My horn usage has gone way up. Driving stick in the US you have to pay attention to be in gear at the right time. In the past 10 years I've seen it get exponentially worse as people put their heads down coming up to a red light. Laws are written but not enforced. Friends and relatives die from drunk or distracted driving and it's frustrating because even though driving is a privileged and not a right people with multiple DUIs get back behind the wheel. Honestly, texting and driving should have as strict punishments as a DUI and I know that's an unpopular stance.
As a cyclist I'm elevated above most drivers on the road. So I can see many distracted drivers who try to be more subtle about it. Distracted driving is a daily problem, but there's almost no enforcement of it.<p>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.
Cell phone use is a small percentage of "distracted driving". We should be careful not to conflate the two things.<p>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]<p>For comparison, there were 10,874 fatalities from DUIs in 2017. [1]<p>[0] <a href="https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812700" rel="nofollow">https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving" rel="nofollow">https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving</a>
There's so much emphasis on using your hands with the phone or not and with most laws that allow hands-free usage, people think that's completely safe; but it's not. No one talks about how distracting it is simply having a conversation on the phone while driving. The hands really aren't the most dangerous part of the equation.<p>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.<p>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.
I have a two-pronged proposal which, though unrealistic, is technically feasible today and could probably work.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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 <i>isn't</i> extreme.
You gotta honk. I honk ALL THE TIME now. It’s just enough of a jolt to send a signal to everyone around you that it’s time to snap back to attention. It works marvelously. I don’t like doing it... but it really works. If the light turns green and no one has moved for a few seconds I give a little tiny honk and like clockwork you can see brake lights in every lane turn off and people begin to activate.<p>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.
Selfish people doing selfish things.<p>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.<p>And then they kill someone.
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.
It seems fatalities per 100 million VMT reached a minimum in 2014 (1.08) and has crept back since then [1] (to 1.19 in 2016, 1.13 in 2018), still not much above 2012 levels (1.14). I can only speculate that the decline has to do with more safer models on the road and then distracted drivers perhaps bumped things up very slightly again.<p>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).<p>Basically, the distraction trends seems to have made driving <i>more annoying</i> 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.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...</a>
Haven't there been some studies that associate smart phones with addictive drugs? Something to do with dopamine dependency. If true, how do you ween people off drugs?
Rewritten headline:<p>"People refuse to put down their phones. They keep dying, suffering, showing many signs of addiction, still keep refusing."<p>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.<p>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.
It is not about saving lives, and mobile phone distractions are not as bad as you think. Statistics are commonly misused.
Speeding kills your pocketbook 2 explores this in depth, fact checking accident statistics in BC: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzmVCSfRR38" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzmVCSfRR38</a>
Werner Herzog made this heartbreaking documentary on this topic. It has kept me from being distracted by my phone when driving since I've seen it.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qf85X3extY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qf85X3extY</a>
Phones have GPS. In states where texting and driving is banned, why isn't there some way to program the phone so that it simply doesn't function if it detects a speed of over 5-10 mph?<p>I just don't see a problem with that since it's already the law.<p>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.<p>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.
It might be time for a regulatory mandate here. Phones have to go offline if they're running more than 15MPH unless docked or handsfree.<p>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?<p>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 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/gun-deaths.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/gun-deaths.html</a>. PRIORITIES!
I have always connected this problem with automatic cars. I haven't looked at statistical evidence, but I think this is a much bigger problem in the US than the UK and I think it's because it's much easier to drive an auto with one hand.<p>I often see established vloggers and public figures recording themselves with a smartphone while driving and they always seem to be American.<p>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.
Unpopular opinion: Trying to look at it from a constraint problem.<p>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.<p>I don’t think phones are going away anytime soon.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Basically what I’m saying is. Let’s fight the problem at a deeper layer.
What floors me about this article is that the data comes from phone users who have installed TruMotion based software. In other words they know their driving behavior is being actively tracked, and they STILL use their phones while driving.<p>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.
I don't believe that laws are responsible for this plateau in distracted driving, but instead the fact that hands-free phone integration in new cars became pretty common six or so years ago. So now, even people buying used cars are buying cars that have hands-free usage. My two cars from 2013 the barest base models available of already cheap cars and they both have hands-free support.<p>The graph showing the downward trend in distracted driving starting at ~2013 is solid evidence in favor of this explanation.<p>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.<p>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.
Abstinence based policies are not working. We need to let people hold and talk on their phone. Everyone is trying to hide their phone. Ride in a bus in the bay area and you'll see ~25-50% of people on their phone on a given day. Are there any studies of cities that allowing talking on the phone, but no texting?
Cell phone use is known to impair driving as much as being drunk, and texting more so.<p>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.
Yet another benefit to limiting the need for cars in new building developments. Plenty of pedestrians also look at their phones while walking but a collision of two pedestrians is very unlikely to be fatal.
Apple might be able to implement some sort of "It seems as though you are traveling in a car, we have disabled texting and driving." but then that has the obvious issue of preventing passengers from texting.<p>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?<p>Hands free voice to text sucks.<p>Best thing I can think of is some sort of windshield heads up display and a keyboard on your steering wheel hah
This seems like an eminently solvable problem.<p>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.<p>Seems to me if cars supported driver and passenger authentication, most illegal device usage could be stopped rather trivially.
How do they know when these drivers are driving vs. being a passenger? Do they rely on the driver to click a button to indicate that? Or do they just assume that anytime a cellphone is going a certain speed, the user is driving? I did not see this addressed in the article and frankly, without knowing this, their data is completely useless. For all we know, they're gathering data on passengers.
In the last two weeks, I've seen two drivers with phones mounted on their windshields, watching what appeared to be the news while driving on the highway. Both instances were men, at least 40 or older. It shouldn't come as a shock in 2019, but I was still pretty surprised in the moment. Unfortunately, according to the article, my state has no such laws against this type of behavior.
I know software isn't a panacea, but how hard would it be to design the cars so that if you are alone in the car (and therefore obviously the driver), mobile devices shift into hands-free-only mode?<p>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 you were only putting your life in danger rather than other people’s, using the phone while driving could actually be rational. Consider how much your life expectancy reduces by using the phone while driving vs how much time you waste due to commuting and not using the phone during that time.
Ive noticed in the last month people mounting their phones on their steering wheel or dash and watching tv. Full on Korean dramas or whatnot. As bad as that is there is a special place in hell for drivers who make eye contact with the passenger they are talking to while driving.
Sure, it's a problem, but motor vehicle deaths are down pretty substantially in the past decade. The per capita rate is down nearly 50% since the 70s. A lot of this is from safety standards, but I don't really see this as an epidemic.
America's puritanical streak is a mile wide. We will ruin your life if you're doing something fun like drinking and driving, but we'll turn a blind eye if you're doing something equally reckless and dangerous like simply sending someone else a text message and not looking at the road.<p>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.