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Comment by thatoneuser | Hacker News Reader

Why not check your phone while at a stop sign? Why not check your phone while on a straightaway with no cars in sight? Why not check your phone to make sure you're on the right route?

I get what you're saying but these are the thousands of little thoughts in the back of your mind that encourage you to use your phone in the car. "Just leave the phone in your pocket" has to defend itself against every one of these little pervasive thoughts. Why do you think the mobile tech companies are worth tens of billions? They got a drug better than any other.

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> Why not check your phone while at a stop sign?

I attempted to answer that question recently.

https://oppositelock.kinja.com/ruminations-on-stoplights-and...

What I don’t get is what is so important that requires “checking” every 5 minutes? Are we all business executives now, executing million dollar deals? Or day trading stocks? What’s so urgent?

I run my phone in Do Not Disturb mode 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No notifications. No texts. No calls. No E-mails. I’ll check these things at night sometime when I’m not doing other things like driving a 2000 pound steel death machine on the interstate.

I've gotta say out of everybody I know even my 80+ year old grandpa - your phone notifies you of the least. Idk if you're in a contest here but that's just now how most people's lives go. Most peoples lives are engrained with their phones and I think most of us are healthy enough to make it be a net positive. (Not implying anything you're doing is wrong!)

I'm not defending or justifying doing it - im simply explaining why it's such a common phenomenon. People are often in conversations all day long with others. Or engaged in online discussions like this. Life is filled with boring moments and phones alleviate us of that. That's why people do it.

Because it's dangerous!! Figure out where you're going before driving off! If you get lost PULL OVER! It's really not that difficult and it shows that you actually care about people in the world other than yourself.

I have an issue with most of the defenses of using a phone while driving, but are you saying we should not be able to use a dashboard mounted phone as a GPS unit? Should all dashboard mounted GPS units be illegal, or just phone as a GPS? The advice was literally to keep the phone in your pocket.

No. But if you need to change your directions, or search for something in the GPS, your eyes won't be on the road and you should pull over. If anything you're doing in your car is taking your focus away from operating a multi ton killing machine, then be an adult and stop it.

Having a dashboard mounted phone as a GPS unit is fine, interacting with it any way other than briefly looking at it is not.

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