I ride a motorcycle ~daily. I'm acutely aware of drivers on their phones. Probably one in six drivers that I see are holding their phone, looking at their phone, or otherwise distracted by their phone. Besides being aware of what folks are doing around me, I routinely use my shoulder checks to peek at whether the drivers adjacent to me are distracted so I can be more prepared if they do something stupid.
The fix for this is easy: pull people over. When I was a teenager, cops met their quotas by watching for people with a phone (back then folks were talking, not typing). This is a big part of what drove people to get bluetooth earpieces: you wouldn't get pulled over for having one and talking on the phone (and cars didn't have microphones yet, so there wasn't another option).
People will be pissed that they're getting pulled over for using their phone while driving. But if there's no expectation of punishment for breaking the law, people will continue breaking the law. And texting and driving is breaking the law. And if I can spot half a dozen people texting and driving on my way to the gym, cops can definitely spot folks texting. Hell, if I could apply for the special cop job of "pull people over for texting" and nothing else, I'd do it purely out of resentment for distracted driving.
Phone use should be treated just like DUI. You don't need a chemical intoxication for your attention and reaction time to be impaired. In CA, this means first offense: 1 year suspension of license, second offense: 2 years, third offense: 3 years. Honestly, I don't understand why people shouldn't lose their license permanently for such repeat offenses but I'm not a lawmaker.
I can tell you that the Tavern League in the state of Wisconsin plays a huge role in why DUI's are enforced like shit here: they want people in bars, drinking. Not necessarily driving but they're fine with it if it means their member establishments make more money.
Rather than draconian punishments that ruin people’s lives for something that millions of people evidently have little executive control over, we could just have a technological solution: have Android and iOS disable the screen on any phone moving faster than 5mph.
This would inconvenience passengers of all sorts but it would immediately eliminate all phone related accidents without getting people with bad impulse control license suspensions. Most people with license suspensions continue driving anyway.
It’s hard for me to see any other solution that really changes anything. Millions of people have a phone addiction and punishing them for using their phone while driving may be just but it won’t be effective. To me this is more than worth the very minor inconvenience of not being able to use my phone while riding in a bus, car, or train.
Camera traffic law enforcement in the US has historically been abused to generate revenue rather than used to increase safety. There was, for example, a wave of states and municipalities that banned red light cameras about a decade ago because cities were illegally shortening the yellow light timing to catch more red light runners.
Because Americans have a right to face their accuser, making it easier to just send the cop that caught them. That's the short version. There's been plenty of "scamera" activism and cases won if you want more info. Try 4409
I do not want more automated law enforcement by surveillance. On balance, I think that would be a fix worse than the problem, even if the problem is this bad. These things creep.
I can guess with a very high probability that a driver in front of me is on their phone just by the way they move in their lane. I hate driving behind distracted drivers -- they tend to do things suddenly (stop, steer, or crash).
Don't forget about the back though: I had a driver slam into me while stopped at a light. She wrecked 4 cars including her own and sent me to the hospital with a $25K ER bill. Took 2 years to resolve that.
I get so sick of hearing people say "It's okay: my car lets me talk hands free!" It isn't just the hands that are a problem ... it's your brain being disengaged that's the problem. No hands-free phone fixes that.
The bottom line is, no one should be using their phone and driving. If you have to use the phone, pull over.
They pull people over in Norway and give them hefty fines (~1000 USD). We don’t have any statistics for number of car accidents where the driver was “probably” using their phone, so it’s hard to say if it works. So same issue was the article brings up.
I feel that the media is partially to blame too. They like to victimise drivers who are caught using their phones, or driving over the speed limit for that matter. Or maybe it’s just my point of view.
It's unique in that it's an addiction that enough people have that it's considered entirely normal. And that normalcy means it's not seen as a big problem to fix, it's just "how it is."
Until people decide that reality is better than the unreality of phones, this kind of willful ignorance will continue.
> Until people decide that reality is better than the unreality of phones, this kind of willful ignorance will continue.
The adoption rate of other entertainment tech like television and video games makes me think that the trend you identify might just be human nature to some extent (with the help of consumerism). I’m not sure people will in fact choose “reality” over entertainment in large enough numbers to reverse that trend.
Do people go into chemical withdrawal if they don’t have phones? Because they sure do if they are actually addicted to a substance like alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamine, or opioids.
Calling phones/games/tv/social media/etc addictions just tells me that you have an authoritarian paternalist ideology.
What you think people don’t get addicted to things like gambling because there is no substance involved? You are standing against a tsunami wave of scientific evidence with this line you’ve arbitrarily drawn.
Although I have never done meth, I had an addition to a type of amphetamine in my teens. It was not a physical addition, in the sense that there were no physical withdraw symptoms, but I can tell you from experience that it was a very "real" addition in the sense that it a) ruined my life b) I felt like I had no control over it and c) I needed professional help to overcome it.
A big part of the cycle was that the "down" felt like an overwhelming depression while the "high" felt like pure happiness coupled with the ability to hyper-focus on anything, which really fed into my personality type. It was that cycle that created a psychological dependency that was very hard to break. Every use created an incentive to use again as soon as the high started to wear off. I've never experienced that with anything else ... not even other types of drugs.
Basically after staying awake for an entire week because I was high on a stimulant 24/7, when I "crashed" I slept for days and that's when my mother realized that I had a serious problem and got me professional help because she was worried I was in a coma or something.
I've never experienced anything similar with video games, gambling, television, social media etc. So I have no idea if it's the same for people who develop "addictions" to those things. All I know is that you don't need physical withdraw symptoms to experience a very real addiction that you can't break on your own.
At my last job, subsidiary of a pretty large corporation, it was not only against company policy to use a phone while driving on-the-clock , it was forbidden to text or even call someone if you knew they were driving. Not very enforceable, but at least it established the intent.
Why not display a Recent Phone Use option when both side buttons of an Apple device is pressed?
* slide to power off
* Medical ID
* SOS Emergency Call
* Recent Phone Use
Report would be high-level -- has phone been unlocked in last 30 minutes, if so, timestamps showing when it was unlocked, for how long, how many finger taps occurred, etc.
That would give law enforcement a quick indication of whether phone was in use. Of course if there are passengers it could be contested. For more detail, they'd have to subpoena as they do now.
I hate people who use their phones while driving as much as the next person, but I would not buy a phone that divulged my personal information in this way.
That is not divulging personal information in any case and the privilege of driving requires some compromises there. For example, having a medical condition actually is a private matter but the state has a compelling public safety interest to require you to disclose conditions which affect your ability to drive safely.
That data is practically useless because I'm using Google Maps and Spotify connected to my AUX neither of which I think most people consider using your phone while driving.
It seems bizarre that I can't choose to use the CarPlay user experience on my phone while I'm driving in my DumbCar. This seems like such obvious, low-hanging fruit.
It's still illegal to use your phone while driving in most countries. So by allowing you to use CarPlay on your phone while not connected to a car's media system, that could be interpreted as enticing phone usage while driving and thus open them up to potential lawsuits. The irony is that so many people disregard the law anyways that it would actually end up making roads safer. But Apple wont risk offending lawmakers for that.
> that could be interpreted as enticing phone usage while driving
This can't be true. Zooming the screen from the accessibility settings probably gets you half way there already. Every navigation app is enticing you to use it while driving. Touchscreens are enticing/forcing users to take the eyes off the road. The mere existence of the phone is enticing a driver to use it.
CarPlay "mode" would just be a slightly different GUI for what you can already do with the phone whether legally (by the passenger, or while stationary) or illegally (while driving). Every app in the phone is also accessible from the home screen.
At most Apple would have to issue a warning every time to use it correctly, like many cars already do.
Most places that have distracted driving laws ban use of hand-held devices. Some places bam all use based on age. I am not familiar with many places that ban all use for everyone.
Given that other large companies offer equivalent functionality, I really doubt that fear of lawsuits has determined when CarPlay is available.
I tried one (maybe a terrible one? https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09TP8RZRT/), but the connectivity was flaky and I couldn't find a good place to mount it in my Odyssey. (Ideas and product suggestions welcome! It's not bugging me enough to replace the head unit.)
Labor and parts for installation could easily bring the total cost of adding a CarPlay/Android Auto compatible head unit to $1,000. At least it did for me, and that was 3 years ago.
Using your phone is demonstrably less safe than not. What I find most interesting is how skewed human psychology can be to risk.
People have phobias about all sorts of things eg flying. Flying on a commercial airplane is demonstrably safer than driving. So why isn't there a more prevalent fear of driving? Some will point to the illusion of control. I can buy that to some degree.
Phone use by driving should make people more fearful of driving. Even if you personally don't use your phone while driving, other people do. And that increases your own risk. Yet that doesn't seem to be the case.
What makes this worse is that everything from marketing to public relations to politics is built around stoking irrational fears that aren't based in fact. A classic example is child abduction even though in reality in the United States ~8 children are actually abducted every year. Figures like "800,000 per year" are heavily inflated with custody disputes.
> Flying on a commercial airplane is demonstrably safer than driving
Can you give me some stats on this? I was under the impression that it's maybe a little bit safer in terms of distance traveled.
But the people who think their driving is 50% safer than the average person's don't care about this. And this is probably near 100% of people who drive.
People have no sense of actual risk and how it affects them. They fixate on emotional rather than rational assessments that perverts their understanding of risk and above all believe they are personally invincible.
The process being somewhat inconvenient ("cumbersome" is overstating it) is intentional. It's one of the few protections we have from abuse by law enforcement in the US. I'm glad we have at least that.
I'm not a phone dev, but is there a second by second logging of what app was in the foreground? I assume it does, but just unfamiliar with how long it's retained blah blah. Is it also granular enough to show if it was actively being used and not just in the foreground? Or do they just look at the timestamp of last messages sent in various apps to see if they were texting? Doom scrolling while driving with no commenting is sadly something I've seen a driver doing while being a passenger.
The cases I've seen, I believe they looked at texts sent... so in that case, pretty sure the info is kept forever. But phones are data treasures so who knows what they do now.
Att had a whole ad campaign of peoples last texts before a crash. Seems cell providers have some interest in making a safer product in contrast to cellphone manufacturers who clearly don’t give a damn about the issue given the lack of any ui/ux change to combat this over a decade plus of smartphones.
Readit News
The fix for this is easy: pull people over. When I was a teenager, cops met their quotas by watching for people with a phone (back then folks were talking, not typing). This is a big part of what drove people to get bluetooth earpieces: you wouldn't get pulled over for having one and talking on the phone (and cars didn't have microphones yet, so there wasn't another option).
People will be pissed that they're getting pulled over for using their phone while driving. But if there's no expectation of punishment for breaking the law, people will continue breaking the law. And texting and driving is breaking the law. And if I can spot half a dozen people texting and driving on my way to the gym, cops can definitely spot folks texting. Hell, if I could apply for the special cop job of "pull people over for texting" and nothing else, I'd do it purely out of resentment for distracted driving.
This would inconvenience passengers of all sorts but it would immediately eliminate all phone related accidents without getting people with bad impulse control license suspensions. Most people with license suspensions continue driving anyway.
It’s hard for me to see any other solution that really changes anything. Millions of people have a phone addiction and punishing them for using their phone while driving may be just but it won’t be effective. To me this is more than worth the very minor inconvenience of not being able to use my phone while riding in a bus, car, or train.
Or, as is currently being tested in many European countries, cameras above the road that automatically detect drivers on their phones.
But I am not optimistic about that taking off in the US, where even speed cameras are a rarity (although I do not really know why).
See the links on https://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/03/24/145247/mississippi-p...
I get so sick of hearing people say "It's okay: my car lets me talk hands free!" It isn't just the hands that are a problem ... it's your brain being disengaged that's the problem. No hands-free phone fixes that.
The bottom line is, no one should be using their phone and driving. If you have to use the phone, pull over.
I feel that the media is partially to blame too. They like to victimise drivers who are caught using their phones, or driving over the speed limit for that matter. Or maybe it’s just my point of view.
Until people decide that reality is better than the unreality of phones, this kind of willful ignorance will continue.
The adoption rate of other entertainment tech like television and video games makes me think that the trend you identify might just be human nature to some extent (with the help of consumerism). I’m not sure people will in fact choose “reality” over entertainment in large enough numbers to reverse that trend.
Calling phones/games/tv/social media/etc addictions just tells me that you have an authoritarian paternalist ideology.
Although I have never done meth, I had an addition to a type of amphetamine in my teens. It was not a physical addition, in the sense that there were no physical withdraw symptoms, but I can tell you from experience that it was a very "real" addition in the sense that it a) ruined my life b) I felt like I had no control over it and c) I needed professional help to overcome it.
A big part of the cycle was that the "down" felt like an overwhelming depression while the "high" felt like pure happiness coupled with the ability to hyper-focus on anything, which really fed into my personality type. It was that cycle that created a psychological dependency that was very hard to break. Every use created an incentive to use again as soon as the high started to wear off. I've never experienced that with anything else ... not even other types of drugs.
Basically after staying awake for an entire week because I was high on a stimulant 24/7, when I "crashed" I slept for days and that's when my mother realized that I had a serious problem and got me professional help because she was worried I was in a coma or something.
I've never experienced anything similar with video games, gambling, television, social media etc. So I have no idea if it's the same for people who develop "addictions" to those things. All I know is that you don't need physical withdraw symptoms to experience a very real addiction that you can't break on your own.
But willing to be wrong on the latter, so might as well watch as it plays out.
[0] https://www.netflix.com/title/70302184
[1] https://vimeo.com/369894528
* slide to power off * Medical ID * SOS Emergency Call * Recent Phone Use
Report would be high-level -- has phone been unlocked in last 30 minutes, if so, timestamps showing when it was unlocked, for how long, how many finger taps occurred, etc.
That would give law enforcement a quick indication of whether phone was in use. Of course if there are passengers it could be contested. For more detail, they'd have to subpoena as they do now.
Dead Comment
This can't be true. Zooming the screen from the accessibility settings probably gets you half way there already. Every navigation app is enticing you to use it while driving. Touchscreens are enticing/forcing users to take the eyes off the road. The mere existence of the phone is enticing a driver to use it.
CarPlay "mode" would just be a slightly different GUI for what you can already do with the phone whether legally (by the passenger, or while stationary) or illegally (while driving). Every app in the phone is also accessible from the home screen.
At most Apple would have to issue a warning every time to use it correctly, like many cars already do.
Given that other large companies offer equivalent functionality, I really doubt that fear of lawsuits has determined when CarPlay is available.
https://9to5mac.com/2022/11/08/ios-16-2-custom-accessibility...
0: https://support.apple.com/en-hk/guide/assistive-access-iphon...
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCB-qzXoJpQ&t=252s
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sku/6283607.p?skuId=6283607
Labor and parts for installation could easily bring the total cost of adding a CarPlay/Android Auto compatible head unit to $1,000. At least it did for me, and that was 3 years ago.
Android let you enable Android auto on phone, but iirc the feature went away.
People have phobias about all sorts of things eg flying. Flying on a commercial airplane is demonstrably safer than driving. So why isn't there a more prevalent fear of driving? Some will point to the illusion of control. I can buy that to some degree.
Phone use by driving should make people more fearful of driving. Even if you personally don't use your phone while driving, other people do. And that increases your own risk. Yet that doesn't seem to be the case.
What makes this worse is that everything from marketing to public relations to politics is built around stoking irrational fears that aren't based in fact. A classic example is child abduction even though in reality in the United States ~8 children are actually abducted every year. Figures like "800,000 per year" are heavily inflated with custody disputes.
Can you give me some stats on this? I was under the impression that it's maybe a little bit safer in terms of distance traveled.
But the people who think their driving is 50% safer than the average person's don't care about this. And this is probably near 100% of people who drive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...
I have seen cases where they went back and look at phone use history after accidents.... not sure how often they do it though.
> The police can access cellphone records but the process is cumbersome and privacy laws require a subpoena.
I wish it was just a default step in figuring out fault nowadays. An not handing over that data should put that driver at a disadvantage.
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