Driving with cell phones
 

Yesterday the NTSB recommended an outright ban on cell phones in cars (including hands free).

Sure a ban would save lives but so would dropping the national speed limit to 10mph. It makes me wonder, what is an acceptable level of risk?

Americans take 1,100,000,000 car trips per day. That's 1.1 Billion trips every day

In 2008 448,000 people were injured and 5,474 people were killed by distracted driving.

That means that on any given day, your chances of being injured by a distracted driving is 0.000001%. Literately one on a million and I'd guess that number drops dramatically if you are not the one doing the distracted driving.

Your chance of being killed is 0.00000001% or 1 in 100 Million

Those are pretty slim odds.

Here's my question - if this becomes law, are we all going to get refunds for the bluetooth devices we had installed in our cars (due to being all but mandated by law) that are now illegal to operate?

I think the 'meet in the middle' will be all 50 states adopting no texting/emailing/Facebooking while allowing hands free/bluetooth talking.

I guess I should learn how to make voice activated dialing work.

I was also wondering how you'd enforce it with most people already having some kind of hands free to comply with current laws. And I must see 20 people a day chatting away with their phone up to their ears anyway.

And I can't use voice activated because the flip farking flip things never recognize my voice. Sync will call random people if I try to use voice dial.

I don't know what form the laws will take or how they will be enforced.

But I'm fine with just saying:

Having a phone conversation, whether hands free or not, while driving is simply stupid. So stop doing it.

Using devices that require more than a second of contact to use while also taking your eyes off the road is simply stupid. So stop doing it.

Doing stupid **** that risks other people's lives because you think, without any evidence beyond the fact you haven't killed anybody yet, that you're one of the people who doesn't suffer the same cognitive and motor failings as general human beings is stupid. So stop doing it.

So, rather than criminal penalties for it, I think the law should be that if you almost or successfully harm or kill me because you're being stupid while operating a car I get to kick you in the balls. Or the lady balls if you're a lady (which you aren't because you're being an idiot while driving). And I get to keep doing it until I feel you've learned an important life lesson.

Does this include talking to others in your car?

When you do it stupidly. Yes.

That said, as a cognitive distraction, conversation with a fellow passenger is not the same impact as the exact same phone conversation on a phone.

If you want to hold a phone conversation with another person in your car then I'll have to give that some thought.

Is everyone on a cell phone in those 1.1 billion car trips? If not, what if they were? I imagine the odds would go up. There are close to 300 million people in the United States. If everybody fired four random gunshots out their window or on the street every day, you'd have about 1.1 billion shots fired every day, the overhelming majority of which would not kill anybody, but, in real numbers, a lot would.

Given that for years, people drove without talking on the phone, the inescapable conclusion is that every single cell phone conversation that occurs in a car is unnecessary. It is, perhaps, a preference, and, like firing gunshots in public, an expression of the cherished freedom to threaten our neighbors, but banning it wouldn't bother me.

I would also add re the statistics that some other driver usually makes me go, "Hey, what the f***!" at least once a week, and that driver is usually on the phone.

I wish we had taken a picture of the West Covina Police officer talking on his cell phone while driving on the 57 freeway yesterday.

Would I be in trouble for continuing to use my phone as a music player? Would selecting the next podcast to listen to be verboten? Is it somehow more dangerous than someone scrolling through their poorly organized directories via LCD display on the MP3 CD that's in their car stereo simply because theirs is built into the dashboard?

I understand, and possibly even agree with, the impetus behind the recommendation. But enforcement I think will be inconsistent at best.

I was mistakenly pulled over for talking on my cell phone because I was resting my head on my hand and my long hair covered me ear, therefore a cop decided I must be on the phone. If they can't even determine accurately whether someone had a device physically against their head, what chance do they have of accurately determining other far less obvious uses of portable devices?