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Automotive News & Views Should cell phone drivers be singled out?
3688 messages, Last post on Oct 27, 2009 at 11:39 AM
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Replying to: boaz47 (Oct 21, 2008 4:22 pm) Just passing a law will ensure it's success? 1. murder 2. dui I could go on and on and on. Even if the accident rate doesn't fall I'm in favor of using the revenue of cell phone laws to help pay down our national debt.
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Replying to: kdshapiro (Oct 22, 2008 8:02 am) Not that it will serve that purpose - these are state-by-state laws, and any revenues generated will go into state and local general funds, to be quickly swallowed up by the next crisis, whatever it may be (we have plenty of fiscal crises in California, it seems, so that money won't be sitting still for even five minutes). |
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Replying to: kdshapiro (Oct 22, 2008 8:02 am) 2. dui I could go on and on and on. Even if the accident rate doesn't fall I'm in favor of using the revenue of cell phone laws to help pay down our national debt. My state as well as many others tout a reduction on both Murder and DUI when they are enforced. This is a new law and we should see a drop if it is enforced. If they can't show a drop then they made the law on bad science. If they can show a drop then they may have a point. It is one way or another. Just making a law doesn't make it a good law. And do you know how long it will take to pay down a trillion dollars with 20 buck tickets? Shoot if they could just pay for the 7-800 billion bail out. But I doubt if either will happen.
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Replying to: boaz47 (Oct 22, 2008 4:59 pm) Exactly, if it is enforced. Actually though I looked at DUI statistics and saw they were on the rise for some period, does that mean less enforcement or less compliance? |
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there was a piece on the evening news tonight on this very topic. CHP reports they wrote 20,000 tickets for handheld use in the period 8/1-9/30/08. They also issued a statement saying that this was a 10% increase in the number of tickets, and that it has become clear to them that despite seeing lots of compliance when the law first took effect, compliance has substantially decreased now. Oh well. Guess lawmakers took their shot.....
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Maybe cell phone using drivers will eventually take themselves all out.  Darwin |
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Replying to: nippononly (Oct 24, 2008 4:43 pm) You could say the same about DUI laws. Laws are ineffective if people decide not to follow them. Friend of mine told me his daughter got a $20 fine for using cell phone. After all was said and done that $20 fine balloned to almost $200 dollars. |
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mobile phone calls distract drivers far more than even the chattiest passenger, causing drivers to follow too closely and miss exits, U.S. researchers reported on Monday. Using a hands-free device does not make things better and the researchers believe they know why—passengers act as a second set of eyes, shutting up or sometimes even helping when they see the driver needs to make a maneuver. The research, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, adds to a growing body of evidence that mobile phones can make driving dangerous. Lee Strayer of the University of Utah and colleagues have found in a series of experiments using driving simulators that hands-free mobile phones are just as distracting as handheld models. They have demonstrated that chatting on a cell phone can slow the reaction times of young adult drivers to levels seen among senior citizens, and shown that drivers using mobile telephones are as impaired as drivers who are legally drunk. For the latest study, also using a simulator, Strayer's team showed that drivers using a hands-free device drifted out of their lanes and missed exits more frequently than drivers talking to a passenger. They tested 96 adults aged 18 to 49. "The passenger adds a second set of eyes, and helps the driver navigate and reminds them where to go," Strayer said in a statement. "When you take a look at the data, it turns out that a driver conversing with a passenger is not as impaired a driver talking on a cell phone," he added. Passengers also simplify conversation when driving conditions change, the researchers wrote. "The difference between a cell phone conversation and passenger conversation is due to the fact that the passenger is in the vehicle and knows what the traffic conditions are like, and they help the driver by reminding them of where to take an exit and pointing out hazards," Strayer said. Strayer's team has videos showing drivers missing exits while on mobile phone headsets and showing that passengers interrupt conversations to help drivers exit correctly at www.psych.utah.edu/~strayer/cellphone.wmv and www.psych.utah.edu/~strayer/passenger.wmv.
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Replying to: kdshapiro (Dec 01, 2008 8:42 am) LOL! And yet for some reason we haven't passed legislation barring senior citizens from driving...... ......I am sure that any politician worth his/her salt knows that they would be cutting their own throat to propose such legislation, so the good of the roads be darned, re-election is more important. Instead, they pass these silly cell phone laws...they increase the state revenues, dontcha' know! 
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"AAA contends that studies analyzing cell phone records of drivers involved in crashes show that using a cell phone while driving -- hands-free or not -- increases the chance of being involved in a crash by a factor of four." AAA Study Finds Using a Cell Phone Hands-Free is no Safer than Using a Handheld
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