Texting while driving

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txtig said:
I hope you’re joking. When I see someone doing this, it makes my blood boil. Not only are they mucking up traffic, but endangering everyone else around them.
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Of course it's not a joke. You absolutely need more space between you and the car in front of you, if you are texting.
 
Original poster here.

Please. Don't under any circumstances text while driving. There is simply no safe way to do both at the same time. Just don't do it.
 
In our county in Texas it is now illegal to text while driving. Our Sheriff's drive around in GMC Yukon patrol vehicles and can see easily into other vehicles. The first weekend this went into effect, I heard over 200 people were ticketed.
 
It's illegal in the entire State of Connecticut too. Do you think that stops anyone? By my daily observation, not at all.
 
In MN it is illegal too. I periodically see renters, via my background checks, get tickets.
 
jebmke said:
In my county, distracted driving surpassed DUI in terms of fatal and serious injury accidents a couple of years ago. I stopped riding my bicycle on public streets because of cell phone users. I have seen too many of them drifting side to side into the bike lane/shoulder.

My wife would like to mount a rocket launcher on my SUV to take out the texters but that might be a little harsh and I'm not sure I'd be able to get the car into the garage.:mad:
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I jogged for 20 years on Texas streets. Not any more. The texters will run over you and not even know they did it.
 
Texting while driving? Sheesh, a lot of people out there shouldn't be driving while driving.
 
It is illegal here too and they have been giving out a lot of tickets. NOthing is that important that it can't wait until you are done driving. When I was young I was hit 7 times when I was in a car that was stopped at a red light. Most of the time I was not driving. Sometimes the driver was not paying attention and once was drunk. By about the 4th time I started to have back/neck pain & injuries. Now at 63 I see the chiro at least once/month and everything hurts.
 
Senator said:
Of course it's not a joke. You absolutely need more space between you and the car in front of you, if you are texting.
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Senator, I don't have the words...

The reason I don't bike on the road (see avatar) anymore is because of cell phones. Drivers are oblivious to bikes these days. Bloomberg has a brand new article on this out this morning:
the increase in fatalities has been largely among bicyclists, motorcyclists, and pedestrians—all of whom are easier to miss from the driver’s seat than, say, a 4,000-pound SUV—especially if you’re glancing up from your phone rather than concentrating on the road. Last year, 5,987 pedestrians were killed by cars in the U.S., almost 1,100 more than in 2014—that’s a 22 percent increase in just two years.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...s-are-killing-americans-but-nobody-s-counting
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Smartphones Are Killing Americans, But Nobody’s Counting

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...s-are-killing-americans-but-nobody-s-counting

Amid a historic spike in U.S. traffic fatalities, federal data on the danger of distracted driving are getting worse.
Jennifer Smith doesn’t like the term “accident.” It implies too much chance and too little culpability.

A “crash” killed her mother in 2008, she insists, when her car was broadsided by another vehicle while on her way to pick up cat food. The other driver, a 20-year-old college student, ran a red light while talking on his mobile phone, a distraction that he immediately admitted and cited as the catalyst of the fatal event.

“He was remorseful,” Smith, now 43, said. “He never changed his story.”

...

"Finally, the increase in fatalities has been largely among bicyclists, motorcyclists, and pedestrians—all of whom are easier to miss from the driver’s seat than, say, a 4,000-pound SUV—especially if you’re glancing up from your phone rather than concentrating on the road. Last year, 5,987 pedestrians were killed by cars in the U.S., almost 1,100 more than in 2014—that’s a 22 percent increase in just two years. "
 
This kind of reminds me of living through the 60s and drunk driving and the tolerance for the behavior back then. Laws were on the books, but many times ignored.
 
Over the past two years, after decades of declining deaths on the road, U.S. traffic fatalities surged by 14.4 percent. In 2016 alone, more than 100 people died every day in or near vehicles in America, the first time the country has passed that grim toll in a decade. Regulators, meanwhile, still have no good idea why crash-related deaths are spiking: People are driving longer distances but not tremendously so; total miles were up just 2.2 percent last year. Collectively, we seemed to be speeding and drinking a little more, but not much more than usual. Together, experts say these upticks don’t explain the surge in road deaths.

There are however three big clues, and they don’t rest along the highway. One, as you may have guessed, is the substantial increase in smartphone use by U.S. drivers as they drive. From 2014 to 2016, the share of Americans who owned an iPhone, Android phone, or something comparable rose from 75 percent to 81 percent.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...s-are-killing-americans-but-nobody-s-counting
 
To even suggest that the solution to texting while driving is to leave more room between cars is ridiculous. Accidents can happen in a second and you need to be fully aware of what is going on around you at all times. I guess eventually when cars are all self driving then we will take the stupid human factor out of the equation.
 
Teacher Terry said:
To even suggest that the solution to texting while driving is to leave more room between cars is ridiculous. Accidents can happen in a second and you need to be fully aware of what is going on around you at all times. I guess eventually when cars are all self driving then we will take the stupid human factor out of the equation.
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Adaptive cruise slows down and stops for you if the traffic in front of you stops.

You should not text and drive, (or drive drunk, do drugs, rob, steal, etc...) but if you are going to do it, leave more room between you and the car in front of you. And have the adaptive cruise on.

Millions of people text and drive every day, and there is not a problem with 99% of them.
 
JoeWras said:
This kind of reminds me of living through the 60s and drunk driving and the tolerance for the behavior back then. Laws were on the books, but many times ignored.
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Heck, when I moved to Texas permanently in the 1990's it was LEGAL to have an open container of alcohol in your car and be drinking it, as long as you didn't become legally drunk. I recall driving down state highway 225 one afternoon and beer cans were being thrown out of pickup truck windows as a matter of course.

Even today, most gas stations have a large iced down cooler full of individual beer cans that are bought by customers who come into the store. The beer can is put into a small brown paper bag for carrying to your vehicle. Still many people have a cold one on the way home around here. But it's hard to text with a beer can in one hand.
 
Senator said:
Adaptive cruise slows down and stops for you if the traffic in front of you stops.

You should not text and drive, (or drive drunk, do drugs, rob, steal, etc...) but if you are going to do it, leave more room between you and the car in front of you. And have the adaptive cruise on.

Millions of people text and drive every day, and there is not a problem with 99% of them.
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Uhm. Personal opinion or can you cite a legitimate reference?

What a cold comfort it would be to that person you had a head-on collision with to know that you doubled your following distance from the car in the lane ahead of you.

On the other hand perhaps you are right. What a marvel of the human condition that one (millions perhaps) seemingly intelligent individual(s) in so many ways can be so obtuse in others.

Think. Think about the power one wields when they sit behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. The power to change lives ... or even take them.
 
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zedd said:
Uhm. Personal opinion or can you cite a legitimate reference?
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My own observation, I see MANY people on their phones texting. If I see a few each day in one small area, a simple mental extrapolation says there are MILLIONS every year that text and drive. I rode along with a cop patrol, and the cop was texting all night doing cop stuff.

It's the same with DUIs. Millions drive drunk, and very few accidents considering the number of people over the legal limit. There may be a lot of accidents, but a small number compared to how many drunks on the road. Get the ones that are .02+, not the .08.

When I had a bar, I know many people that left were drunk. Some did not have drivers licenses because of it. I even helped some out of snow banks, and got one guy with 4-wheels that were sticking up, with wheels back on the ground. I helped a drunk customer out the back door when the cops came in the front. Cut cop handcuffs off a drunk once when I was a server. But no one ever killed anyone or got killed.

It's always the bad one percent that cause issues. Is driving drunk or texting smart, probably not. It happens a lot, and most of the time no incidents.
 
Senator said:
My own observation, I see MANY people on their phones texting. If I see a few each day in one small area, a simple mental extrapolation says there are MILLIONS every year that text and drive. I rode along with a cop patrol, and the cop was texting all night doing cop stuff.

It's the same with DUIs. Millions drive drunk, and very few accidents considering the number of people over the legal limit. There may be a lot of accidents, but a small number compared to how many drunks on the road. Get the ones that are .02+, not the .08.

When I had a bar, I know many people that left were drunk. Some did not have drivers licenses because of it. I even helped some out of snow banks, and got one guy with 4-wheels that were sticking up, with wheels back on the ground. I helped a drunk customer out the back door when the cops came in the front. Cut cop handcuffs off a drunk once when I was a server. But no one ever killed anyone or got killed.

It's always the bad one percent that cause issues. Is driving drunk or texting smart, probably not. It happens a lot, and most of the time no incidents.
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Moderators. Respectfully. May be this thread be locked freezing these diametrically opposed points of view. This topic perhaps can be addresses elsewhere.

Thank you
 
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