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Comment by hateful | Hacker News Reader

Yes, it's been illegal for years - but EVERY DAY I see people on their phones - talking, texting. My favorite move is when they're holding their phone like a waiter - it's on speaker phone, but I would consider that in no way "hands free" operation. And they are always driving recklessly (inconsistent speed, sometimes swerving). It's absolutely out of control.

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It's not the hands that are the problem, it's the cognitive load. Hands free is no safer than hands on, when it comes to talking on the phone.

https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2014/04/15/32...

Is having a conversation with someone in the car any different than having one over the phone?

I don't see anyone advocating for a ban on conversation in cars.

The hypothesis of why local conversations are safer is that when traffic gets complex, the passenger will see that as well and pause the conversation. The person on the phone doesn't have that awareness. However some jurisdictions have restrictions on passengers for younger/provisional drivers, for just that reason.

FWIW, the data doesn't really bear this out. Vehicle travel has been getting steadily safer in the US for decades. Obviously there are problems that need to be addressed, and those change over time, but the war is a long one and we're winning. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

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.

We're winning. This is absolutely crazy that 36 000 deaths a year in the USA is considered "winning". Like it couldn't get any better. Hey it's better than the apocalypse from 30 years ago, we are WINNING. If terrorism was 36,000 deaths every year you can bet this would be a big topic of conversation.

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...

My point was that our reaction to this new problem of distracted driving should be commensurate with our reaction to the "old problems" of, I dunno, DUI or road rage or whatever. Because numerically it doesn't really make sense.

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.

Eh. You're likely making a statistical error also. Cars are massively more safe to get in an accident in. In theory the rates of deaths should have fallen far further.

How do you know they should have fallen much further? How are you quantifying the increases in safety? Cars might be less safe even since cars are getting lighter to hit fuel efficiency regulations.

The decrease in fatalities is mostly a result of improved safety technologies. The appropriate statistic would be to look at accident rates under similar traffic densities and speeds to see whether or not that bears out.

That rate only applies to fatalities as the result of motor vehicle collisions, which is likely going down because we keep making vehicles more and more tank-like. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/us/pedestrian-cyclist-dea...

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