Texting and Driving

[Astonished]

I have pointed out numerous times that if a drunk driver makes it home safely they're no morally superior to a drunk driver with less fortunate circumstances. Whether or not someone has to have hit someone to be caught on a cell phone while driving, it's such a horrendously negligent, inhumanly uncaring thing to do that it's insulting for anything less than a prohibitively high fine to be imposed for doing it.

[Zen Badger]

A few years back I was following a semi trailer where i knew the driver was texting because of the way he kept drifting to the left and then correcting.
When we got to the next intersection he plowed straight into the five cars that were waiting at the lights.
Didn't even hit his brakes, that no one in any of the cars was killed or seriously injured still amazes me to this day.
Since then I've attended four bus v car accidents where the car drivers were texting or otherwise engaged on their phones and didn't even see the bus they were running into.

[mlmooney89]

I text and drive but before y'all lynch me I have stipulations. 

No intention of lynching you, but I do have a few questions.
1. Do you believe that people who text while driving (not you in particular but people in general as a group) place themselves and those around them at a significantly increased risk of accidents and death?

2. I understand that you have stipulations and restrictions in place to limit your distractions. Do you believe those stipulations result in 0% distraction while the vehicle is in motion?

3. Do you believe your stipulations are 100% foolproof? IOW do you never deviate from them in least?

4. You are driving and texting and following your self imposed stipulations to the letter and somehow an accident occurs and someone dies. Do you at that point feel the text you were sending was worth it?

1) I never said it was fool proof or safe. I just said I had stipulations. Although I'm wondering if y'all are still thinking I'm sitting there LOOKING at my phone. Literally the only difference between me texting and me driving normally is where my hand is. Again I am used to a standard so I don't use my right hand to drive an automatic- ever. I don't look at my phone unless I am fully stopped. I still watch my mirrors and my lane. I can text without looking thanks to Swype. My hand sits on my lap, it texts by muscle memory just like how I type on a keyboard without looking. Tell me what is the difference between that and letting my hand just sit there? The amount of attention going into it is the same as if I were having a conversation with someone in the car with me.

2) Nope, but then again people eat while driving and that is more distracting than my texting.

3) I feel like this is a duplicate question just rephrased.

4) I'm not worried about killing someone since I always keep my hand on the wheel and my eyes on the road. If an accident happens it won't be my fault for lack of attention simply because I was holding something in my right hand.

[brewer]

Has anybody seen that length of rope I had laying around? hehehehehe

[Jackalope]

But what does also concern me is how more and more vehicles have computer dashboard screens and I don't see how that cant be just as much a distraction. I think we are also going to see a rise in accidents because of those too.

I don't know what's going to happen in that regard, but I have two vehicles with in-dash navigation and/or audio systems.

The older one (installed ca 2009), while it does lock out certain functionality (such as viewing video) while not parked, the user interface doesn't put many other limits on what you can can do while moving. Pretty unsafe, if you don't exercise some restraint. However, that unit is entertainment only, none of the car's functions or navigation worth through it.

The newer one (2016 model year car), has two modes of operation, I use the Android Auto integration, which provides navigation via Google Maps, and audio streaming from any of a number of streaming providers (I use Google Play, my gf uses Spotify and Stitcher). There's almost no interaction with the screen at all, almost everything can be done with voice or wheel-mounted controls. During navigation, your map track is displayed and updated, and during audio playback, some information on the track is shown. Neither of those things is going to be particularly distracting, IMO, at least I haven't found them to be. For what it's worth, I find it to be far less distracting than a dash-mounted phone used for the same tasks, even with the same features (hands-free, voice activation, voice response, navigation, streaming). The factory implementation is less ad hoc and much less intrusive, at least how I use it.

ETA The latter system also adds a number of UI safety features - for example, it will let you scroll your current playlist, but when you're moving, the amount of scrolling you can do is so limited that the feature is largely useless while moving.

[johan]

1)  ....Tell me what is the difference between that and letting my hand just sit there? The amount of attention going into it is the same as if I were having a conversation with someone in the car with me.

I would disagree and here's why. Like most people, I learned to speak in sentences by the time I was 3 or 4 without any formal schooling or coaching. People around me spoke and I figured out how to speak back all on my own at a very young age. I don't think I'm at all unique in this respect.

Writing sentences? That came later and took years of formal schooling. Again I'm sure I'm not unique here. So while I would agree that being able to write in coherent sentences a very basic adult skill that lots of people are able to do with minimal distraction, I do not for a second buy into the theory that it takes absolutely no more mental bandwidth than talking. The facts regarding the age and effort required to learn to do each definitely suggest otherwise. 
I totally get that to you, it 'feels' like it takes absolutely no more mental bandwidth. But it definitely does. Probably not much more, but definitely more. 

[quote pid='1575006' dateline='1498487614']
2) Nope, but then again people eat while driving and that is more distracting than my texting.

[/quote]

Again, you would have a point if all children were bottle fed until someone with a degree in education taught them to feed themselves in the third for forth grade. But I'm pretty sure that's not how it goes down for most folks.

3) I feel like this is a duplicate question just rephrased.

Nope its very valid question. You wrote that you only text with your right hand and that you don't look at the text while texting. The question is do you adhere to that 100% of the time. Its a valid question. Because MANY people will claim something similar but what they actually mean is that they don't look while texting very much. Not looking very much is not the same as not looking ever. So its a very valid and very simple question. Have you ever looked at the words on the screen of your phone while texting while driving? Yes or no?

4) I'm not worried about killing someone since I always keep my hand on the wheel and my eyes on the road. 

Drunk drivers have their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road too. Unfortunately, there's more to it than that.

[Astonished]

1)  ....Tell me what is the difference between that and letting my hand just sit there? The amount of attention going into it is the same as if I were having a conversation with someone in the car with me.

I would disagree and here's why. Like most people, I learned to speak in sentences by the time I was 3 or 4 without any formal schooling or coaching. People around me spoke and I figured out how to speak back all on my own at a very young age. I don't think I'm at all unique in this respect.

Writing sentences? That came later and took years of formal schooling. Again I'm sure I'm not unique here. So while I would agree that being able to write in coherent sentences a very basic adult skill that lots of people are able to do with minimal distraction, I do not for a second buy into the theory that it takes absolutely no more mental bandwidth than talking. The facts regarding the age and effort required to learn to do each definitely suggest otherwise. 
I totally get that to you, it 'feels' like it takes absolutely no more mental bandwidth. But it definitely does. Probably not much more, but definitely more. 

[quote pid='1575006' dateline='1498487614']
2) Nope, but then again people eat while driving and that is more distracting than my texting.

Again, you would have a point if all children were bottle fed until someone with a degree in education taught them to feed themselves in the third for forth grade. But I'm pretty sure that's not how it goes down for most folks.

3) I feel like this is a duplicate question just rephrased.

Nope its very valid question. You wrote that you only text with your right hand and that you don't look at the text while texting. The question is do you adhere to that 100% of the time. Its a valid question. Because MANY people will claim something similar but what they actually mean is that they don't look while texting very much. Not looking very much is not the same as not looking ever. So its a very valid and very simple question. Have you ever looked at the words on the screen of your phone while texting while driving? Yes or no?

4) I'm not worried about killing someone since I always keep my hand on the wheel and my eyes on the road. 

Drunk drivers have their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road too. Unfortunately, there's more to it than that.
[/quote]

Funny thing...the guy who rammed me said he was only looking down at his phone 'for a second'. Yeah, that matters a whole lot to me while I'm lying there bleeding and wondering if I'm ever going to be able to walk again. One second of inattention for him, 8 hours in the hospital for me, and over 2 years of recovery. So going by that logic...even one goddamn second can make you totally fuck shit up. And again with the drunk driving analogy...just because you claim to be able to text and drive with no issues doesn't mean you're smarter or better, it means you're luckier.

[brewer]

Let's not gang pile m89 to much. You understand that she was the only one to reply with yes. My guess is that there a lot more here that would/could answer yes but decided not to face the backlash.

There are plenty of other things that people do (have done) that has the potential to endanger theirs and/or others well being. 

Thanks m89 for the honesty. I'd like you to stop but I'm not going to tell you to stop. Doubt telling would work anyway.

[johan]

Let's not gang pile m89 to much. You understand that she was the only one to reply with yes. 

True enough and a very good point. While I can't say yes I text while driving, I can say that I most definitely have texted while driving. I don't know that I ever did it regularly, I have definitely done it. I never had an accident or even a close call because of it. Like m89, I knew that it distracted me somewhat, but I never felt it distracted me that much. Kept my eyes on the road and all that. I felt pretty comfortable about doing it.


But then I started seeing accident stats. Lots of accidents are caused by it. It didn't take a genius to realize that most of those people who were getting into accidents while texting probably felt they weren't all that distracted exactly like I did. So if all those people thought they could handle it and obviously couldn't, what kind of arrogant prick would I have to be to go yeah, but I'm different, I'm better than those assholes. I'm a prick for lots of reasons, but I didn't like the idea of being an arrogant prick so I stopped.

Along the way I became the safety person at work and part of my job ramming it into the heads of our truck drivers that texting while driving for any reason was unacceptable and grounds for termination. I don't like being an arrogant prick and I don't like being a hypocritical one either which is also what motivated me to stop. If I get a text while I'm driving, I ignore it. If its urgent, they'll call. If they call, I can answer by pushing one button on the steering wheel. If that call or any other situation requires me to send someone a text, I pull over, no exceptions. I won't use voice to text because the technology isn't to the point where I trust it enough to send without proofreading. Faster for me just to pull over and type. 

Side note: After I drew my line in the sand and stopped we installed cameras in all our trucks. The cameras face out and in. If I hadn't already quit, I would have once I started watching the video we got from the trucks. I've got so many clips on my computer of guys not even texting but just looking at their phones. Either reading texts, or checking notifications or futzing with apps for a few seconds. The system puts video on one side of the screen that shows what their seeing on the road ahead and video on the other side of the screen showing them. Its amazing how many clips we get showing no significant situation ahead and instant the drivers focus is off the road, something changes and they don't see it and then 2 or 4 seconds later, what would have been a completely non-event is now a close call. Its surprising how much can change in 4 seconds.