French train passenger fined €150 for using phone on speaker | Hacker News Reader

French train passenger fined €150 for using phone on speaker

thelocal.fr

74 pointsspeckx26 comments

    SNCF staff member told him to switch his phone's loud speaker off, or risk being fined. When he argued, he was served with the €150 fine

I'm good with this. He wasn't told to end the call but to stop subjecting passengers to both sides of a loud phone call. Using his phone like a phone would mute one end of the call and likely quiet the other. It's bare minimum not-jerk behavior.

Please bring this to America. Especially in airports and even on airplanes people think this behavior is acceptable, it is not.

I though of quiet restaurants. but airplanes? wow.

> I though of quiet restaurants. but airplanes? wow.

So i can bring my 100W portable sound system with me on the plane ? And listen to some Doom Metal or György Ligetti ? /s

Good to see France handling antisocial behavior in mass transport system.

I only realized how bad the EU situation was once I moved to Japan. The train experience here is wonderful. Particularly the silence.

https://archive.is/vuBE5

Awesome. We need that law in Denmark. Uh, perhaps we already have, thank you, EU.

Even more than that, we need the people that hold people to the rule. While it’s nice to have a law, you need someone who cares enough to enforce it.

good. Reminds me of a sign put on every back-of-seat in train Narita-Tokyo ..

"please be considerate of other passengers while using your computer (keyboard noise, etc).."

i have a photo of it but no idea how to post it :/

> i have a photo of it but no idea how to post it :/

Upload to https://imgur.com/ (no account necessary) and post the link here.

Keyboard noise? That sounds a bit intense.

I always bring my model M in the train.

Playing the devil's advocate here, but what would be the difference between talking on a phone via loudspeaker vs. (loudly) talking with another person sitting next to you?

Tinny cellphone speakers play noisy, low-fidelity speech audio captured with a mic that's likely clipping and compressing the caller's voice (audio-wise, not data-wise, although that too is happening and likely doesn't help). Actual people speaking is broad-band, has full fidelity and dynamics, and is directional and context sensitive

Loudspeakers broadcast whereas a person physically next to you can adjust their loudness based on what's socially acceptable

Wouldn't it be equivalent to adjust / turn down the speaker volume on the phone?

in america you can eat a big smelly sandwich on public transit and if anyone complains you are allowed to shoot them :)

Twice

Hooray!

wish that was a thing here in my area.

The french get yet another thing right.

For use as communication in public, is the only thing I like about SMS...

Finally. There are many countries with laws in place for things like these, it's just that the enforcement is so lax given the tolerance.

Great.

Now please extend this to national parks.

While I support this, it’s not clear from the article if the phone conversation was in French or another language, so no way to know whether, knowing how sensitive the French are about language, if it would have made any difference either way.

No - it’s socially strongly frowned upon to not mute your phone on a train, and it’s written everywhere that you should be quiet, so SNCF is just materializing this .

I remember years ago group of four loud American tourists ( who were just having a loud conversation, they weren’t throwing beer bottles around )- passengers, not staff, repeatedly told them to be quiet. I still remember the look of misunderstanding of how of the tourists, who clearly didn’t understand what he was doing wrong.

Right, like how in the US you can't shout "fire" in a crowded theater, but it's perfectly fine to shout "fuego".

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