Talking While Driving? Not any more...
 

WASHINGTON ? Hand-held cell phone use while driving will be illegal in the nation's capital starting on July 1 and a ban is soon to be signed into law in New Jersey.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,108409,00.html

If you've read my posts regarding the war against terrorism, you'd probably assume that I am a hardcore right wing republican. This is not true at all. If I have any political affiliation at all, it is with the libretarian party.

This law is absolutely ridiculous. This goes to show how much the government trusts the people, and how much personal responsibility the government will give the people. While I agree that cell phones are a terrible distraction to drivers, this should not be enforced by law. What about eating? Putting your make up on? Checking the floor for a CD? Scolding your children behind you? Looking for the button to roll your window down? All of these things distract from driving, should they be banned via legislation as well?

Absolutely ridiculous.

Years ago in my Spanish class we had a guest speaker from some South American country, can't remember which. The speaker couldn't believe we had people driving around talking on phones, they were banned in her country.

doesnt say you cant use a headset, whats the problem

Adolf and Saddam both had laws against speaking against their government. A Nazi Party member coming to the US in the 40's would most likely be in shock regarding freedom of speech as well, eh?

Bad comparison...but just because other countries have restrictive governments doesn't condone the US government taking complete control.

damnit, now i wont be able to look important so i can pick up girls

Glad to see this stimulated such a great discussion.

They made that shit illegal here in Aus like 5 years ago ah

been illegal in NY state for awhile and i agree with it...buy a $20 headset, or get a kit installed in your car and deal with it. i can not count the number of times some soccer mom in so big ass SUV just about killed me while trying to hold the phone and chat while driving down the road...

I absolutely agree with it and have been drilled a number of times just because of cell phone use, but where do you draw the line on where the government forces what you do, and where the person is able to exercise personal responsibility for their actions?

I dropped my cell phone for a year at one time after getting 3 tickets for being on one while driving as well noticing that I almost clipped a few people when I had it stuck to my head.

Also, nothing ever really got done since I wasnt able to check my laptop / palm pilot since I had to hold the wheel with the hand that wasnt holding the phone. Also, my bill was outrageous for calls that were just nonsense mostly.

A year later now, I almost never use my cell in the truck as I am on the road. I enjoy driving and being able to get away from all the biz of the world that is on my plate.

You'd be suprised how much you really dont need a cell phone to be on constantly and chatting away. I tell all my peeps the same, hit me on ICQ / Email me and I'll hit you when I am back.

Ban the fucking things and lets all get back to enjoying driving.

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It's legal in Texas. In fact I'm driving right now while I type a reply to a GFY and I'm talking on my phone right now too. Is that bad?
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No doubt you consider speed limits to be an infringement of your rights also?

People said the same thing about forced seat belt use and forced helmet use for motorcyclists. Fact is, hand-held cellphones are contributing to more accidents and higher deathrates. If there is not law, people will just continue being stupid, they will continue being too lazy or cheap to buy a wireless setup or headset, and they will continue to sail down the street behind the wheel of 3000 lbs of steel with a phone stuck to the side of their fucking stupid distracted heads until they run over another kid, then another, and another.


These types of government enforcemtent laws always suck, but because there are so many idiots everywhere they have to be brought in and enforced, for the good of the many. That's the way it is.

You agree that it's a terrible distraction. You agree that it puts lives at risk. Not just the life of the driver, but any poor sap that happens to be near him when he crashes. And... you don't think it should be enforced by law? As far as i'm concerned, anything that requies someone to take a hand off the steering wheel for more than a few seconds should be illegal. This includes eating, drinking, etc.

Wait till someone you know gets killed because some yuppy fuck couldn't wait 5 minutes to make a phone call.

Hands free sets are readily available. There's no excuse for using a mobile phone in a car without one.

The stupidity of some people is <i>almost</i> unbelievable. They did a report on people using mobile phones while driving on one of the current affair type shows down here in Australia. They set up a camera at the intersection of two high traffic roads, and they filed drivers passing by. There were literally hundreds of people yapping away. This is as bad as drunk driving. This one dumb bitch even saw the camera, and took the only hand she had on the steering wheel off to wave. I couldn't believe my eyes.

became illegal in the Uk recently too

Good question. That's something I'd have to give some thought to. If you have the people "personal responsibility" you'd have idiots doing 110 MPH in traffic. I think that falls more under the lines of law enforcement for a dangerous act rather than infringements of personal rights.

Don't misunderstand me in this matter. I never talk in the car as the drive on a cell phone unless it's an absolute emergency (in which I case I pay a lot more attention to my driving). I get as pissed as anybody when morons drift side to side, pull out, speed up / slow down because they're on a phone yapping away like they're an all-important god.

As far as seat belts are concerned...those who do not wear seatbelts are participating in passive eugenics. I say more power to people if they don't want to wear a seat belt or motorcycle helmet. If you're not wearing those items, then you're an absolute idiot. Saying "they didn't wear a seatbelt they deserve to die" is obviously taking it a bit far...but I believe seat belts are more of a personal choice (shouldn't be much of one if you have any education at all) rather than something that should be enforced (FYI, I'm pretty sure the government forces seatbelt usage to protect insurance companies and state prosecution fees rather than human lives).

Once again people start confusing privileges with freedoms.

Driving is not a freedom we are endowed with, it is a privilege and being that it is a privilege it is regulated by our governments.

Focus on real free speech issues, the ones that will truly affect your way of life and don't get caught up in this kind of garbage...the government just loves that...it's almost as good as the ol' bait and switch.

I'm not an activist on this matter or anything. I took two minutes to post a thread on a porn webmaster forum.

I'm undecided on whether or not I believe driving is a right or a privelage. I pay for the car. I pay to insure the car. I pay for the roads to drive on. Why is it a privelage? I believe it's a right, just with extended responsibility beyond most other rights.

Feel free to give me your input on this. I'm undecided and haven't given it a whole lot of thought.

These are the same people that don't tell their children to wear seat belts. A five year old shouldn't have to die because of their parent's idiocy and a law not being enforced.

the cop who issues me a ticket for this (I have no intentions of obeying this law) will certainly get a lecture from me about the value of frivilous laws and the degradation of his authority by upholding them. (they hate that)

We give people the right to bear children, and we give them the same right to fuck the children up (sad but true).

Partly, yes. But the other reasons for seatbelt and helmet laws are quite significant as well. Like for example, the drain on society when thousands of people every month with head injuries and other preventable injuries taking up beds in hospitals, and also causing insurance rates for everyone to rise.

These, and the coming cellphone laws, are for protection and prevention as much as to benefit insurance companies. And hell, insurance companies love accidents and having to pay out settlements. People say "Thank GOD I had insurance!" causing others to buy more insurance, and of course they simply raise their premiums to recoup the loss. No, public outcry is most of the reason why such laws come into effect. Society becomes tired and outraged when it sees death and dammage on the rise due to something that is PREVENTABLE.

Choda, you've reached the wrong conclusion from what you saw.
If they taped 100s of people yapping away yet didn't film any accidents at this "intersection of two high traffic roads" the conclusion you should have reached is that the practice is safe.

for the amount of people using cell phones while driving, the increase in traffic accidents is non-existent. So is the need for these idiot laws.

rights you are born with, responsibility you earn...that's the difference...and that is why driving is not a right but a privilege regardless of what you pay.

Privileges are granted and taken away especially in cases where you act irresponsibly. example the cell phone usage while driving.

got any DOT statistics to back up this statement?

It needs to happen down here in Florida for sure... People can?t drive for shit as it is. People using cells while driving just makes it a war zone. You gamble with you life every time you go out on the road.

They need a ban on using your mobile when drunk too, causes more damage

Back up what that the government can and will take away certain privileges?

I did not argue that cell phones did increase traffic accidents, I did state it was an irresponsible act and you won't have statistics to prove that.

And as far as that goes how many people do you think who caused accidents will admit that they did so because they were using a cell phone?

i live by rebecca gayheart. she is an actress who killed a child and didn't notice - because, she said, she was on the phone.

every scary near miss i've had on the road in the last month was with someone who was on the phone.

while i agree that it is possible to talk on the phone while driving, and still drive safely, most people automatically put their phone conversation ahead of their driving in priority.

i read in several places that people who didn't wear seatbelts and helmets and got in accidents were costing each state millions of dollars in medical care that wasn't covered every year.

what you state and then can't prove makes you look silly, but you go on with your groundless statements.:1orglaugh

I can't prove kids throwing the ball in the house is an irresponsible act with statistics either but as an adult I think it's pretty easy for me to decide it is.

As far as statistics are concerned read this:
http://www.nsc.org/issues/idrive/cellfone.htm

It discusses how flawed your statistics are because of simple things like I stated...a person causing a wreck is not going to admit they were at fault because of their cell phone usage...let alone just admitting fault period.

Follow through on some of the links for even more information:

http://www.nsc.org/issues/idrive/inincell.htm


3 paragraphs I find rather interesting:

The principal findings for this experiment are that: (a) SPs that engaged in cell phone conversations missed twice as many simulated traffic signals as when they were not talking on the cell phone, (b) SPs took longer to react to those signals that they did detect, and (c) these deficits were equivalent for both hand-held and hands-free cell phone users.

In sum, we found that conversing on either a hand-held or hands-free cell phone led to significant decrements in simulated driving performance. We suggest that the cellular phone use disrupts performance by diverting attention to an engaging cognitive context other than the one immediately associated with driving.

Our data suggest that legislative initiatives that restrict hand-held devices but permit hands-free devices are not likely to reduce interference from the phone conversation, because the interference is, in this case, due to central attentional processes.


So basically they conclude that any cell phone usage hand held or hands-free creates issues.

Here's a BBC article on this --- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1885775.stm


Here's another article --- http://www.iii.org/media/hottopics/i...ce/cellphones/

• Ninety-one percent of Americans believe driving while talking on a cell phone distracts drivers and increases the likelihood of an accident, according to a 2000 survey conducted by the Insurance Research Council.
• Talking on a cell phone while driving quadruples the chances of getting into a motor vehicle accident, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. This risk is similar to the hazard associated with drunk driving.
• Vehicle crashes account for 24 percent of workplace deaths, the highest single cause of on-the-job fatalities.
• According to the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, 6 percent of the auto accidents in the U.S. each year could be attributed to cell phone use, which works out to 2,600 fatalities and 330,000 injuries.

Obviously some people DO have the ability to drive safely while talking, but that isn't the issue. Some people also have an innate ability to drive well even while intoxicated. The problem is that out of say 1000 cellphone-using-drivers, MOST of them CAN'T drive properly, and obviously many of them are causing dammage and injuries. YOU might be mr A-one driver, but the idiot next to you isn't, so maybe rather than blaming the government for enacting such laws we might think about blaming the idiots who are causing these laws to be considered.

Regardless I am not here to debate cell phones...I just used that as an example because of the thread...what I did debate was that DRIVING IS NOT A RIGHT BUT A PRIVILEGE...so if you wish to waste your time on the other topic be my guest ;)

Some people really shouldn't be driving and talking on a phone, they can't drive worth a shit then you give' em a phone. I said some people not all, it's the some people that are the cause of these laws being passed.

sounds good for car safety procedure.
headset would be fine.

There are many things you can't do.

son, *my* statistics are not flawed and the url you listed is worthless opinion (similar to your own)

Now here:
http://www.bts.gov/publications/nati...ble_02_03.html

you have statistics on accidents for 1990 thru 2001 during this time, cellphone usage went thru the roof yet accidents went down. Now please run along with your unfounded statments and your silly ball throwing arguments.


(I can't wait for him to change his argument to "look how much safer we'd be if we didn't use cellphones" again with no facts, just the *feelings* of a liberal):1orglaugh

I really hope they ban cell phone use in cars everywhere I drive. I'm sick of these idiots driving with a phone stuck to their ear. Had this fuck last night talking on the phone will driving a stick. Couldn't find the gears (phone in one hand, steering wheel in other hand - where's the hand for shifting gears? um.....) so this asshole can barely get up to 20 before I'm seeing red.

OTOH, stupid people really don't need the cell phone excuse to do really stupid things. We almost got nailed yesterday but this fucking tool that either didn't look and see us or didn't care as he entered traffic from a gas station. My wife laid into the horn and managed to wake the fuck up.

So maybe they should just ban stoopid people from driving? That'd work for me. The roads would be just about empty.
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