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[Doc]

Major props to Wombles for bringing the science.

I'd still be against it as there are enough times when I've been in a car as a passenger and needed to make a call or vice versa. I think the only way this changes is the way people's view of drink driving changed, you make it illegal but more importantly you educate people on how stupid it is and wait for social stigma to do the rest.

[pmcd9]

I don't text while driving because I realize I am not an exception.  I do talk on the phone while driving, but I try not to dial while driving.

I think the problem of phone mode can be addressed by evolving the way we speak on the phone while driving.  I find that I often mention what's going on on the road to the person I am speaking with.  It keeps me present in my driving moment and it also makes them aware that I am in a driving situation and there might be driving related interruptions in my attention on the phone conversation.  It's kinda like talking on the phone to someone with kids.  Everyone understands that there are going to be interruptions and they accept that.  But most people haven't gotten that yet with the phone and driving.

No to cell phone jammers.  Legislation and stigma are the way to go.

[side_show]

My husband and I were rear-ended by a guy who was on his cell who hit us going full speed although we were stopped at a red light, behind two other vehicles, in ideal driving conditions, during stop-start type traffic at rush hour. Anyone at all focused on their surroundings would not have been going that fast.  I spent the last year in physiotherapy, including a few months where I was afraid my life was ruined, and the first few weeks were I was afraid I would have to take my own life due to the amount of pain if it didn't ease up.  If the pain hadn't decreased, it was more than I could bare, and I knew I would be unable to function.  Thankfully after a lot of work to heal my back, hips and shoulder over an entire year, with the help of a an excellent physical therapist I am more or less recovered, but I do often think about the dude that hit us.  It was such a minimal, insignificant choice he made, yet it impacted me negatively for over a year.  He has no idea of the damage he caused.  I mean he new he totaled the vehicle he was driving (and that he totaled another vehicle the week before as he told me), but he never knew the significance of my injuries, or even the amount of damage he did to our SUV.  The frame was bent.  As one of the many witnesses told him "that shit is going to be illegal in a couple of months" but he hit us before the laws came into place.  

The thing is, yes it's hard to catch someone on their cell while driving, but when it comes to an actual accident, like the one we were in, there were several witnesses who all saw him on his phone.  He would have been fined, the cost for him to renew his license would have been affected for years to come, and it would be forever on his driver's abstract that he'd broken this law.  I'm not saying such things would guarantee he would have "learned his lesson," but at least he'd have record due to the driving offense.  I work along side a lady who hires drivers to take foster kids to appointments, and I can say without a doubt that this stuff matters.  Being defined as an unsafe driver matters.

[Nabubrush]

A driver in Portland, talking on a cell phone, drove clean off the middle of the Morrison bridge (sorry for the kinda crappy link).

I was just looking for details about this incident and found another where a driver in Portland, ME, slammed into the back of a cop (lights flashing) whilst talking on a cell phone - and as I tried to narrow my search, I just found more and more. Seriously, can't manage to keep the car on the bridge? Probably shouldn't be chatting on the phone. I've read some of the same studies and stuff that Wombles has, and from what I've seen nobody is really good at using the phone and driving.

[wombat]

Paul, I am afraid you are part of the problem. You believe you can come up with strategies to circumvent the fundamental biology of your brain. It's not going to work.

Hang up and drive. We want you to be around for a long time, you know?

[miles]

Normally for anything that intrusive I'm all fuck that shit. I think people should basically be able to do whatever they want. Except for when driving cars is involved. Cars should be treated very much like dangerous weapons. You can't set the bar for having access to cars too high because they are very useful, as you can for the most dangerous weapons, but I allow a much longer leash for government to restrict activity than I do generally. Like, it blows my mind that in-dash video players are available legally. (Are they? I'm in the market for a new car stereo and they seem to be, which, yeah, blows my mind.)

Even with all of that said this idea still kind of freaks me out.

[arkabee]

yeah, cell phones suck ass.

HOW ABOUT WE MAKE THESE MORONIC, MOUTH BREATHING ASSHOLES OCCASIONALLY USE A GOD DAMNED TURN SIGNAL, THOUGH??

[jay-ell]

I talk on the phone while driving. I do it often. I know this is a terrible habit. The thing is, I don't have many other opportunities to make uninterrupted phone calls, but when the kids are strapped in watching a video, I can actually call my doctor's office to make an appointment and not have to hang up before they take me off "hold" because one of my children is sitting on the other one's head.

I have totaled two cars in my life -- once versus another car who decided to stop dead in the middle of the road just around a curve, and the other was a losing fight with a deer -- and I didn't even own a cell phone during either incident. I have never had even a minor fender-bender (nor a citation for any reason, even a red-light camera ticket) while talking on the phone. (Though I've had several red-light-cam tickets, all at the same intersection, I was un-distracted for all of them. Eventually, they lengthened the yellow light, which I think means I should get my fines refunded because obviously the yellow was *way* too short, but of course that will happen about the time they have a blizzard in Hell.)

All this being said, I am fully aware that I should not talk on the phone while driving. It is a terrible, awful vice of mine and it is irresponsible and dangerous, and it's even worse that I do it when my kids are in the car. And yet...I continue to do it anyway, because I always think "It won't hurt anything THIS time, I'll be extra careful, yadda yadda." And the more often I do it with no negative results, the harder it is to imagine anything bad happening at all. How do we combat the kind of mentality Paul and I have? We are otherwise reasonable people; will cultivating a social stigma be enough?

[theinevitable]

JL has given me the courage to admit that I am one of these people too.

even though I know that I am an incredibly distractible person.

if it helps, today I consciously decided not to do this because of this thread.

[wombat]

JL, did you read my links about how cell phone driving is as dangerous as driving drunk? Would you drink and drive with your kids in the car?

[jay-ell]

JL, did you read my links about how cell phone driving is as dangerous as driving drunk? Would you drink and drive with your kids in the car?

Of course not.

And the answer to "Well, then, would you talk and drive?" SHOULD be "of course not," as well. But it doesn't feel as wrong. That's what I'm trying to get at -- why doesn't it feel wrong, even when we all read these studies that say it is? Why do we, as a society, think everyone else should "hang up and drive" but that we all get a free pass? Is legislation enough?

For drinking and driving, I think the legislation came first, and that set the stage for the PSAs we all remember, and the social stigma that grew up around the ad campaigns. I'm sure there was talk of having a brethalyzer in every car, somewhere, at some time, but now we only do that for repeat DUI offenders, because to put in in every car would be just over the line in terms of what people are willing to accept from our government, I think.

Maybe that's what we should do with this scrambler -- make it illegal to talk while driving, and if you get cited for it 3 times, you get a court-mandated scrambler installed. That seems to walk the line between individual rights and personal responsibility in a way that we've sort of agreed is OK in this country, right?

[wombat]

I have no response to the first part of your post because for me, the fact that there is clear evidence that it's dangerous IS enough, and I have no idea why it's not enough for everyone else.

But I would say that the problem with your last idea is that it's much harder to catch someone talking and driving - you can't test for it after you've pulled them over. So I think the likelihood of anyone getting ticketed for it multiple times is so low as to make your idea useless.

[jay-ell]

My in-laws volunteer with the local police as translators for sobriety checkpoints. They also have periodic seatbelt checkpoints in some localities. Why not monitor for cell phone use in the same way?

I would think it would be harder to lie about being on a cell phone than whether or not you were wearing your seatbelt -- you can just make it legal for officers to check the "recent call" log if he has reasonable suspicion that the individual was using the phone. Sort of a digital sobriety test, if you will. Take away the "nobody's looking" mindset and replace it with "but somebody might..."

That would work on me. I might not believe that I am going to cause an accident (because subconsciously I think I'm smarter/better at multitasking/luckier than everyone else), but I will definitely change my behavior if I think I might get caught breaking the law and have to go to court or pay a heavy fine and have my insurance rates jacked up for a moving violation.

Irrational, for sure, but if behavior modification is the goal, you've got to go with what works, and financial disincentives are very effective.

[wombat]

August would know this better than me but don't you need to subpeona the phone company to legally check someone's phone use? Which gives them access to who you called, not just that you were on the phone. 

In any case, your suggestion seems like a bigger invasion of privacy than a device to disable the phone when I am driving. I don't have a problem with it being illegal to use my phone in the car. I definitely do have a problem with giving the police the right to say "hand over your phone so I can check what you were just doing." 

[side_show]

The police do pull people over here, as it's illegal, and they have police out on the road all the time specifically looking for driving infractions of all sorts.  They give out hefty tickets for cell use- all the heftier if there are other infractions.  For someone like me who has been hit by a cell user, and who likes to do all the things necessary to avoid ticketing, this is all it takes.

A thing to do is - if you are in fact in agreement that you don't want to use your phone while driving, then make the decision to start physically turning your phone off when entering a vehicle you will drive, and physically turning it on when you exit the vehicle or pull over (or some other routine that your comfortable with, like putting it out of reach).  This is what I had to do, as it is basically a reflex for me to pull out my phone and answer it when it rings.  Once you start doing it, it becomes routine over time.  Even though I committed to not answering the phone while driving, when I first got it, before I made this safety plan, I did pull it out an check the call display a couple times when it rang, and taking my eyes off the road that long felt pretty icky after having adjusted to not doing it.  On the one occasion where I was expecting an important call, I left it on, and pulled over when it was safe to check.  I actually missed the call, but called the person right back - no harm, no foul.  There's a lot of poor drivers and tricky driving conditions where I live and I've definitely experienced situations where I've been really glad to have both hands on the wheel since doing this. 

On top of everything, now that I work for child protective services, it's not only the law, but company policy to not use a cell when driving.  It's just another drop in the bucket after my injury, but it adds to my sense of responsibility that an agency responsible for child safety also opposes phone use in vehicles.

Remember:  Oprah wants your car to be a no phone zone.