Posted on 11/03/2016 3:28:54 AM PDT by lowbridge
After a trucker killed a mum and three of her kids while using his phone as he drove, her family have worked with police to produce this heartbreaking video - including horrifying footage from inside his cab at the moment of impact.
Tomasz Kroker has been jailed today for 10 years for causing the deaths of Tracy Houghton, her two sons Josh and Ethan, and her stepdaughter Aimee Goldsmith.
(Excerpt) Read more at lbc.co.uk ...
Only 10 years for killing four people?
IMO, everyone who caught using a phone while driving, “hands free” or not, should be jerked out of their car and stomped within an inch of their life.
Studies have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, that your brain makes no distinction between hands or hands-free.
You are more “impaired” than if you were blistered drunk.
MD outlawed cell phones [except for the laughable “hands free”] and said it would be “zero tolerance”.
My ass.
People are still rocketing down the roads, with their stupid faces staring at them.
A couple nights ago, I got behind a car, creeping along and swerving everywhere, that I swore the driver was either drunk as hell or having a major medical issue.
When I got beside her, she was freaking TEXTING as she drove, and did not look up once in nearly a half mile.
Every time I go out on the bike, I have to deal with a dumb ass whose every thought is SO stinking important, that they simply cannot wait a minute or two, until they find a safe place to stop and grace the universe with their latest brilliant FB comment.
I have had people stop and see if I was “okay”, because I really needed to call home and had pulled over with my flashers on.
I’m sure I’ll get crap for the ‘hands free’ comment but I *do not care*.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hands-free-texting-is-no-safer-to-use-while-driving/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130612092949.htm
SHUT UP AND DRIVE!
Flame on.
Should’ve shot his ass dead on the spot.
Reading the ‘c’mon, we’ve all done it’ comments there.
No, we don’t.
I ignore it. If there’s something that needs a quick check, I do that at a full stop at red lights.
This is one of the reasons I’ve stopped riding motorcycles which is something I loved doing.
I pulled up alongside a car on a 6 lane urban interstate. It was dark, rainy and I could see a colored glow in the car. I was in a pickup, so could easily see in the car. This potential Darwin Award winner had affixed an iPAD to the center of his steering wheel and was playing Pokemon while driving 65MPH on a dark rainy morning. I moved two lanes over and sped by not wanting to be near when he “applied” for the Darwin.
Totally agree!
While magnificent, our brains are really quite simple, single threaded and underpowered by today's computing standards. When people look left and right before they pull out, they are looking for a car. You can be right there in their clear line of sight on a motorcycle or bike and their brain won't register your presence because your image is not that of a car. This simplicity in how our brains process information is crippled even further with the added distraction of processing information from a phone.
I’ve done many stupid things in my life, but I am terrified of using a phone while driving; here in NJ there is simply too many things to hit while driving.
I see little enforcement of laws for this; people are constantly driving 45 in the fast lane on highways using their phones. It may be too late in most cases, but cops are looking at phones when accidents are happening with no clear cause. There is talk of stiffening penalties to mirror DUI convictions (a motor vehicle violation, not a crime here in NJ); driving impaired is driving impaired...
How dangerous is it to talk to a passenger in your vehicle while you’re driving said vehicle?
They don't want him to feel bad.
Yes, I, too, stopped driving my motorcycle after the death of a close friend who turned in accordance with the L turn light and was struck by a much older driver who was “proceeding straight ahead” in the oncoming lane. That driver just “didn’t see him”.
I think the penalties of driving while operating almost anything besides the car should be sky high. Even changing a CD disc becomes an issue.
Don’t ever answer the phone. You are blind to the road when you even say “hello”.
Kroker is NOT a citizen of the UK. And the EU says the UK can’t deport him.
I guess he needed more practice.
Yikes.
I used to drive the turnpike on the way to Asbury Park *before* they even existed and I was mortified, way back then.
Where the hell are those people all going in such in hurry?
[and why could I get *into* Newark but not back *out*??] :D
That was addressed in the studies.
Apples and oranges.
Real conversations do not affect our brains like phone calls do.
Perhaps it’s the habit of having to listen more intently over the phone than in person.
I think it’s because the phone calls make us focus on the object, itself.
In addition, a 2012 white paper by the National Safety Council – which includes references from more than 30 research studies – found that “the cognitive distraction from paying attention to conversation – from listening and responding to a disembodied voice – contributes to numerous driving impairments” including inattention blindness (when drivers look at, but do not “see” objects in their path), slower reaction times and problems staying in a lane. That paper concludes: “Driving while talking on cell phones – handheld and hands-free – increases risk of injury and property damage crashes fourfold.”
Believe it or not, but a passenger or radio playing is actually less hazardous than the cellphone.
The reason is when the call comes in your brain does more than just chat with the caller. It often causes you to envision the person, maybe the place where they are, what THEY are doing vs. what you are doing(driving). The imagination is a serious distraction to driving.
In fact, that “virtual” conversation is more distracting than talking with a passenger, their study shows. In their study, Rose and Hunton suggest that “cell phone conversations consume significantly more attention than passenger conversations, resulting in more incidents and crashes during simulated driving.
“Due to the lack of nonverbal cues, conversations on cellular telephones demand more cognitive resources than conversations with passengers,” the study notes. “More working memory is consumed by cell phone conversations relative to passenger conversations, and fewer resources are available for the driving task.”
http://news.siu.edu/2006/03/030306tw5142.html
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