Texting While Driving - One Of The Most Dangerous Everyday Things That People Do

[DonRocks]

Last year, I made a promise to Matt that I would never text and drive again (I tweeted my thoughts here). The thought of him getting his license, and texting behind the wheel, scared me straight. And I will not betray my promise to him by doing it when he isn't around.

But there are others who need to be scared straight more than I do:

"Texting Driver Who Slammed Cyclist: 'I, Like, Just Don't Care'" by Andy Campbell on huffingtonpost.com

While the article is fine, it's Logan Tittle's report (see the video on the link) that merits all accolades that can be heaped upon it.

[The Hersch]

It has always puzzled me that there needs to be a campaign against texting while driving.

[DonRocks]

It has always puzzled me that there needs to be a campaign against texting while driving.

Why, because it's so obvious? If "yes," I think that enormous numbers of people do it, and that penalties need to be severe and relentless for those who are caught. And I also think MADD needs to be on the front lines (and if they aren't, then shame on them; if they are, perhaps they should change their name to Mothers Against Dangerous Driving). Whenever I'm behind a car weaving and swerving, I inevitably pull up alongside and see a driver texting - it is *so* dangerous, and *so* prevalent.

[The Hersch]

Why, because it's so obvious?

Yes, because it's so obvious. If I didn't know that people actually do it, I would not imagine that they might. Do people need to be told not to stick their hands in a running garbage disposal?  Or not to straighten their pubic hair with a hot iron? Or not to make a u-turn on the Beltway? (Someone who was almost certainly telling the truth once told me he had seen someone make a u-turn in Westmoreland Circle, but I hope very, very few people would do that.)

[SeanMike]

Just the other day I passed an Arlington County car where the driver was very much under the speed limit and erratic. When I passed him he had his head down, reading a stack of printouts. (And yes, I contacted ARL Co. with the car number, time, and place, and they're looking into it.)

People do stupid shit while driving. Is it because they're thoughtless, selfish, stupid, overconfident, or what? It doesn't matter. Look at the signs they put up on route 50 that basically said "don't hit the car in front of you" and they reduced the accident rate!

I used to do a lot of stupid shit while driving. I used to brag about playing Brickbreaker while driving down the toll road. I used to drive drunk occasionally. I used to text and drive. Fortunately for me, I never hurt anyone or myself while doing those things, and I don't do them anymore. I am still not perfect and I know that and I work to try to fix my driving problems. But too many people never think about what they're doing, or think that they can get away with it, and that's why you need such an obvious campaign.

[lperry]

I keep telling Mr. lperry that there should be some sort of electric shock generated if a person happens to be touching a steering wheel and mobile device simultaneously.  I started out with phones that stopped working in a car while the motor is running, but it was pointed out to me that passengers should be able to call, so I went with shock therapy.  I suppose there is no middle ground. 

[The Hersch]

I used to drive drunk occasionally. I used to text and drive. Fortunately for me, I never hurt anyone or myself while doing those things, and I don't do them anymore. I am still not perfect and I know that and I work to try to fix my driving problems. But too many people never think about what they're doing, or think that they can get away with it, and that's why you need such an obvious campaign.

I too used to drive drunk occasionally, long ago when I was young and preternaturally foolish, and it's one of the few plausible arguments for the existence of a benevolent providence that neither I nor anyone else was ever actually harmed as a result. When you're drunk, of course, your judgment is by definition impaired, and it's understandable that you might consequently text while driving drunk, although even more frightening than merely texting while driving or merely driving while drunk. So I can imagine texting while driving drunk, although it would be a challenging task for most drunk drivers, but it's very hard for me to imagine texting while driving sober.

[porcupine]

People do stupid shit while driving. Is it because they're thoughtless, selfish, stupid, overconfident, or what?

I know you're being rhetorical, but the answer is because they don't take driving seriously.  People who haven't had advanced driver training really don't understand what skills are needed and what the real problems are.  Most people think "it's easy! press the skinny pedal to go, press the fat pedal to stop, turn the big round thing in front me me to turn the car."  Yeah, a monkey could be trained to do that...

Talking on the phone while driving is not as distracting as texting, but it's almost as bad.  And get this: it has nothing to do with hands.  It's the cognitive distraction that's the problem.  Recent studies have shown this, though it's been obvious forever to anyone who cares about such things.

The single most important thing you can do to be a safer driver is PAY ATTENTION.

[deangold]

Hey, time is important.... SHHHIIIITTTTTT WATCH WHERE YOU AE GOING!!! Time is money and I'm... where the F is the send button?????? I meanm what's the big d

[SeanMike]

I know you're being rhetorical, but the answer is because they don't take driving seriously.  People who haven't had advanced driver training really don't understand what skills are needed and what the real problems are.

Actually I wasn't really being rhetorical...but yeah. When I took the Motorcycle Safety Foundation class they emphasized SIPDE (scan, identify, predict, decide, execute) and knowing that on a motorcycle, you're just dead if someone does something wrong...I pay a lot more attention now when I drive.

[DonRocks]

I too used to drive drunk occasionally, long ago when I was young and preternaturally foolish

Let's not kid ourselves or be ashamed of past norms: we ALL did.

Until 1968, seat belts were not even required equipment.

Hell, in 1966, our family of 5 drove cross-country, and I, as a 4-year-old, would *nap on the back dash*. When I was an infant, I would nap in my mom's lap in the front-passenger's seat. That's just the way it was.

Don't forget: the roads were virtually empty back in the 1960s, and the Interstate Highway System had only recently been completed (under President Eisenhower) - you could drive for hours on almost brand-new, smooth pavement, and barely even see any cars.

As an aside, the last time I've been in Las Vegas was 1970, when you could walk the entire strip - easily, even in 125-degree temperatures - and play penny slot machines in gift shops.

Texting is more dangerous than any of this - it just *is*.

[Waitman]

Let's not kid ourselves or be ashamed of past norms: we ALL did.

Hell, in 1966, our family of 5 drove cross-country, and I, as a 4-year-old, would *nap on the back dash*. When I was an infant, I would nap in my mom's lap in the front-passenger's seat. That's just the way it was.

Don't forget: the roads were virtually empty back in the 1960s, and the Interstate Highway System had only recently been completed (under President Eisenhower) - you could drive for hours on almost brand-new, smooth pavement, and barely even see any cars.

I remember driving with my two brothers in the "pit" of the family station wagon -- no belts or seats.  And, of course, who didn't ride in the back of a pickup every now and and again.  But, despite your gauzy memories of empty interstates, driving was dramatically more dangerous back then, and we all probably should have been seized by child protective services.

Grim relevant news item of the day.

[DonRocks]

I remember driving with my two brothers in the "pit" of the family station wagon -- no belts or seats.  And, of course, who didn't ride in the back of a pickup every now and and again.  But, despite your gauzy memories of empty interstates, driving was dramatically more dangerous back then, and we all probably should have been seized by child protective services.

Grim relevant news item of the day.

My memories are indeed gauzy, but the reduction in driving fatalities is probably multifactorial; the introduction of text messaging as a variable can't be enough to negate the effects of seat belts, drunk-driving awareness, safety equipment (air bags, etc.), better construction, radar enforcement, speed humps, nanny devices, etc.

Without having read the article, I wonder if there are more fender benders today than there used to be due to distracted driving - perhaps not, due to things such as anti-lock brakes (did it take anyone besides me a long time to get used to the idea of "mashing down the brakes" as the safest way to stop? That took me years to get used to, and even now it gives me the willies. As an aside, it is *amazing* how many cycles-per-second my brain is capable of when cars in front of me are crashing - it's almost as if time slows down.)

A lot of people probably remember the *extremely* graphic and disturbing fictional PSA that was produced a few years ago in the UK and went viral (I hadn't thought about it in years; thanks a lot for bringing up the sickening memory). But the most famous "pioneer" in this genre is probably the 1961 film, "Mechanized Death," produced by the Ohio State Highway Patrol - I won't link to it here, but you can Google it easily enough. For those who don't have any need to see it, it's basically what you would think: a compilation of graphic, full-color, actual accident scenes designed to scare and nauseate the crap out of teenagers taking Drivers' Education (*). There are several others made around the same time period (e.g., Signal 30 (1959) - this is a link to a modern-day promotional poster, not the actual video (which interestingly quotes that the film is a "Lynchian view of the nightmarish underbelly of middle America." The poster itself is great and worth seeing.))

(*) Does anyone remember "Reflection of Death" in "Tales From The Crypt" (1972)? It's the one where the driver was being followed by a motorcycle whose driver turned out to be, you know, "Him." Well, it, and all of the other Vincent Price-styled B-horror films from the era, scared me. I doubt if Milton Subotsky (or "Uncle 'Cod' (**) Miltie" as he was fondly called by his legions of corpses) was thinking about text messaging when he wrote the screenplay, but you never know.

(**) Had to tie it into food somehow

[Pat]

When I was really little--no more than 3 or 4--I fell out of a moving car. It was no later than 1965, probably earlier. It was one of those cars that you pushed the handle one way to lock and the other to open the door.  I was leaning on it (the car didn't have seatbelts) and the door flew open.  Fortunately, the car was going maybe only 30-35 mph, and, as my mother always noted when retelling the story, I was wearing a snowsuit.  I think I pretty much bounced like a marshmallow.  I remember it happening, though.  It was right outside a cemetery.  We were probably headed to my grandparents' house, based on where it was.

Many years later, I discovered that my best friend had had the same thing happen, except it was Southern California (no snowsuit, and she's 9 years older than I am).

I learned to drive on a 1960 Valiant and then on a 1965 Ford Fairlane.  The amount of raw metal people in the front seat faced still astonishes me.

[Barbara]

When we would be traveling on the Autobahn--which had no speed limits--in West Germany (note the name) in the 1960s and be passed by some nut job doing over 100 miles an hour, I would say out loud (sitting in the back seat with no seat belt), "See you in the accident up ahead."

It actually came true often enough to scare me. I'm talking wrecks so bad that nobody could have made it out alive. Since I was way too young to have a driver's license, that sort of mayhem put the fear of Dog in me.

[ktmoomau]

I think there are a couple different problems with texting.  There are the drivers who think oh I am sitting here barely moving, I can multi-task.  Before it was eating, drinking, make-up, coffee, but now we have become addicted to texts.  And when people send me texts it's like they expect an answer right away, which they often don't get. But I think most people who text someone and don't get a response send another text, which makes people think well maybe this is important.  I admit texting is convenient, but if it is so urgent it can't wait, should it really be in a text, and really is it that urgent?  Then it goes too- well I did that while barely moving, I can probably do it now. People don't think driving is hard.  People get cockey or bored and make stupid decisions then it becomes a habit.  The same way with drunk driving- well I survived doing it that time, becomes a habit.  The fact that people have taken other peoples lives over a text is so sad.  I do take phone calls now and then while in the car, but these days I try to avoid that too, as much as I can.  With the way other people drive, I need to be on my A game.   The thing I really don't understand, not that I understand any of it, but it's the people on short trips, or on roads you really need to pay a lot of attention especially ones with cyclists, pedestrians and lots of distractions.   

[DonRocks]

When we would be traveling on the Autobahn--which had no speed limits--in West Germany (note the name) in the 1960s and be passed by some nut job doing over 100 miles an hour, I would say out loud (sitting in the back seat with no seat belt), "See you in the accident up ahead."

It actually came true often enough to scare me. I'm talking wrecks so bad that nobody could have made it out alive. Since I was way too young to have a driver's license, that sort of mayhem put the fear of Dog in me.

FWIW, I've driven a Mercedes 550 SEL at 120, and it felt like I was going 40, and it also felt *completely* safe. Now I know there's no way for you to believe that, but anyone who's done it on the Autobahn will know what I'm talking about - large German sedans are remarkably safe, stable, and quiet at very high speeds. I think things have changed in Germany in recent years, but in remote parts of that country, you could theoretically be driving in the left lane of the Autobahn at 100 mph (or 160 kph, take your pick), and in your rear-view mirror, you'd see flashing lights from a car about a mile back who was driving 180 mph and asking you to get over so he could pass (and yes, you feel like one of "those people" on the escalator standing on the left side).

Furthermore, if it wasn't for the Autobahn, today's hipsters might not know about Kraftwerk.

[porcupine]

There's no arguing with physics.  The closer you are to the limits [physical limits of the car, not speed limits], the easier it is for something to go wrong, and the likelier the consequences to be dire.  The Mercedes' limits may be higher than a Buick's, but at a buck twenty it's going to be ugly either way.

However, there's a world of difference between exceeding the speed limit by ten mph on a limited-access, multi-lane, lightly travelled highway and doing the same on a neighborhood street.

I used to travel north on I-270 very early in the morning during the week.  There were very few cars around, and the county police and state troopers wouldn't go after anyone doing less than 75 mph (in the 55 mph zone).  On the other hand, there's a street in my neighborhood that is narrow, crumbling on the edges, with cars often (poorly) parked on both sides, lots of children, lots of dogs.  The speed limit is 25.  I rarely exceed 20 - never if there's a child in sight.  The road conditions are just not safe over 20 mph.

The point is, it's better to use your good judgement then blindly obey a sign.

I remember when as a teenager a friend was chiding me for always driving too fast.  He was behind the wheel. We were on P St in Georgetown.  As he lectured me he ran a stop sign.  Never even saw it.  Never saw the cars waiting at the intersection, or the pedestrians.  Too busy flapping his jaw about my unsafe driving....  He was right, I did drive too fast in those days, but by God at least I was always paying attention.

Morbidly amusing that we're discussing this around the 20th anniversary of Ayrton Senna's death.

[DonRocks]

There's no arguing with physics.  The closer you are to the limits [physical limits of the car, not speed limits], the easier it is for something to go wrong, and the likelier the consequences to be dire.  The Mercedes' limits may be higher than a Buick's, but at a buck twenty it's going to be ugly either way.

Try doing "a buck twenty" on the *Beltway* in a 69 Road Runner ... as a *passenger*. The white lines almost appear solid.

I did not pay for my friend's interior to be professionally detailed, as was needed.