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Comment by DenisM | Hacker News Reader

How about this:

If you're caught cell-driving, you either pay a large fine, say $750, or you submit to a program that bans talking while moving faster than 5mph for the next two months. The cell carrier will monitor the ban and issue citations by SMS.

So if you opt into this program, and then you're driving down the road, start talking on the cell phone, and then 30 seconds later BANG! you get a text message: "That call was $75 payable to the city hall before the end of the day". Yeah, you can't talk on the bus and stuff, but that's the "punishment" part for ya.

It's worth a try, I think.

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The trick with using technology to assess "driving while texting" is that texters are often the passengers in the car. Waze tries to deal with moving typers by having an alert that pops up thatsays (roughly), "You can't enter text while moving" - but has a button that says, "It's ok, I'm a passenger."

The trick with a $75 fine for texting while moving is passengers. If you're willing to ban texting entirely while moving though, using technology to assess small fines could work!

I'm not proposing trying to figure out who is driving and who is riding. Once a person got caught breaking the law, he can't use his phone while moving; passenger or driver is not important at this point.

The key is to training new habit and making it stick, according to the article, is to make punishment moderate, certain, and immediate. We can't do that across the board due to the limitations of technology, legitimate use, privacy concerns, presumption of innocence and so on. But we sure can do that to those who broke the law, especially when they opt into it.

What if the person is on a train? Spending the entire ride not being able to use one's phone?

but Waze also asks you to report road conditions while driving even if you are the driver...

What about when the initial crime isn't discovered? All the people who don't get caught?

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