Driving in the US yesterday a couple of things were very clear. Everyone is texting and talking on the phone while driving, especially on the freeways. It is madness. I know, I know, its the land of the free and all, but anti-talk-text laws while driving are desperately needed. This is like motoring with a majority of people intoxicated at the wheel. Needed now: bans and enforcement with heavy fines along with media campaigns to underline just how reckless this behavior is. That goes for Canada too. In Canada we recently legislated some bans but you still see a fair amount of drivers thumbing away on the freeway. This is not a personal choice issue, this is endangering everyone. Has no one seen the movie “Seven Pounds?” Watch it.
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Cell phone jammers could be installed in all vehicles and automatically activated whenever the vehicle is in motion. You could allow a ring tone to sound when a call is received allowing you to stop the vehicle and answer or make a call.
This drives me crazy; I go out of my way to honk at anyone I see doing it and am of the opinion that the problem is worse than drunk driving. At least for drunk driving there are laws against it. An interesting statistic would be the number of accidents involving cell phones. This to include all bumps even car park crashes; authorities should automatically check this out for each and every car accident; laws to be changed so there is no privacy in this matter when you are in an accident and providers have to release this info. Then any insurance claims invalid.
Hands free make little if any difference.; I think there was an Ozzie study that verifies this. Yes every call is soooo important – grrr – most of it is an ego thing too; I am so important nothing can wait a few minutes.
A NY Times study showed that texting while driving was far more dangerous (reaction-time-wise) than being legally intoxicated while driving. There are of course DEGREES of intoxication that would make a big difference in comparisons, but that would be true for DEGREES of texting, too. http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/texting-is-more-dangerous-than-driving-drunk/
It doesn’t help that some idiotic car companies (Ford for example, with their MYTouch or whatever they call it) are putting so much techo crap in thier cars that actually focusing on driving the car is a secondary consideration.
Get Blue Tooth. Problem solved.