Posted on 07/26/2014 11:43:42 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Most Americans admit to being fry-dipping, cell-phone-gossiping, mascara-applying distracted drivers. A 2011 poll, reported in USA Today, showed 86 percent of us eat or drink in the car, more than half talk on the phone, and about 40 percent admit to the offenses of setting the GPS or texting. Many Americans, even in a state as conservative as Texas, want to be saved from their bad behavior by a ban on cell phone use in the car.
But are they really saving themselves? Though the laws are largely noncontroversial, they’re also hard to enforce, and increasingly look ineffective, according to studies of their real-life track records. A new study of California’s six-year-old cell phone ban, peer-reviewed and published in the journal Transportation Research examined crash data for the six months prior to California’s cell phone ban and the six months after.
“Our main result was that we found no evidence that the California cellphone ban decreased accidents,” Colorado University economics Professor Daniel T. Kaffine, one of the lead autors of the study, said in a statement. “This is surprising, because a lot of prior studies had shown that people who talk on cell phones, while driving, are just as impaired as people who are intoxicated.”
Along with Colorado School of Mines mathematician Bob Yu and Rand Corporation analyst Nicholas E. Burger, Kaffine looked at the six months from January 1 to June 30, 2008 as the “before” period and July 1 to December 31, 2008 as the “after period” to avoid overlap with a ban on text messaging that took effect on January 1, 2009.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Because stupid gonna be stupid.
ping
Yeah we have had this law in California for quite some time and I have yet to see any reduction in people using cellphones while driving, or driving stupid.
The only purpose of laws is so that the authorities can find something to selectively enforce against you when you piss them off.
I don’t think cell calls while driving is as bad as made out. No doubt somewhat distracting however. Texting, on the other hand, has got to be downright dangerous. While texting, people walk off cliffs, into traffic, run into others, etc. This is well documented.
Hang up and drive.
They’re not enforced.
Great point. I ride a motorcycle. It's hard enough to get California drivers to notice and/or see me w/o having the added distraction of them being on their damned phones.
RE: They’re not enforced.
In my part of the world, they’re enforced haphazardly.
You can get away with it by proving that the call was very important and could not wait.
the researchers are showing the evidence that, anecdotally, made my arguments on the subject over a decade ago
- a cop can always stop and ticket ANYONE for driving in a negligent or reckless manner and that negligent/reckless manner, no matter the cause, is the only legal cause the cop needs, and so the only necessary law is/was already on the books
so how often is someone stopped for driving while eating or drinking, loading/unloading their CD, adjusting their radio or GPS, putting on their makeup, putting on or taking off a shirt, or sweater, or jacket or a zillion other things that can lead to major driving errors - not very often
but just let someone be seen using their cellphone, no matter how responsibly, and THAT’s a legal issue
it’s not about insane driving practices, there are dozens of them; its about insane utopian laws that pretend to do what they cannot - stop stupid from being stupid
My personal experience isn’t documented, but I can tell you that if I see a driver weaving back and forth or driving very slowly-—sometimes in the passing lane-—it’s almost a given that the idiot is yakking on a phone. Yesterday a moron was slowly cutting in and out of lanes, once in front of a huge truck, without giving his signal. I knew he was on the phone-—and when I passed him, sure enough.
That doesn’t include the times I’ve almost been hit by people who can’t put the phone down long enough to drive.
I've even gone through a license check point with everyone in front of and behind me that I could see chatting away as the move up in line, not a one of the folks ahead of me stopped using their phone for any longer than it took to hand the officer their license and get it back. They were talking again as they drove off. If my license had been expired by two days I'd have had to call someone to come and get me and the car.
Which is the greater hazard? The outlawing of it was just another feel-good thing as far as I can tell.
Glad to hear they at least take a stab at it some places, though. A officer I'm friends with says three out of five accidents he works are at least in part caused by someone talking on their phone or typing with their thumbs and the people more often than not admit it. No fault insurance, so no problem.
If you were to be an invisible passenger with one of those drivers, I bet you would discover that when they are not on the phone they are doing something else that diverts their attention away from driving.
That’s the way those kind are.
They are not "impaired", they are inattentive. While at times could be just as dangerous, nonetheless is NOT the same thing. The terms are not interchangeable. The man should be sufficiently educated to be more precise in his use of language.
This all goes back to the early days of cell phones and the liberal response to them.
They were expensive and used mostly by businessmen and the 1 percenters.
Therefore, cell phones were a symbol of capitalism. So they must be banned.
Doing so today when they are the pacifiers of the masses makes no sense. But then, so does little of liberalism.
I refuse to be a passenger in a car when the driver “has” to text. Other activities that don’t require taking eyes off the road I don’t care about.
I’ve been talking on a cell phone driving since they first came out. Never a problem. This may not be true for everybody. Texting is dangerous even while walking.
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