Self-driving Tesla hits fire truck

[jesmu84]

"We" should stop using the phrase "texting and driving" which by definition is "writing a text via SMS."

Actual writing a text via SMS is a fraction of what you can do on your phone that steals your attention while driving.

Reading texts, facebook, twitter.  Finding a Pandora station to play.  Checking a map.  Looking at photos, snapchat, iMessage.  Googling something, the weather, ad infinitum.

Something I'm guilty of is using Waze.   

My question is why have phones been demonized in this way? Shouldn't it all fall under the purview of reckless driving? It should include putting on makeup, messing with the radio/whatever, eating/drinking... basically anything that distracts from the road. And all of those should be punished equally, IMO.

[mu_hilltopper]

My question is why have phones been demonized in this way? Shouldn't it all fall under the purview of reckless driving? It should include putting on makeup, messing with the radio/whatever, eating/drinking... basically anything that distracts from the road. And all of those should be punished equally, IMO.

I wouldn't disagree with any of that ..  I think it's because all that other stuff existed 20+ years ago.   Cell phones octupled the rate of distracted driving.  If we could "just" get a handle on that ...

[forgetful]

My question is why have phones been demonized in this way? Shouldn't it all fall under the purview of reckless driving? It should include putting on makeup, messing with the radio/whatever, eating/drinking... basically anything that distracts from the road. And all of those should be punished equally, IMO.

Honestly, that is why we need automated driving.  People are always going to be distracted, and accidents will happen because of it.  Take the human out of the equation. 

[ChitownSpaceForRent]

Honestly, that is why we need automated driving.  People are always going to be distracted, and accidents will happen because of it.  Take the human out of the equation.

Hopefully that means they can raise the speed limits then.

Just the thought of having to go 55 MPH on 94 is already stressing me out.

[forgetful]

Hopefully that means they can raise the speed limits then.

Just the thought of having to go 55 MPH on 94 is already stressing me out.

Curious as to how much vehicle speed limits data accuracy as a function of internet/data speed.  My guess is as vehicles are moving faster, the requisite read/write of data also needs to increase.  I wonder if that is limiting at all.

[brewcity77]

Hopefully that means they can raise the speed limits then.

Just the thought of having to go 55 MPH on 94 is already stressing me out.

Unless you are traveling great distances, driving over the speed limit makes negligible differences in arrival time. Especially when you get up to the higher speeds (55/65/75) because the percent of speed increased by going 10 mph over becomes less significant as the speed limit goes up.

If you're going 15 miles, the difference in arrival time between 55 & 65 is less than 3 minutes.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/lifehacker.com/does-speeding-really-get-you-there-any-faster-1556767685/amp

[Benny B]

Oh, honey.

The percentage of people texting and driving is extremely high.  The amount of people being pulled over or caught doing it is extremely small.

I still like my idea that anyone in an at fault accident gets their phone record pulled and if it can be proven that the offender was using their phone in ANY way, the fine doubles and the point demerits double.

I like where you're going with this, but to pull records for every single accident might be a little overreaching, privacy-wise, i.e. the potential harm to the public doesn't outweigh the harm to one's privacy.  Plus, if you simply go by "blind" phone/data usage - i.e. all you see is an "on/off" indication, not who they were talking to or what data was being streamed - imagine the difficulty of proving the person wasn't using CarPlay, Waze, or talking hands-free.

That being said, if there's a critical injury or a fatality involved, typically phone records are being pulled any way, aren't they?

[buckchuckler]

We should probably start retesting seniors every year then.  I would argue that most anyone over the age of 70 is more dangerous than an experienced driver in their 40's on their phone.  Even if the level of impairment due to age is 20% and impairment due to phoning is 60%, I'll take my chances with the intermittent 60 than the constant 20.

I'll take the old people on sheer numbers.  Not to mention the 16-20 year olds that are bad drivers and on their phones.

The danger is that you are constantly surrounded by the intermittent 60.  Even while they are going 75 mph on the highway.