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Comment by uxisnotui | Hacker News Reader

Texting while driving comes to mind: https://www.nsc.org/road-safety/safety-topics/distracted-dri...

Eating while driving is also a huge part of the distracted driving problem. Food also causes numerous other health problems; obesity, diabetes and so on.

If we all work really hard we can come up with dumb reasons to ban almost anything. Politicians make careers out of this sort of thing.

I always liked the idea of simply banning distracted driving. Why have the law play cat and mouse with new technologies.

unfortunately the law has to balance principle with practicality. it's hard to imagine a way of detecting a wide range of distracting behaviors without some sort of pervasive surveillance. would you be willing to accept a camera in your car than an LEO can tap into at any time?

That’s definitely true but why should it be any harder than detecting someone texting?

From a practical standpoint, how about if your car is weaving back and forth they Get checked out.

AFAIK, people are rarely caught simply for texting and driving. to actually catch someone in the act, a cop has to drive by at the right moment and see the driver texting. more often, sms records will be examined in a crash postmortem. if texts were sent right before the time of the crash, it's good evidence that the driver was illegally texting. I guess if the police really care, they can do the same thing after pulling you over for erratic driving.

eating food doesn't leave the same digital trail. if a person crashes or gets pulled over for driving erratically and there's half a sandwich in the passenger seat, there's no way to know whether they were eating while driving or whether they just ate half of it in a parking lot 30 minutes ago.

Awhile back when no texting laws were just starting out I remember thinking it was so stupid because my state (Michigan) already had a no distracted driving law.

I don't see how it's any different than eating, smoking, reading, or whatever else people do in their car that makes it harder to drive.

Part of it is marketing. Part of it is a way to essentially double the fine by adding an additional offense.

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