NTSB recommends full ban on use of cell phones while driving
Washington (CNN) -- A federal safety board called Tuesday for a nationwide ban on the use of cell phones and text messaging devices while driving.
The recommendation is the most far-reaching yet by the National Transportation Safety Board, which in the past 10 years has increasingly sought to limit the use of portable electronic devices -- recommending bans for novice drivers, school bus drivers and commercial truckers. Tuesday's recommendation, if adopted by states, would outlaw non-emergency phone calls and texting by operators of every vehicle on the road.
Yes. Texting while driving takes your eyes off the road and at least one hand off the wheel. It's incredibly dangerous in many driving situations and should be used very sparingly, if at all, while behind the wheel. But to outlaw talking on even a hands-free phone? What's next? Are we going to be forbidden from carrying passengers? Having radios in our cars?
Where does it end?
Life is a distraction. Unless you're in a single-occupant vehicle with a continuous spray of caffeine and Ritalin, you're going to have to deal with conversations, distractions, and other things that take your attention from the task at hand. We've had radios in automobiles for the majority of the time that there have been automobiles. We've had passengers even longer. It's not the cell phone that's the problem - it's the nut behind the wheel. Someone that would text 11 times in 11 minutes - the 19 year old who caused the crash that brought this to the NTSB's attention was rumored to have been so involved - isn't going to care if they get a ticket for texting.
And, of course, one wonders if they're going to apply the same standards as OUI - are you going to be in for a ticket if you're surfing the web on your smartphone in a parking lot in a running vehicle? Let's face facts - this has nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with revenue generation and government intrusion. Local police will salivate at the opportunity to pull over and ticket every car with a driver on the phone. Local government will love the influx of cash. And the .gov gets to stick the camel's nose even further into the tent.
Once more, with feeling: Life. Is. Not. Safe. Someone that would take their eyes off the road to send a text message isn't magically going to become a safe and attentive driver just because there's a law preventing cell phone use behind the wheel. Someone so easily distracted by a ringing phone - even a hands-free phone - will be just as distracted by tuning the radio or talking to a passenger. Try as we may, we cannot legislate folks into behaving better - although we sure as hell have tried in the last hundred years or so.
Is life. Is not safe.
That is all.
10 comments:
First we need to ban all two way radios in cop cars and fire trucks and ambulances as well as computer terminals in same unless there is a second person in the vehicle to handle communications. Perfect example of a doofus dropping his pen trying to write while driving that ended up driving his police car up a telephone pole. It is safe for them to do so but it is unsafe for us mere peons to talk on a phone? BS!
I've done a decent amount of late night driving where carrying on a phone conversation has *increased* safety by keeping me awake.
Another federal agency that the next President can eliminate without danger to the public.
As much as I know every politician is trying to screw me like its Prom night, I suspect this will go nowhere. It's flat political suicide for anybody who actually has to be elected.
Why? Because while texting bans pretty much only affect the politically apathetic (my generation and younger), this affects your generation. My Dad's generation. And that most sacred and fickle voting block, the Boomers.
Any intelligent Republican presidential candidate (yeah, I LOL'd when I typed that too) should go out of his/her way to round up a list of these EPA/NTSB/ATF/ETC nannystate trial balloons Obama's administration floats out on a daily basis and pound it into the voters' heads that THIS is just a preview of what we can expect if the Lightworker is re-elected.
Won't happen. It'd be insensitive or something.
Don't forget racist...
True Story Time. You ever been driving down the Highway, get a 100 yards from the Off Ramp, and some Crap-for Brains just realizes that he needs to get off at that Exit, so they come tearing across from the Fast Lane and nearly puts you into the Guard Rail? Bad Driving Habits, right?
Well, Ohio DOT is rebuilding Route 2 through my town, and as part of the job, they are putting in Jersey Walls to funnel those who wish to exit onto the ramp. And when that Crap-for-Brains does his High Speed Dash across Traffic, he'll end up Smashing into the Barrier at 60.
Nanny State Mentality? Probably. But I must admit, the rise in Darwin Awards when this is finished does make me feel Warm and Fuzzy.
But those tools will eventually figure it out, and do their High Speed Dash sooner.
BTW, does this new Reg apply to the Gooberment Motors Onstar System?
(The previous News Story was provided by the BLNN, your First Stop in What SHOULD be Reported.) ; )
They need to look at how effective our state handles the "no texting" law. In 2 years, 32 tickets issued (when I last counted). It is, essentially, unenforceable, until after the fact. Yet another reason we need to not allow the government to pass these blanket laws...that serve absolutely no purpose.
IIRC, talking with a passenger is not neurologically the same as talking to a disembodied voice as the two fire up different parts of your gray matter. The former is slightly dangerous, the latter even more so.
Coming from a background in human factors, cognitive psych is the Big Thing these days. Division of mental resources is one of the big factors in accidents caused exclusively by, say, pilot error (Controlled Flight Into Terrain, etc)- the NTSB's decision isn't too surprising.
A lot of their suggestions are a bit optimistic. That's why they're just 'recommendations', not regulations- DOT will likely have to do any actual banning.
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