop signs, the usual playbook that people ignore because it’s expensive. More enforcement is what we tried with drugs, how’d that go?
    - jf22 3y ago
      I agree with you, but there are a great deal of drug use metrics that have declined over time so maybe choose a different analogy.
      - c0pium 3y ago
        If you look into what those metric changes are related to, you’ll find that it’s almost entirely uncorrelated with stiffer incarceration and zero tolerance policies, which was my point.

devin 3y ago

I would expand this to include the incredibly distracting and cumbersome touchscreen crap that infests modern vehicles.

smallerfish 3y ago
And the half-assed UI that's there in the name of the name of safety - whose idea was "safety pause"?

gumby 3y ago

I refuse (I'm polite about it) to allow people on my zoom meetings who are calling in from their car unless they are parked. But I am frequently on zoom mtgs run by other people who don't seem to care. Even when I just call someone on the phone (not that often these days) and find they're in the car I always ask, "Hey, should I just call you later?" and, perhaps surprisingly, people will usually say "yeah, we can talk XXX". This is common when they will get to their destination in not so long a time. I'm nore likely to get a "naah, I'll be on the road for a couple of hours so let's just talk now" than I am, "I'll be driving for another 10 minutes so let's just talk now"

mattgreenrocks 3y ago
Even when the link is handy, the stupid Zoom UI is horrible to use from a car. I park myself in a meeting before driving and then use CarPlay mute/unmute as needed. It works ok. If I lose the call, it's impossible to get back in, as I need to use the phone.
- gumby 3y ago
  I am uncomfortable with someone being distracted by what’s going on in a meeting while maneuvering a multi-ton device around other people.

tonymet 3y ago

> Several ideas ... without stepping on civil liberties. One idea... would involve using roadside cameras Maybe the initial version of this camera that requires human intervention will barely abide by the already overreaching law, but face-reading cameras everywhere will soon be abused. Despite talk about authoritarianism we rarely discuss its cultural roots. Notice how the article puts the burden on authorities & companies to add more surveillance and penalties for people to improve their behavior. Every ill in society can be fixed with enough surveillance, by this reasoning. People often worry that we will become like the 20th century authoritarian states (e.g the 3rd Reich, GDR , USSR, etc) and I tell them that we've far surpassed their surveillance and control capacity. So let's not keep adding to it, shall we?

intrasight 3y ago

It makes no sense to me that we don't have, in the US, cameras everywhere giving tickets like they do in Europe. I assume that it's just a matter of time before we get over our collective stupidity. But it's also possible that personal driving will become illegal (only robo-cars allowed) before that happens.

kjkjadksj 3y ago
When we put cameras up usually groups try and take them down for the worst reasons, e.g. a “never mind fatalities went down, we are now burdening the low income community with tickets” sort of irrational emotionally driven argument.
nojvek 3y ago
Seeing how many hidden speed cameras there are in Australia to catch someone going slightly over on a plain straight road with steep fines, no thank you! I very much like that US treats me as an adult when driving. I am fine with cops pulling me over. I just legit hate the idea cameras always watching me waiting for me to make the tiniest mistake and chew up a significant chunk of my monthly income. Speed and red light cameras are a big business raking in millions per camera.

trklausss 3y ago

My experience with phone and driving is it would be much better if Siri was remotely useful… Half of the times doesn’t understand what I ask, can’t take me somewhere when I ask her to, and can’t read the top hit of a search when asked a question, only answering with “Can’t show you the result while in the car”. I got to stop to reconfigure more often than not. Transcription of messages is utterly broken when having conversations in different languages with different people. Why is it still bad with so many advances in LLMs and machine learning?

6figurelenins 3y ago

I'd like to remind everyone clamoring for law enforcement that the person who arrests you will be driving to jail at 70 miles per hour, in a 35 mph zone, while using a laptop.

rufaia0147 3y ago

[dead]