I ride a motorcycle ~daily. I'm acutely aware of drivers on their phones. Probably one in six drivers that I see are holding their phone, looking at their phone, or otherwise distracted by their phone. Besides being aware of what folks are doing around me, I routinely use my shoulder checks to peek at whether the drivers adjacent to me are distracted so I can be more prepared if they do something stupid.
The fix for this is easy: pull people over. When I was a teenager, cops met their quotas by watching for people with a phone (back then folks were talking, not typing). This is a big part of what drove people to get bluetooth earpieces: you wouldn't get pulled over for having one and talking on the phone (and cars didn't have microphones yet, so there wasn't another option).
People will be pissed that they're getting pulled over for using their phone while driving. But if there's no expectation of punishment for breaking the law, people will continue breaking the law. And texting and driving is breaking the law. And if I can spot half a dozen people texting and driving on my way to the gym, cops can definitely spot folks texting. Hell, if I could apply for the special cop job of "pull people over for texting" and nothing else, I'd do it purely out of resentment for distracted driving.
It's unique in that it's an addiction that enough people have that it's considered entirely normal. And that normalcy means it's not seen as a big problem to fix, it's just "how it is."
Until people decide that reality is better than the unreality of phones, this kind of willful ignorance will continue.
> Until people decide that reality is better than the unreality of phones, this kind of willful ignorance will continue.
The adoption rate of other entertainment tech like television and video games makes me think that the trend you identify might just be human nature to some extent (with the help of consumerism). I’m not sure people will in fact choose “reality” over entertainment in large enough numbers to reverse that trend.
Do people go into chemical withdrawal if they don’t have phones? Because they sure do if they are actually addicted to a substance like alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamine, or opioids.
Calling phones/games/tv/social media/etc addictions just tells me that you have an authoritarian paternalist ideology.
At my last job, subsidiary of a pretty large corporation, it was not only against company policy to use a phone while driving on-the-clock , it was forbidden to text or even call someone if you knew they were driving. Not very enforceable, but at least it established the intent.
Why not display a Recent Phone Use option when both side buttons of an Apple device is pressed?
* slide to power off
* Medical ID
* SOS Emergency Call
* Recent Phone Use
Report would be high-level -- has phone been unlocked in last 30 minutes, if so, timestamps showing when it was unlocked, for how long, how many finger taps occurred, etc.
That would give law enforcement a quick indication of whether phone was in use. Of course if there are passengers it could be contested. For more detail, they'd have to subpoena as they do now.
I hate people who use their phones while driving as much as the next person, but I would not buy a phone that divulged my personal information in this way.
That data is practically useless because I'm using Google Maps and Spotify connected to my AUX neither of which I think most people consider using your phone while driving.
It seems bizarre that I can't choose to use the CarPlay user experience on my phone while I'm driving in my DumbCar. This seems like such obvious, low-hanging fruit.
Using your phone is demonstrably less safe than not. What I find most interesting is how skewed human psychology can be to risk.
People have phobias about all sorts of things eg flying. Flying on a commercial airplane is demonstrably safer than driving. So why isn't there a more prevalent fear of driving? Some will point to the illusion of control. I can buy that to some degree.
Phone use by driving should make people more fearful of driving. Even if you personally don't use your phone while driving, other people do. And that increases your own risk. Yet that doesn't seem to be the case.
What makes this worse is that everything from marketing to public relations to politics is built around stoking irrational fears that aren't based in fact. A classic example is child abduction even though in reality in the United States ~8 children are actually abducted every year. Figures like "800,000 per year" are heavily inflated with custody disputes.
Phones are easy to blame here, but nobody wants to talk about speeding and dangerous driving, which seems to have become totally normalized. People treat speed limits as a minimum speed suggestion. There's also close to no enforcement of traffic laws from what I've seen, yet lots of people are outraged about too many bicycles (even though the number of people killed by bicycles is a tiny fraction of those killed by cars).
Why would someone be using their phone while driving? Is this something I'm too European to understand? Literally never occured to me to do that, and I haven't ever been in a car where someone did it.
Obvious exceptions being to look at a message while stopped at a traffic light or other safe location, or having the navigation app open with the phone fixed to the dashboard and otherwise not interacting with it.
Might be. Here in the US, as a cyclist who has to look at drivers to ensure that they see me, something like 1 in 10 are using a phone with one hand, texting or swiping Facebook/TikTok with their thumb while driving with the other hand. An even larger fraction pick the phone up at any stoplight to check messages or scroll, and occasionally need to be honked at to realize the light has turned green.
It's not quite a lethal problem when their peripheral can notice a car in front of them (which is probably moving with traffic), but it could be lethal for me. Car drivers are used to looking for cars, they're not looking for me on a bike - even with a florescent yellow backpack, flame orange helmet, and obscenely bright red blinky rear light.
I've given up hope on people not talking on their phone or occasionally dialing a call with their fingers or updating navigation apps or starting a voice-to-text or using their phones at stoplights. But could we at least get a few of the most-used OSes and non-driving apps to not work when they're being used by a driver? If there are no other phone Bluetooth beacons continuously in range (you're known to be not a passenger), there is a car stereo Bluetooth beacon, and GPS says you're in motion on a road at road speeds, don't play video. Don't allow new social notifications. Don't allow Tiktok or Facebook or Reddit to run. At least make an effort at it, stop the easiest 80%.
I'm convinced it's going to take a horrific accident going viral - someone plowing through a class of elementary students on a field trip while live-streaming or something like that - to cause change.
"The EU mean percentages of car drivers self-reporting different mobile phone uses at least once while driving in the past 30 days are: 47.7% talked on a hands-free mobile phone, 28.6% talked on hand-held mobile phone, and 24.2% texted."
I once drove 5 blocks behind someone with a tablet mounted to their windshield, big enough for me to discern they were attentively watching an MMA fight. After 5 blocks they turned the wrong way down a busy 1-way street.
There's not going to be a rational answer for 'why', it's just addiction.
At least around me in CA I see folks every day looking at their phones while driving. I believe license requirements and overall driving safety is much higher in Europe vs the US. I have friends from Europe who are shocked at how easy it is to get a license in the US.
A coworker was in an accident because some teenager cut 3 lanes of traffic from the left lane to the exit because he almost missed a Poke stop. It was his passenger playing, so the driver can still make horrible decisions based on a phone even if not the one personally operating the phone.
I realize this anecdotal story is not a 1:1 example. It's definitely more general into distracted driving in general, and just how teenage decision making isn't very mature at all.
> Is this something I'm too European to understand?
My guess is: yes. I'm almost too "I look at the car, not the driver" to understand but I have actually seen this as a passenger in America. I drive myself places.
One difference is that manual transmissions are much more common in Europe (they are effectively gone in the US), so you're less likely to have an extra hand free to hold a phone with while you're driving.
The GPS app is doing something screwy and I’m getting lost so I look at the map to figure out where I need to go. Other than that I don’t use my phone in the car, if I get a call I can take it on my Apple Watch.
What is the real value here? Man years in prisons equal a better society. Is anyone willing to reconsider how insane driving is in general for the average person?
It's one of the few areas where society basically demands we take on massive liabilities in order to live our basic lives. Then we also like to pretend it's a "privilege", and not necessary. My employer almost called the cops on me, because I didn't drive in one day and used uber.
Starting to get some real second thoughts about this culture. It seems we have taken an insane shift in perspective. In 1970 all car crashes were accidents, but in the 2020s, none are; and someone has to be obliterated.
Tackling "drunk drunk" driving eg. 10 beers, 0.10+ bac, etc. is one thing. All these calls to lock up more people for longer seem to be taking us down a crazy road... and they continue to use the same rules for other substances, even though the chemical testing doesn't work, and the number of cases are low (ie. not a lot of crashes happening).
I refuse (I'm polite about it) to allow people on my zoom meetings who are calling in from their car unless they are parked. But I am frequently on zoom mtgs run by other people who don't seem to care.
Even when I just call someone on the phone (not that often these days) and find they're in the car I always ask, "Hey, should I just call you later?" and, perhaps surprisingly, people will usually say "yeah, we can talk XXX". This is common when they will get to their destination in not so long a time. I'm nore likely to get a "naah, I'll be on the road for a couple of hours so let's just talk now" than I am, "I'll be driving for another 10 minutes so let's just talk now"
Even when the link is handy, the stupid Zoom UI is horrible to use from a car.
I park myself in a meeting before driving and then use CarPlay mute/unmute as needed. It works ok. If I lose the call, it's impossible to get back in, as I need to use the phone.
I wonder if anyone has done any studies about lack of turn signal use being tied to phone in the hand that normally operates the turn signal.
The amount of added background commute stress caused by almost everyone on the road ignoring their turn signal these days is infuriating. It makes everything take longer, and every delay gets magnified multiple times by multiple people in a causal chain not doing it.
This increases stress, road rage, increases commute times, gridlock, everything connected with driving decision that involves meshing with the moves of the cars around you, which now defaults to the worst case defensive scenario- i.e. that everyone who, say, could swerve into your lane when you try to merge, is likely to do so, so you wait multiple times longer to get on to a highway or turn onto a two or three lane thoroughfare, than you would have to if people would just perform what has to be the simplest yet most beneficial gesture of productive cooperation. Even navigating a 7-Eleven parking lot turns into a needlessly guessing game.
And yet if you try to raise the subject among casual friends, even in a joking manner, they look at you like you're some kind of anachronistic Barney Fife character.
> Several ideas ... without stepping on civil liberties. One idea... would involve using roadside cameras
Maybe the initial version of this camera that requires human intervention will barely abide by the already overreaching law, but face-reading cameras everywhere will soon be abused.
Despite talk about authoritarianism we rarely discuss its cultural roots.
Notice how the article puts the burden on authorities & companies to add more surveillance and penalties for people to improve their behavior.
Every ill in society can be fixed with enough surveillance, by this reasoning.
People often worry that we will become like the 20th century authoritarian states (e.g the 3rd Reich, GDR , USSR, etc) and I tell them that we've far surpassed their surveillance and control capacity.
My experience with phone and driving is it would be much better if Siri was remotely useful… Half of the times doesn’t understand what I ask, can’t take me somewhere when I ask her to, and can’t read the top hit of a search when asked a question, only answering with “Can’t show you the result while in the car”. I got to stop to reconfigure more often than not.
Transcription of messages is utterly broken when having conversations in different languages with different people. Why is it still bad with so many advances in LLMs and machine learning?
It makes no sense to me that we don't have, in the US, cameras everywhere giving tickets like they do in Europe. I assume that it's just a matter of time before we get over our collective stupidity. But it's also possible that personal driving will become illegal (only robo-cars allowed) before that happens.
When we put cameras up usually groups try and take them down for the worst reasons, e.g. a “never mind fatalities went down, we are now burdening the low income community with tickets” sort of irrational emotionally driven argument.
Seeing how many hidden speed cameras there are in Australia to catch someone going slightly over on a plain straight road with steep fines, no thank you!
I very much like that US treats me as an adult when driving. I am fine with cops pulling me over.
I just legit hate the idea cameras always watching me waiting for me to make the tiniest mistake and chew up a significant chunk of my monthly income.
Speed and red light cameras are a big business raking in millions per camera.
2. ...and should they? If a crash happens, and someone was on their phone, it would be pretty obvious that they were at fault. I just have a really hard time thinking that more device-related tracking would be better for society.
Also, the mention of cameras at the end of the article is another concern for me. I really don't think this country is better off with more internet connected cameras that are actively being used to surveil the populous. There have to be better ways to win the hearts and minds of people and convince them to not use their phones. Turning into a surveillance state doesn't seem to be the best way to do that IMO.
The article discusses this: it’s often not obvious and largely on the honor system, just as police are often extremely deferential to drivers who claim a pedestrian “jumped in front” of their car. That means that we’re almost certainly significantly undercounting the number of times it’s a factor.
A good analogy would be DUI: Americans really loved their booze and there were many people who felt it was a core freedom to be able to drive after drinking, but eventually the death toll mounted high enough that our social norms changed to include things like designated drivers and doing roadside tests rather than trusting drivers’ claims. Phones will probably follow a similar arc because they are involved in many serious accidents and most people agree that driving safely is not an unreasonable request or a civil liberties violation.
>If a crash happens, and someone was on their phone, it would be pretty obvious that they were at fault.
Accidents are so circumstantial that it's not always going to be "pretty obvious" someone involved was on their phone. Nor does being on your phone when involved in an accident necessarily mean that you caused it.
I'd like to remind everyone clamoring for law enforcement that the person who arrests you will be driving to jail at 70 miles per hour, in a 35 mph zone, while using a laptop.
[+] [-] bastawhiz|2 years ago|reply
The fix for this is easy: pull people over. When I was a teenager, cops met their quotas by watching for people with a phone (back then folks were talking, not typing). This is a big part of what drove people to get bluetooth earpieces: you wouldn't get pulled over for having one and talking on the phone (and cars didn't have microphones yet, so there wasn't another option).
People will be pissed that they're getting pulled over for using their phone while driving. But if there's no expectation of punishment for breaking the law, people will continue breaking the law. And texting and driving is breaking the law. And if I can spot half a dozen people texting and driving on my way to the gym, cops can definitely spot folks texting. Hell, if I could apply for the special cop job of "pull people over for texting" and nothing else, I'd do it purely out of resentment for distracted driving.
[+] [-] mattgreenrocks|2 years ago|reply
Until people decide that reality is better than the unreality of phones, this kind of willful ignorance will continue.
[+] [-] snazz|2 years ago|reply
The adoption rate of other entertainment tech like television and video games makes me think that the trend you identify might just be human nature to some extent (with the help of consumerism). I’m not sure people will in fact choose “reality” over entertainment in large enough numbers to reverse that trend.
[+] [-] ls612|2 years ago|reply
Calling phones/games/tv/social media/etc addictions just tells me that you have an authoritarian paternalist ideology.
[+] [-] dazzlefruit|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reaperducer|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nonrandomstring|2 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.netflix.com/title/70302184
[1] https://vimeo.com/369894528
[+] [-] robotguy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] synlatexc|2 years ago|reply
* slide to power off * Medical ID * SOS Emergency Call * Recent Phone Use
Report would be high-level -- has phone been unlocked in last 30 minutes, if so, timestamps showing when it was unlocked, for how long, how many finger taps occurred, etc.
That would give law enforcement a quick indication of whether phone was in use. Of course if there are passengers it could be contested. For more detail, they'd have to subpoena as they do now.
[+] [-] rideontime|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spivak|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] singleshot_|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SkyPuncher|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CharlesW|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmyeet|2 years ago|reply
People have phobias about all sorts of things eg flying. Flying on a commercial airplane is demonstrably safer than driving. So why isn't there a more prevalent fear of driving? Some will point to the illusion of control. I can buy that to some degree.
Phone use by driving should make people more fearful of driving. Even if you personally don't use your phone while driving, other people do. And that increases your own risk. Yet that doesn't seem to be the case.
What makes this worse is that everything from marketing to public relations to politics is built around stoking irrational fears that aren't based in fact. A classic example is child abduction even though in reality in the United States ~8 children are actually abducted every year. Figures like "800,000 per year" are heavily inflated with custody disputes.
[+] [-] ijhuygft776|2 years ago|reply
I have seen cases where they went back and look at phone use history after accidents.... not sure how often they do it though.
[+] [-] nicepplonly|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kab1r|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitexploder|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andersa|2 years ago|reply
Obvious exceptions being to look at a message while stopped at a traffic light or other safe location, or having the navigation app open with the phone fixed to the dashboard and otherwise not interacting with it.
[+] [-] LeifCarrotson|2 years ago|reply
It's not quite a lethal problem when their peripheral can notice a car in front of them (which is probably moving with traffic), but it could be lethal for me. Car drivers are used to looking for cars, they're not looking for me on a bike - even with a florescent yellow backpack, flame orange helmet, and obscenely bright red blinky rear light.
I've given up hope on people not talking on their phone or occasionally dialing a call with their fingers or updating navigation apps or starting a voice-to-text or using their phones at stoplights. But could we at least get a few of the most-used OSes and non-driving apps to not work when they're being used by a driver? If there are no other phone Bluetooth beacons continuously in range (you're known to be not a passenger), there is a car stereo Bluetooth beacon, and GPS says you're in motion on a road at road speeds, don't play video. Don't allow new social notifications. Don't allow Tiktok or Facebook or Reddit to run. At least make an effort at it, stop the easiest 80%.
I'm convinced it's going to take a horrific accident going viral - someone plowing through a class of elementary students on a field trip while live-streaming or something like that - to cause change.
[+] [-] Symbiote|2 years ago|reply
So it's just you I'm afraid.
[+] [-] rideontime|2 years ago|reply
This exception is "obvious" until you've sat through an entire cycle because the car in front of you didn't notice the light turning green.
[+] [-] 1shooner|2 years ago|reply
There's not going to be a rational answer for 'why', it's just addiction.
[+] [-] rdoherty|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dylan604|2 years ago|reply
I realize this anecdotal story is not a 1:1 example. It's definitely more general into distracted driving in general, and just how teenage decision making isn't very mature at all.
[+] [-] lcnPylGDnU4H9OF|2 years ago|reply
My guess is: yes. I'm almost too "I look at the car, not the driver" to understand but I have actually seen this as a passenger in America. I drive myself places.
[+] [-] InitialLastName|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ls612|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CalRobert|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] browningstreet|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] P_I_Staker|2 years ago|reply
It's one of the few areas where society basically demands we take on massive liabilities in order to live our basic lives. Then we also like to pretend it's a "privilege", and not necessary. My employer almost called the cops on me, because I didn't drive in one day and used uber.
Starting to get some real second thoughts about this culture. It seems we have taken an insane shift in perspective. In 1970 all car crashes were accidents, but in the 2020s, none are; and someone has to be obliterated.
Tackling "drunk drunk" driving eg. 10 beers, 0.10+ bac, etc. is one thing. All these calls to lock up more people for longer seem to be taking us down a crazy road... and they continue to use the same rules for other substances, even though the chemical testing doesn't work, and the number of cases are low (ie. not a lot of crashes happening).
[+] [-] devin|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gumby|2 years ago|reply
Even when I just call someone on the phone (not that often these days) and find they're in the car I always ask, "Hey, should I just call you later?" and, perhaps surprisingly, people will usually say "yeah, we can talk XXX". This is common when they will get to their destination in not so long a time. I'm nore likely to get a "naah, I'll be on the road for a couple of hours so let's just talk now" than I am, "I'll be driving for another 10 minutes so let's just talk now"
[+] [-] mattgreenrocks|2 years ago|reply
I park myself in a meeting before driving and then use CarPlay mute/unmute as needed. It works ok. If I lose the call, it's impossible to get back in, as I need to use the phone.
[+] [-] whoswho|2 years ago|reply
Well they’re not laughing when their children are involved. /gruesome
[+] [-] jacquesm|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChainOfFools|2 years ago|reply
The amount of added background commute stress caused by almost everyone on the road ignoring their turn signal these days is infuriating. It makes everything take longer, and every delay gets magnified multiple times by multiple people in a causal chain not doing it.
This increases stress, road rage, increases commute times, gridlock, everything connected with driving decision that involves meshing with the moves of the cars around you, which now defaults to the worst case defensive scenario- i.e. that everyone who, say, could swerve into your lane when you try to merge, is likely to do so, so you wait multiple times longer to get on to a highway or turn onto a two or three lane thoroughfare, than you would have to if people would just perform what has to be the simplest yet most beneficial gesture of productive cooperation. Even navigating a 7-Eleven parking lot turns into a needlessly guessing game.
And yet if you try to raise the subject among casual friends, even in a joking manner, they look at you like you're some kind of anachronistic Barney Fife character.
[+] [-] osi|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tonymet|2 years ago|reply
Maybe the initial version of this camera that requires human intervention will barely abide by the already overreaching law, but face-reading cameras everywhere will soon be abused.
Despite talk about authoritarianism we rarely discuss its cultural roots.
Notice how the article puts the burden on authorities & companies to add more surveillance and penalties for people to improve their behavior.
Every ill in society can be fixed with enough surveillance, by this reasoning.
People often worry that we will become like the 20th century authoritarian states (e.g the 3rd Reich, GDR , USSR, etc) and I tell them that we've far surpassed their surveillance and control capacity.
So let's not keep adding to it, shall we?
[+] [-] trklausss|2 years ago|reply
Transcription of messages is utterly broken when having conversations in different languages with different people. Why is it still bad with so many advances in LLMs and machine learning?
[+] [-] intrasight|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kjkjadksj|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nojvek|2 years ago|reply
I very much like that US treats me as an adult when driving. I am fine with cops pulling me over.
I just legit hate the idea cameras always watching me waiting for me to make the tiniest mistake and chew up a significant chunk of my monthly income.
Speed and red light cameras are a big business raking in millions per camera.
[+] [-] s3p|2 years ago|reply
2. ...and should they? If a crash happens, and someone was on their phone, it would be pretty obvious that they were at fault. I just have a really hard time thinking that more device-related tracking would be better for society. Also, the mention of cameras at the end of the article is another concern for me. I really don't think this country is better off with more internet connected cameras that are actively being used to surveil the populous. There have to be better ways to win the hearts and minds of people and convince them to not use their phones. Turning into a surveillance state doesn't seem to be the best way to do that IMO.
[+] [-] acdha|2 years ago|reply
A good analogy would be DUI: Americans really loved their booze and there were many people who felt it was a core freedom to be able to drive after drinking, but eventually the death toll mounted high enough that our social norms changed to include things like designated drivers and doing roadside tests rather than trusting drivers’ claims. Phones will probably follow a similar arc because they are involved in many serious accidents and most people agree that driving safely is not an unreasonable request or a civil liberties violation.
[+] [-] jjulius|2 years ago|reply
Accidents are so circumstantial that it's not always going to be "pretty obvious" someone involved was on their phone. Nor does being on your phone when involved in an accident necessarily mean that you caused it.
[+] [-] 6figurelenins|2 years ago|reply