Drivers Refuse to Put Down Their Phones. People Keep Dying
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
On top of that, you can avoid the vast majority of drunk drivers if you stay off the roads at night. Distracted drivers are on the road at all hours.
This may not be possible. One of the effects of alcohol on cognition is that it increases distractability while simultaneously making you less aware of it's occurrence which is a compounding issue.
I think what the poster meant is that while a person driving under influence might be slightly distracted (there is full spectrum of being under influence) the person fidgeting with a phone is always very distracted.
You can't be only slightly distracted when you are not looking at the road but reading or replying to message.
When I used to drive auto I could literally have my phone in my right hand with my left hand on the wheel at all times if I wanted to...
He probably just drives something made in the last ~15yr. In a modern vehicle the power band is wide enough that you have about 3 gears that can be used in any given situation and the gear shift is basically a 6-way toggle switch. You could definitely use your phone if you wanted to.
I used to eat a bagel on my way to work in stop and go traffic with my gear shift hand and that's in a 25yo vehicle with a really long shifter and such little power you really only have one good gear for a given situation. In a vehicle like that it is much harder to be distracted and drive comfortably.
I learned stick on a working holiday, driving utes in Western Australia
The hard part of texting while driving stick is taking your eyes off the road, not having three things to manipulate with only two hands. That's like saying it's impossible for humans to drive stick because there are three pedals but only two feet.
What's your driving style like? I imagine the people who accelerate as quickly as their car is capable of, consistently drive 15-20 over the speed limit, often have to speed up and slow down and dodge between lanes will have to shift a lot more than the rest of us.
It just strikes me as weird that other people think it's impossible to drive stick and text at the same time. Sure you can't do it safely, but that's nothing to do with the transmission.
I've driven stick shift for over a decade and this is completely false.
> You don’t constantly need your hand on the shifter.
Constantly? No. Frequently? Yes.
My first car didn't have cup holders, and I remember managing to drive while holding a cup of soda or a shake when bring food back from fast food drive-throughs, holding the cup the entire trip. It was stick and I had no problem doing this.
With a phone, I'd expect you could just set it down between messages, which should make it easier than carrying those cups was. Setting those down risked spilling them.
Maybe we need one of those corny ‘80s throwback PSAs to shame people into conscientious behavior.
Have you ever watched someone sitting alone lately? It's like this nervous tick happens where they get irritated and uncomfortable if they don't check their phone every 5 minutes. There is no attention span. We've programmed it out.
I remain skeptical that the switch from "the Internet exists at some physical locations, you must go to one to use the Internet" to "the Internet exists at all physical locations all of the time" was anywhere near being a net (haha) gain for our collective wellbeing.
"They've programmed themselves." - Isn't there evidence that the apps (like fbk and msgr, others) - and phones (apple) have been programmed to create this like - dopamine - want - get - more - behavior (?)
Supreme court is now allowing people to sue gun manufacturers when people use their tools improperly (at least in one case) - it won't take a top 10 law firm to copy the tactics deployed there and convince jury's that big tech was taking advantage of lil johnny and lil mary who are not that smart - and they were using the devices and apps as intended - as so they should be liable for the pain, suffering, deaths, etc
right? (not a lawyer, but I'd go that route for that kind of ambulance chasing maybe)
How do you define touching the phone? Can you imagine some circumstances where that shouldn’t be a permanent removal of driving privileges?
I would like to agree but in reality the vast majority of the population get a driver's license (and drive on the regular) and you have to fuck up really badly to lose it.
For better or for worse, most of our built environment is absolutely dependent on driving so society as a whole is way too lenient on drivers and their statistical externalities.
Driving is treated as a revocable right, not as a privilege.
We do have "driving while intoxicated" (which covers alcohol and drugs - controlled, illicit or medical) and "distracted driving" (which covers everything from lighting a cigarette to adjusting your radio, to talking on your phone, to turning around to high-five the passenger in the back seat).
I'm not recommending removing those charges. I'm advocating that the charges should be made stiffer by adding "care and control of a vehicle" on top of the dwi or distracted driving charges.
That way, there are more points taken off your license, and it gets even more expensive to deal with in court (or jail, as the case may be). The tools are there for us, but we don't use them as effectively as we could.
I can recall one time where I talked to a driver stopped at a stoplight about how he wasn't paying attention and couldn't stay in his lane. I told him to put down the phone and watch the road. This driver tried to change the subject, acting outraged that before he passed me I left the bike lane for less than 10 seconds to pass another cyclist. I told him that's not illegal but he wasn't having any of it. Apparently I'm just as bad as he is, which makes his distracted driving okay. Except that what I did was legal and perfectly safe, yet what he did was illegal and rather dangerous.
One time I switched lanes rather abruptly as the person in front of me was erratically speeding up and slowing down. (No, I wasn't tailgating; I think they were drunk or maybe having an argument.) The person in the next lane apparently got pissed that I merged so closely behind him and a few blocks later pulled up alongside me to yell. I apologized. From his perspective it was a dick move; I got it. The look of shock on his face when I apologized was priceless; he almost looked dejected.
People get so self-defensive; it doesn't make any sense. It's like people turn 18 and stop growing up. Their loss, I guess.
Whenever someone cuts me off or wanders into my lane, rather than getting angry I try to remind myself that that's me during an inattentive moment, which we all have regularly. We just don't realize when we have them because, well, we're distracted.
You're right. The lap people are worse because they are trying to hide what they are doing in a way that makes it more dangerous!
> I apologized. From his perspective it was a dick move; I got it. The look of shock on his face when I apologized was priceless; he almost looked dejected.
As a cyclist I talk to a lot of drivers. I'd guess, just based on my intuition, that about 1/3 of drivers will apologize outright for dangerous driving when I talk to them. I'm not surprised this would disappoint some people but I think it's the right response. I myself have tried to get better about pausing to evaluate my situation when I've been accused of doing something bad and apologizing if necessary. It takes practice.
I'm not sure if it really matters that much. Humans are very bad at paying attention to more than one thing. It's the attention that really matters, not so much the vision. Besides, peripheral vision essentially just tracks movements, and traffic is always moving regardless.
I suspect that if there is a difference at all, it will be smaller than you'd expect.
You say "it's difficult to fathom this level of negligence", but a driver doing this is significantly more dangerous -- yet current laws don't take this into account.
For example: a ticket for a cyclist running a red light in NYC is greater than a ticket for a driver texting on their phone.
But, I've never been buzzed by a car going 20mph at a distance of under one foot, and certainly not while I'm walking on a sidewalk. I am regularly buzzed by bikes in this manner.
In general, drivers act with the knowledge that if they even tap a pedestrian, they're likely to severely injure or kill them. They might be sloppy or distracted, but they almost never willfully do this.
I encounter bicyclists playing "chicken" with me on sidewalks all the time. There's a cold or smug look on their face as they ride directly toward me--it's clear that I'd better step aside or be struck.
So, regardless of the actual numbers, cyclists seem more dangerous. I don't think accurate statistics are being collected on this sort of thing, and I think we should start.
(P.S. Have you really seen a bicyclist getting a ticket in NYC? Never seen that in my life. Wow!)
In my experience as a cyclist and pedestrian, many drivers don't seem to act with the knowledge that if they even tap a pedestrian or cyclist that they'll severely injure or kill them. Many drivers do similar things to what you describe cyclists as doing. Ultimately the percentage of jerks among drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians is about the same.
> (P.S. Have you really seen a bicyclist getting a ticket in NYC? Never seen that in my life. Wow!)
Isn't NYC famous for ticketing cyclists? E.g., for not riding in the bike lane? (Which isn't illegal by the way.) I don't know specifically about the claim previously made but it seems plausible to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzE-IMaegzQ
I live in Austin and as a cyclist I've gone through bike stop sign enforcement twice (getting a ticket neither time). My guess is that the same thing happens regularly in NYC, but you're not paying attention for such things.
Only saw maybe four drivers get tickets, though, and two looked more like some dispute about taxi regulations than actual moving violations.
I will say that NYC bicyclists are far more law-abiding and respectful than my current "bike-friendly" city. (Never thought I'd type those words...)
Cyclists shouldn't be on the sidewalk (unless they're kids <8 years old I believe).
As to bicyclists being ticketed... unfortunately, yes. I've been ticketed and a number of friends have been ticketed. There have been a number of anti-cycling initiatives recently (follow @bikesnobnyc to see the level of it, with some snark)
I do too, especially for maps and changing music.
Seriously the drivers in that area are so terrible, with Uber drivers taking it a step higher. For the average cyclist, it’s a matter of when, not if they will get hit.
Also not surprised about ride share drivers. A few months ago I had one try to attack me with a screwdriver! Helmet cam video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trSB3mK78bs (I believe the guy has been arrested now, not sure though as he might have skipped town.)
(Yes, I've heard that I should not confront drivers, but I think on a whole me doing so has led to greater understanding between cyclists and drivers. In this case the Uber driver nearly hit me head on, probably because they were distracted. If anyone thinks I was rude to the driver in any way, I'm interested in learning why.)
Right now I'm in Austin but don't intend to stay here long term. While people say driving is terrible everywhere, some places are worse. In Texas drunk driving is basically socially acceptable, plus you have people driving huge trucks, often with frivolous "grille guards" that would butcher any pedestrian or cyclist hit by them.
In 2017, 3,166 fatalities (of 37,133 total) were attributed to "distracted driving". Of those, 434 fatalities were associated with cell phone use. [0]
For comparison, there were 10,874 fatalities from DUIs in 2017. [1]
[0] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
Also, and they don't note this, but people can be intoxicated and using a mobile device. I suspect their model substantially unreports DUIs where distraction was a factor. It is very easy to do a field test and chalk it up to a DUI and not investigate further.
"Honestly, I think the real number of fatalities tied to cell phones is at least three times the federal figure " - https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2017/10/18/46...
Also, in an accident where all parties are dead, how do you determine the cause?
Obviously, looking at the phone rather than the road is the worst part, but no one seems to be talking about how hands-free systems aren't helping either and are probably hurting by making people think they are being safe.
I also don't understand why the laws regarding cell phones and even drunk driving are so lax. Any of these should result in an immediate ban on your license for a long time. If I had a gun license and walked around shooting it, I would lose that license as well as I proved I am not responsible enough to operate it and that could result in death.
Although I agree the reason this has (and may never) happen is that (atleast in America) we have been forced in a world where cars are basically required due to car-first development, so to take away someones license basically takes away employment opportunities, friends, and other basic necessities. People will spend a lot of time and money fighting traffic offenses, just so they don't lose there ability to drive due to the detrimental effects it has.
We have to make it stupid simple to drive because we have basically made that a requirement to function in normal society.
The only alternative (which I think we need to do) is to transform our transportation and development policies to make cars either optional or not needed at all.
But, turns out alcoholics aren't rational people. So after they get out, they drive drunk, but this time they don't have insurance (and they're too broke to sue) so when they do cause an accident next time, the victim ends up needing to pony up the cash to pay for it.
I have several drunk family members who've been caught drunk driving multiple times. They've been to jail, and they don't have a license, but they still drive. This is not a problem you solve by making laws harsher (unless maybe you go to Sharia law levels of harsh and execute people after some number of offenses). You have to tackle alcoholism.
If anything it can lead to worse behavior where people that are trying to text keep their phone below window level requiring them to take their eyes further off the road. I realize it's an attentional issue and that having the phone up higher won't resolve that component, but if you don't even have peripheral vision of the road for seconds at a time because you're looking down, you've got no hope of having your brain send you a danger signal to visual input.
I don't see a problem with talking to close friends, holding the phone to my ear with one arm, on a highway in low traffic conditions (eg long drives at night). But any time I come up on a situation (passing a meandering car, heavy traffic passing me, construction zone, car stopped in breakdown lane [1]), I abruptly say "hold on", and take the phone away from my head. I probably laid the foundations for this behavior driving stick (where you want your second arm back to be able to shift etc). Most situations I also take the vehicle out of cruise control so that keeping speed has to be done with intent.
I can see the temptation to make the opposite choice - assume that everything will be fine, keeping some attention on the conversation. Meaning that if something unexpected occurs, I wouldn't be fully primed to deal and the problems multiply.
But I admit that this is all modulo the same bias of personal perception that makes many people think it's fine to stare at their phone half the time while driving. So perhaps data would disagree with me. But it takes more nuanced data than a simplistic division between "talking on phone" and "not talking on phone".
[0] There is a small possibility here that the DSP involved in making mobile calls sound reasonable only changes perception and still requires much more brainpower to process the audio.
[1] And because it doesn't seem universal: if someone - anyone - is stopped in the breakdown lane, move to the left even if you aren't in the right lane, to facilitate people in the right lane also moving over. The less "serious" a situation on the side of the road looks, the more likely it is that said people are amateurs unaccustomed to being pedestrians near the highway.
But yes, that is why I said "good friends" - if you're talking to someone non-understanding where you're trying to "keep up" and can't just interrupt and ignore them at a moments notice, then the temptation is to modify your driving to suit the conversation.
I reckon there is a similar dynamic around texting (dopamine from the social interaction), where if everyone were capable of holding themselves to say one letter every 30 seconds we wouldn't have this epidemic at all. Although to be clear I'm certainly not condoning any sort of texting or app use, they are too compelling.
1. Force people seeking a driver's license to undergo classes, regardless of their prior self-education. In my opinion, a significant amount of irresponsible and incompetent driving stems from the early failures in parents teaching their kids properly. People not only don't learn everything they need to, but they don't respect driving as the dangerous activity it is.
If someone succeeds in obtaining their license, they must then re-test every five years to maintain it, regardless of their age and driving history.
2. Augment the new mandatory classes with virtual reality lessons. The VR headsets will ostensibly drill driving skills before they're practiced in a real vehicle.
But the real reason they'll be used is to force candidates to experience high fidelity simulations of hitting and killing people while in the vehicle. They will be exposed to the immediate trauma involved in hitting a family in a sedan, or killing a pedestrian who was adhering to the rules of the road. It might also be helpful to force them to watch footage of people being seriously injured and killed in vehicular collisions.
This recommendation comes from two hypotheses of mine. As the article states, people overwhelmingly know distracted driving is dangerous, but they can't help themselves. I believe this is because 1) they have no way to activate empathy for the potential danger they present to others, and 2) they do not take driving seriously enough. It is treated as an innate right with loose rules, not a dangerous activity sustained only out of necessity to keep urban society functioning.
Unfortunately, this proposal will never happen. I know parts of it are extreme, but I don't see an alternative for fixing such a systemic problem which isn't extreme.
When it comes to acquiring good judgement, for most people there is no teacher like experience.
To combat that, we could induce accelerated experience using VR simulation.
VR isn't magic. Your brain is pretty good at subtly understanding you won't die if you make a mistake
It also won't work. People will do what they want regardless of how many laws we try to pass and how much we try to control them. See: drug war, prohibition, minimum age laws, sin taxes, traffic violations, DUI laws, longer prison terms, etc. I don't know why people don't realize that, even with all the historical evidence.
The only thing that works to curb behavior is education. See: Truth commercials, "Now You Know" campaigns on TV in the 80s, MTV's Teen Mom, etc. I think you are attempting education but it smells a lot like authoritarianism. People don't react well to forced education either.
My proposal attempts to activate a level of empathy and self-preservation. A tolerable amount of trauma is induced in potential drivers to get them to treat it as a necessary evil, not a rite of passage, a right or an enjoyable activity.
I think I understand what you mean when you say it sounds authoritarian, but I disagree. It's not authoritarian, it's just a more stringent set of rules on a gating function which already exists. I guess I would agree it sounds dystopian because of the VR simulations that would be involved. But then, it's a measure intended to curb tens of thousands of deaths each year, thousands of which are due to distracted driving in particular.
I would think we could save a ton of money just buying commercial spots explaining the physics, the statistics and a video of what a wreck looks like in totality.
Maybe even better, give companies tax incentives for domestic remote employment that replaces people coming into the office. That would probably hit the 80/20 rule right there.
Most likely people would run into pedestrians on purpose in the simulation out of curiosity. As long as your free to do so.
Worse than parents leaving gaps in their lessons, one of my friends was directly told something that is wrong. His parents taught him to stay in the left lane unless his exit is coming up. They taught him to be a left lane hog.
> Augment the new mandatory classes with virtual reality lessons. The VR headsets will ostensibly drill driving skills before they're practiced in a real vehicle.
Driving in VR is not a good idea because of motion sickness. VR works great for games where your movement in the game world matches the real world (Job Simulator, Beat Saber, etc.), but any game that involves being in a moving vehicle (MS Flight Simulator, any racing game) is a 1-way ticket to nausea. I've got over 200 hours of gameplay in my Vive and still tend to avoid the racing games despite how fun they are because of this.
That all said, classes should absolutely be mandatory. They shouldn't just teach general driving habits, but give hands-on experience in emergency maneuvers. Make them have to suddenly avoid an obstacle at 60 mph on wet pavement. If possible, make them try it in both a large SUV and a compact sedan or coupe, ideally without stability/traction control, so they can learn to appreciate the better handling of a smaller car and not jump to an SUV under the illusion that they're safer.
In climates that get any amount of snow, emergency braking from both 30 mph and 60 mph should be attempted, not to mention practice turning. It's ridiculous that anybody acts like it's business as normal when driving in snow.
Everyone knows that driving and looking at your phone is against the law and dangerous, but its a matter of "it won't happen to me" or "I've been doing it for years with no issue" that keeps people doing it.
I highly doubt VR will provide enough of a shock factor for people, it will more than likely make it feel like a video game where an accident is perfectly fine. Heck I play in gaming simulators with hyper realistic graphics and crashing doesn't phase me, the body is quite good at realising its not going to actually experience an accident.
Someone else here put it well "Everyone thinks they're above average, that bad things will never happen to them, that they're faster and have better reflexes than everyone else."
IMO we need to have penalties that are so harsh that they make drivers think twice (Immediate loss of license 3-6 months). The thought of potentially killing someone isn't a big enough incentive to not use your phone, because most of us have never experience it, so why would it happen to me?
Riding a motorcycle is the fastest way to realize how little attention people have on the road / surroundings when they drive.
The number of vehicles with very dark tinting on front windows has, in my experience, increased dramatically. I do this, too, but it's getting to where I can make eye contact less than half the time.
Maybe I need to bring a very bright flashlight so I can make sure I can see the driver...
This works both ways. As a car driver, I try to give motorcyclists a nod to let them know I see them.
People driving "rideshare" taxis still try to run me over in marked crosswalks an average of once per day. Nothing will come between them and their fares.
My next step is to buy a pocket-sized air horn. If drivers of cars can have horns, so can I.
Then again, I'm pretty sure rideshare cabbies don't give a shit about traffic laws anyway. They see "bus only" and think "ah, the perfect loading zone" so it's not too surprising that crosswalks are viewed as impediments to their next fare.
(Yes, I am very annoyed by this.)
The few times i have almost been hit is by someone who has a device in their hands and most are merging into my lane and not paying attention.
I had people cut me off ilegally, pass another vehicles by going in the wrong way (risking a frontal collision with my car), turn while texting, miss the radius and climb on the sidewalk (that one was scary, I genuinely believed the guy would hit a nearby trash truck)...
I saw several crashes, including cars literally flipped over in a straight avenue, dunno how that one happened.
Yet... I started driving only one year ago, in one year I saw much, much, MUCH shenanigans on the road, it is just ridiculous, I don't like using my horn yet there were days I had to use it more than once to avoid collisions (ie: people not paying attention were about to crash on me, 4 DIFFERENT people mind you... and it was a 10 minute drive!)
They're super easy to use. They constantly write in a loop, deleting old footage to make room for new footage as the memory card fills up, so you don't have to maintain them. And they'll usually have a button to press that will move the last couple minutes of video to a location where it won't automatically get deleted when full.
Seriously though, changing human behavior is hard. People didn't just start wearing seatbelts, there were years (arguably decades) of resistance and an active effort by many state law enforcement agencies to ticket it (even including an advertising campaign - click it or ticket).
I agree it's a huge problem, maybe even an epidemic. I agree we should not be lenient (within reason). But we have to start by educating consumers if our goal is change and not retribution.
Bad drivers are just bad drivers and there needs to be better enforcement.
I don’t think we can solve this with enforcement. We gotta start thinking outside the box. I have no advice... I wish I did ... but it’s an epidemic. Its a symptom of a much larger issue, I think, so we need to try and treat that instead.
Self-driving can't come soon enough.
But it's the only way to actually get someone's attention sometimes. If you live in an urban area you should know what you're signing up for. People are going to honk, even if it's annoying to the rest of us living in the city.
And by the way, the vast majority of horn use is illegal.
Loud honking (especially at night) is a common complaint that New Yorkers frequently empathize over. Keep in mind that fully 78% of households in Manhattan don't even own a car, so way more people are annoyed by honking than ever do it.
And it's already illegal, no further legislation needed. The issue is with enforcement.
Some people consider honking rude no matter the reason, but I think honking for safety is exactly the reason horns are added to vehicles. It's not rude at all, in fact, it would be rude to not honk as far as I'm concerned.
Negative ghostrider... being patient is why traffic has gotten to the point it is today. Too many people have become comfortable with the status quo and that is why things move at a snails pace.
Everyone thinks they're above average, that bad things will never happen to them, that they're faster and have better reflexes than everyone else.
And then they kill someone.
You need to catch and significantly penalise someone to stop them. The incentive of not killing someone isn't good enough because most of us have never experienced almost killing someone with their car, so why would it happen to me?
In my opinion, you need to have penalties so harsh that it will stop drivers from using their phones. Immediate loss of license for 3-6 months etc.
That's not to say driving with a phone is safe, but it's not a crisis. We address it with the same tools we always have: law enforcement and regulation of safety technologies.
Other data to look at, shared of accidents caused by distracted driving are way way up. Perhaps if distracted driving was going down instead of going up, we would be getting much lower than 36,000 death/year
Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-are-you-a-dis...
By all means let's work to reduce traffic fatalities. Let's just do it in a smarter way that "OMG phones in cars" -- I mean, how about work on better civil infrastructure choices so people aren't incentivized to drive in the first place.
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2014/04/15/32...
I don't see anyone advocating for a ban on conversation in cars.
I think most drivers, at least those not always distracted, notice the prevalence of distracted drivers on the road - cars that drive normally and then, say, gradually slow down to well below the speed limit and the speed of traffic. Which is to say, considering how common they are, it's remarkable these drivers don't cause many more accidents - statistics altogether seem to say they don't (correct me if I'm missing something). A factor to consider is that the "not as dangerous as you think" quality of distracted drivers comes because they do drive slowly, slowing traffic and thereby reducing accident totals (years ago, the introduction of the 55 speed limit reduced traffic fatalities a lot, see same wikipedia article).
Basically, the distraction trends seems to have made driving more annoying but not that much more unsafe. Perhaps something still needs to be done but that something might just some warning bells when driver driving outside the norms.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
Maybe in the future, traffic can just stop entirely and everyone will virtually work from their phones.
Distracted driving might not lead to more fatalities, but I could certainly see them causing more collisions. So many crashes I see on dash cam compilations on YouTube are people using their phone while driving and rear-ending someone at ~20 mph.
In other words, potentially far more addictive than drugs.
In the 50s people though 'how can I drink and drive safely'.
It took a while for people to accept that... can't happen.
I see far too many people thinking about texting like people thought about drinking in the 50s.
"People refuse to put down their phones. They keep dying, suffering, showing many signs of addiction, still keep refusing."
Drivers are just a large subset of the population. The phone addiction is a problem with the society as a whole. The impact of this addiction is just most visible, as an externality, in drivers.
I'm not defending drivers, I'm just saying that drivers are people, and this is a wider people issue, not a driver specific one. I write this as a runner, cyclist, walker, and a very occasional driver.
I'm an impatient driver (when I'm not watching myself) and distracted drivers slow me and when I'm watching someone drive distractedly, it is easy for me to think that driver is about to cause an accident but that view can be biased by my desire to pass that "slow, inconsiderate jerk".
I just don't see a problem with that since it's already the law.
It could then send an automated message back to the caller letting them know the owner appears to be driving and can't take your call.
I'm sure many of us here are old enough to remember life before cell phones and I can guarantee you that there's almost never anything so emergent that it can't wait until you get to your destination.
I can't believe i'm calling for regulation, but someone will. Question is do we get ahead of it now or before a new Congress does?
I also feel like pointing out this article says there were 3,000 deaths from phone use. Well, there were 40,000 from firearms in the US https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/gun-deaths.html. PRIORITIES!
I often see established vloggers and public figures recording themselves with a smartphone while driving and they always seem to be American.
I believe there has been some adjacent research done into the safety of manual cars which has found that they can be safer since they demand more concentration to drive.
"Studies haven't really shown whether one is safer than the other."
I don't know what the numbers are, but around Paris, where most cars are manual, there are a lot of people texting on their phones (I'll see at least several of them on my 5 km commute in the city traffic).
I remember meeting with a German coworker, raving about how fantastic it was to drive in Germany[0]. He was flabbergasted to learn how easy it is to get a driver's license in the US.
Driving is more necessary in the US than in Europe, but it's absurd that (at least in WA) all[1] that's needed is:
- a small, multiple-choice test
- a ~20 minute driving test
- a small fee for all of the above
[0]: driving through small medieval-ish Germany cities sucks, though.
1) telling people not to use their phones. I think this is a losing fight. Why do people use their phones? Because waiting for red lights is boring. We have a 3 minute red light (1 min per direction) in one of our junctions. Almost every driver is distracted at end of 3 mins and somewhat on their phone.
I don’t think phones are going away anytime soon.
On the other hands I’d like cars to get a bit smarter. I’ve really been enjoying my comma Eon. It does a great job of following lanes allowing me to use my brain cycles for higher order environmental awareness about other cars. I feel a bit less guilty changing to another Spotify track on my phone.
But it’s also a phone problem too. The touch interface is horrible. There is no tactile feedback. Siri voice commands are really dumb as hell.
The phone could be mounted on the dash and the mobile is needs to guarantee every app can be used via voice with almost as much efficiency and accuracy as touching it.
Basically what I’m saying is. Let’s fight the problem at a deeper layer.
I have to think a good amount of these people are actually unable to make the choice of not using their phone while driving, presumably because the habit is so deeply ingrained.
A couple of years ago I moved to a place with extensive bike lanes and other bike-friendly signage, road features, etc. Sounds awesome. But I've noticed that it significantly adds to the mental load of driving here. I'm an unusually conscientious driver, and I often encounter the feeling of hitting my multitasking ceiling at intersections, partly due to the bicycle-friendly increase in complexity. I suspect that many less careful blow through that ceiling without realizing it.
I'd like to see the question studied.
Earlier this year I did a small study of how often drivers yield to me, a cylist, at certain crossings. These crossings are rather confusing, but the city seems to believe that merely putting signs (sometimes multiple in basically the same spot) telling drivers to yield to cyclists is enough. It's not. Drivers nearly run over cyclists on a regular basis at these crossings. According to my statistics drivers yield to cyclists only about 61% of the time. See the slides here:
http://trettel.org/pubs/2019/austin-bac-2019-10-15.pdf
There are multiple ways to fix this problem but Austin seems uninterested.
Here's what worked for me, over thousands of miles of cycling back before bike lanes, etc.:
1. I rode as far right as I safely could, typically on the white line or a foot away from the curb, and always with the flow of traffic.
2. I was careful to ride in a straight line, following a completely predictable path.
3. I had a glasses-mounted rear-view mirror and kept an eye on traffic coming up behind. I never needed to, but I was always ready to bail out to the right in a split second. Towards that end, kept my bike in top shape and practiced quick stops and counter-steering.
4. Never made left turns if vehicles were present. Instead, passed through the intersection, stopped on far side, dismounted, and lifted/turned bike 90 degrees.
5. Reflective gear day and night. Never rode in poor visibility (e.g., rain storm).
6. Most importantly, always yielded to all vehicular traffic all of the time. If a car could intersect my path, I just stopped and waited, unless I could make eye contact and it was clear that they saw me and intended to wait.
With that, never had a close call, nor even got honked at.
Now, you might say that that's not fair, or that you don't want to ride in such a wimpy style. I understand. But I think it's the only safe(-ish) way to ride on public streets.
The graph showing the downward trend in distracted driving starting at ~2013 is solid evidence in favor of this explanation.
If laws were responsible for the reductions, then the article should point out that states who didn't pass new laws also didn't see reductions in usage.
I do agree that this is a problem, but misidentifying the cause of the downward trend is actively working against a solution. Perhaps we should be passing laws that mandate vehicle-phone integration standards rather than punitive traffic laws.
OK, that's probably too harsh (although viewed from a utilitarian lens, perhaps not?). What if the fine were like $10k, and were handed down liberally for first offenders?
None of this is going to happen of course. I suspect we'll be living with this problem until self-driving cars are ubiquitous. I'm just sort of morbidly curious what level of viciousness would be required to convince people to behave like responsible human beings.
Draconian enforcement has it's place, but it's not on this sort of policy. This would either become a tool of assassination, or just kill a bunch of young, poor people. The enforcement would stop for wealthy kids in privileged areas.
Honestly, this is a more carrot then stick problem. It's unsolvable with the privacy rights American's are entitled to under the constitution. The best approach would be to incentivize safe usage and create some sort of system to track and penalize unsafe behavior. It would need to be a minor fine, but that would make enforcement more likely, give better data, and allow us to punish habitual offenders who actually cause harm.
The carrot/stick idea is interesting though. I wonder if you could incentivize manufacturers to make a really good triangulating beacon that would allow a phone to know if it's in the driver area of the car, and whether the car is in motion. The phone could disable all functions for the duration of the drive based on this signal. You'd do this in firmware and ideally using some sort of chain of trust that can't be circumvented by rooting the phone. Free software folks would squawk, but the world might be better off for it.
I used to have a great system for texting and driving, before it was made illegal in CA -- I generally drive with my left hand, so I would hold my phone up on the steering wheel with my right hand (at 3:00) and I would text as needed with my right thumb. Since I was holding the phone up on the wheel, I would never take my eyes off the road to text. I did this frequently for years and years, was never really distracted, got very good at it (quick at thumb typing), didn't have any issues to speak of.
Then, when it became illegal, I got like two tickets for doing this in two years. So, I learned to start hiding my phone way down low on my lap to text. Now, if I decide to text while driving, I constantly have to take my eyes off the road and look way down at my lap to text, for seconds at a time. Texting the easy and safe way, where the phone is held next to the steering wheel, has been punished and gets tickets. Texting the unsafe way, holding the phone down at lap level, rarely gets a ticket.
In the next couple years of holding my phone down at my lap level to text, I had not gotten any tickets, but I did have some minor issues doing this. Since I had to take my eyes off the road to text this way, I caught myself swerving towards the center line, or the berm, etc., multiple times. And I almost rear ended someone because traffic stopped when I was looking down at my lap for 1-2 seconds.
Because of these issues, I gave up texting and driving entirely, however, I doubt most people ever will, as I tend to have a lot more self-control than most people (I've completely quit drinking, quit smoking, quit gaming, etc.) Overall, I find it very ironic that the safe(est) way of texting, where you don't have to take your eyes off the road, is punished, while the unsafe, dangerous way (holding your phone at lap level) is not.
Banning texting basically made it far less safe than it used to be -- everyone holds their phone at lap level now, so of course that's a huge issue.
This is how you sound to me:
> When I drive drunk, I drive real slow. But I started getting pulled over, so I started driving drunk and at normal speeds. It's so dangerous to do that. Why can't I drive drunk really slow, it is the safest way to drive drunk after all! Most people don't have the self control I do.
If you find that unconvincing, don't expect others to find your anecdote convincing.
Cars have blind spots to check; pedestrians, pets, kids, bikes can come from no where really quickly. Don't you agree that drivers should have 100% of their cognitive capacity devoted to driving? If not, if you allow 90% of cognitive capacity to watching all around the roadway, multiply that 90% over millions of drivers, and you're statistically going to have thousands of unnecessary deaths and countless more injuries and accidents.
If you're texting "okay" or "on my way" and you kill someone, you will have killed someone's family member all for a completely pointless, inane text. Even if you never killed someone, and you only injured someone or scared the Beejesus out of someone, how is it worth the .001% convenience to text someone now instead of at your destination or pulling over briefly with hazards or turn indicator?
Your form of texting while driving was likely safer than the alternatives.
Your form of texting while driving was less safe than not texting.
Do not text and drive.
There are plenty of people who have texted without incident, that doesn't reflect a particular merit to the way you texted it's just simple statistics. If you touch an electric stove top hot enough to boil water you'll be burned, but if you touch it a short while after turning it on you may be burned. Texting and driving is not an instant guarantee of an accident so don't mistake your luck for skill.
The choice to text and drive is an absolute malus on your driving safety, being in a car with you may be safer than being in a car with other folks when they are fully focused, clear minded and sober - but you're accepting an additional risk and it is putting yourself and others in danger. When you text and drive you lower your awareness and a situation you may have been able to escape with full focus may become a fatal accident, studies have shown that texting does significantly impact driving and not only because of looking away to a screen - it also diverts your attention to consider the environment which can result in slower reaction times.
It may very well be that your skill at driving is sufficient to avoid an accident while texting that a normal person couldn't avoid at full focus but, your reaction speed is lowered and if you text and drive it will reinforce that being a socially acceptable activity and lead other people to text and drive that may have fatal accidents themselves.
With the regulations now in place, as you said everyone is trying to hide it. This usually means below the dashboard - so the driver is now looking _down_ at their phone. Not only does this seem to increase the amount of time spent looking away from the road (it's slower to switch, and so people are doing it less), it also greatly reduces even _peripheral_ awareness that something relevant may be unfolding on the road.
Penalties need to be upgraded to match those of drunk driving convictions, and enforced as strictly as drunk driving is. Including manslaughter and homicide charges when the cell phone use is involved in an incident that results in deaths.
If you were to embrace the problem, whats the safest way to let people text and drive while on their phone? Something that doesn't force them to look down off the road?
Hands free voice to text sucks.
Best thing I can think of is some sort of windshield heads up display and a keyboard on your steering wheel hah
My car knows when its key fob is inside it with great precision, to the point that I cannot even lock the doors while it is inside. My iPhone knows when it is itself in the car, so when I want to use it while driving, I have to dismiss a warning message, which I adeptly do with muscle memory.
Seems to me if cars supported driver and passenger authentication, most illegal device usage could be stopped rather trivially.
Allowing passengers to use devices in any capacity makes it extremely difficult to build technological solutions to this.
https://leg.colorado.gov/content/distracted-driving-and-cell...
I realize if you had multiple passengers it seems like a much harder technical problem to detect whether the person using the phone is also driving.
If only there were the regulatory will to implement this, over and above being nudged (I guess?) by insurers…
"Insurers know exactly how often American drivers touch their phones"
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-distracted-driving-in...
George Hotz has a killer talk about why the general approach to autonomous vehicles is flawed. I highly recommend it.
Texting and driving should obviously be treated the same as DUI if we're going to be logically consistent about recklessly endangering your fellow drivers and pedestrians, but I'm not optimistic about that happening.