California Court Bans Checking Smartphone Maps While Driving

Just a clarification guys:<p>In California, the decisions of the state appelate courts (for levels below California's Supreme Court) are elective. That means, any lower court in the state can select to follow the decisions of any appellate state court. In practice, this means that the decision potentially applies to all of California, or to none of it. Moreover, consistency is not required among the choice of precedence among lower courts, so a judge could theoretically select to follow the law of one appellate court in one case, and the law of an differing appellate court in another case (but in practice is rare, since it is a potentially actionable cause for dismissal from the bench).<p>The decision does not bar the use of GPS for navigation...it's still okay to have it on, showing you which way to go.<p>The decision specifically relates to the <i>interactive use</i> of a GPS device or software while driving. Meaning, i.e,. that you are inputting data with your hands while driving. Such acts were deemed to fall under the distracted driving laws. *And they're right: you should not be interacting with your screen while your car is not parked.<p>See the case below at the direct link, rather than the multiple blogspam links: <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/680893-jad13-02.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/680893-jad13-02.html</a>

The only way forward to a sane future is to ban all humans driving all cars. Increase funding and scale of self-driving car efforts to get them on the road as quickly (and safely) as possible, then ban all the humans. I can see no other reasonable end to this insanity. 30,000 to 40,000 Americans die every year in car accidents that are pretty much all human error. Ban the human drivers.

They're not going to be able to legislate safe driving. Drivers are oblivious to the danger they wield with two-ton blocks of steel. It's not just distractions, it's a total lack of care.<p>Piling on more conditions and limitations on phone usage will create further contempt for these laws. Light-up road signs that threaten fines as consequence -- ignoring the dangerous consequence of distraction -- don't help.

All of the people saying: "why a law against this specifically?" should read the fine article. The court didn't "ban" checking smartphone maps while driving. It interpreted that California's distracted driving law could be applied to checking maps on your phone while driving, not just texting while driving. That's how these things work. The law is general, courts apply it to the specific circumstances to set a precedent for similar circumstances.

As someone who would have been ran into multiple times by texting drivers, had I not been paying full attention to what was happening around me, I wish these sorts of laws were rigorously pursued.<p>However, I think policing of this really only makes sense in some areas, those where there are a high number of pedestrians or cyclists who are at far greater risk of serious injury.

Are paper maps illegal too? What about having someone in the passenger seat check the map and then tell me what to do? Can they hold the phone in front of my face for me so I can see the map?<p>I honestly just wish they'd settle for a simple, concrete description of what's acceptable while driving and what isn't. Like, you must always keep your eyes on the road, or you must always have both hands on the wheel, or whatever. Of course, this would have collateral damage - reaching over to change the radio station becomes illegal. But that's a distraction too, isn't it?<p>I think about this occasionally since I use my phone to play music in the car. When I reach over to tap 'next track' on the incredibly broken Bluetooth hands-free kit (that CA law requires me to have) to change tracks, I'm technically distracted. Is it any different from reaching over and tapping the next track button on my phone? If anything, it's more distracting because Bluetooth (at least for cars) is a complete nonfunctional clusterfuck of a spec that never, ever works right and when it breaks in new and exciting ways I end up more distracted than I would have been if I just tapped a button on my phone's screen.

I guess this invalidates what I've been used to for the last 4 years about using phone mapping. [1] I've always wondered what would happen if a police officer thought you were texting but you were actually using a GPS, or changing a song on your iPod (does it matter if it has cellular connection or not?) Presumably we would need to exclude dash-mounted or built-in GPS manipulation as well. This makes everything with phone use more consistent (and restrictive), which may be the right thing to do.<p>[1] <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/12/illegal-and-tex.html" rel="nofollow">http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/12/illegal-a...</a>

"Driving without due care and attention" is a catch-all violation that covers everything. There is no need and it is a waste of legislative resources to define all these specific things you can't do while driving.

Just ban "reckless driving" and be done with it.<p>Oh wait.

It appears the issue is around "hands-free use", so it appears maps are still fine if you use a dash dock.

I got a ticket in DC about three years ago for using my blackberry maps app while driving. Citation said "improper use of a phone while driving" didn't matter what app I was using. It was like $100 too.