Maybe texting isn't the cause of most accidents. Maybe people simply replace the outlawed bad behavior with an equally bad but legal behavior. Maybe we should stop wasting everyone's time with see useless laws; I'm pretty sure we already have a law based on reckless driving.
I suspect the real issue is people using phones while driving, I know of at least one person who is dead from this. I rear ended a car when I was in my early 20s while on the phone, I se people driving trucks in narrow streets while on the phone in my area.
I don't like enforcing things like this as a band aid, it's fine to try improve a situation, but let's be honest, many people who are involved in these accidents are doing something with their phone.
It is really sad that texting while driving is enough of a problematic to require such sensibilisation. If you don't understand the implications of diverting your attention to this point while driving, you shouldn't have the right to drive. And texting seems to divert enought attention that some people died walking in between the subway`s wagons.
By this argument there is nothing wrong with texting while driving. Or drinking. Why did we make it illegal for all people to drive under influence instead of just punishing those who become inattentive?
You are talking about attention as if we can detect inattentive drivers by measuring their chakra energy from a mile away. No. There are inherently more dangerous situations on the road, right turn on red being one of those. We have the data to prove it, no need to sacrifice pedestrians in order to make the road—eventually—safer. Why do we need traffic lights at all? Let’s just all pay attention and punish drivers who are inattentive.
The suggestion to punish drivers who hit pedestrians is great. Oh wait, we are already doing that.
I think you might be reacting too strongly? Take a step back, and rather than making this a victim/perp situation, look for anything that can mitigate the end result. Some of that is changing how people drive, but some of it could also be how people walk -- at least when they are crossing roads. Texting on your phone while going across a sidewalk definitely increases the risk. And it doesn't matter if you're right and the driver is wrong, because you're still dead either way.
I've said this before, and I'll restate it again here for relevancy.
We have spent people's entire lives vilifying drunk driving. We haven't had nearly as much time to demonize texting and driving. Comparatively, it's a relatively new phenomenon, even if the act of driving while distracted (cheeseburger, conversation, just plain not paying attention) are not.
I've personally been in the car with someone who was so nervous and preoccupied with something that was on his mind, he rear ended a guy who was in front of us plain as day. He wasn't drunk, he wasn't texting, he was just thinking too much about things that weren't on the road. A lapse in judgement and observation and SMACK right in to the next guy's bumper.
Education on why it is a terrible, horrible idea to text while driving is certainty a step in the right direction, though I've always been a believer in making the punishment fit the crime. Driving while texting and cause an accident? Take away your ability to send/receive text messages.
Observation by police officers? I already see plenty of people texting while driving. The first hint is that they're driving like they're not paying attention. When you pull up alongside them you see them glancing down repetitively.
Also, the penalty fines are a joke. I think in CA at least they were very low, especially considering IMO distracted driving is way more dangerous than other simpler measures like speeding.
The issue with drunk driving and texting is not that they can’t focus but can they when they have to. Unless someone’s slam dunk, they can. It’s the time to react when something happens that’s the problem.
With texting and driving there are other major daily hassles. A common scenario for me as I walk my dog is that I no longer assume a car will yield on a crosswalk - even the ones with a stop sign or a signal. May be the impact is that few people bike or walk? Or walk elsewhere like a trail or a park instead of sidewalk and neighborhoods? End of the day, it’s about what we want as a society. If we decide that people should be allowed to focus on their phone, we have to start redesigning the streets now.
Not just as a pedestrian, even as a driver I don’t assume I can go in green light anymore. People seem to miss red lights on the regular now
I don’t think you can simply educate people not to text and drive.
Governments are ramping up signs and laws against texting and driving and it doesn’t appear to be doing anything to stop the problem. People know it’s bad but they don’t care because they haven’t personally killed someone yet. Just like they’ve treated speeding laws for decades.
Surveillance apparatus that directly hits people in the pocketbook on a frequent basis with fines is the only way to solve this problem that keeps humans behind the wheel IMO (we had a thread recently about such cameras that are being tried in Australia). Or autonomous cars or a massive and incredibly expensive redesign of our cities and transportation network to get people out of cars.
There's data that suggests that the increases in vehicle/pedestrian collision is mostly due to the in car displays that require you to take your eyes off of the road to do anything. Most excess collisions since around 2010 collisions have been at night, when peripheral vision is less likely to catch movement, and when the screens will mess up your night vision.
Also, smartphones being used while driving are a massive hazard that people aren't really talking about. The number of people that I, or my passenger, has seen texting while driving is really shocking. I'd wager it's a bigger problem than drunk driving ever was.
There's only so far you can go to try to protect people from being idiots.
There are plenty of data points now that show that texting related accidents and deaths went up when the bans were enacted because instead of doing the sensible thing and NOT texting while driving, these people simply moved the phone into their lap instead of in a place where they could still kind of see the road ahead.
It's an unfortunate fact that people have tendencies to be extremely stupid under the guise of "I can do it, it won't cause me to crash", and no law will fix this.
Then logically texting must also be made illegal at all times. These are not simple accidents, these are people texting, driving and killing people, and its happening a LOT more frequently.
Until texting while driving is made a DUI-level offense, with the same penalties, this is a bunch of posturing and theft from law-abiding drivers.
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