"Yeah, sure, I'll get in an accident. Whatever."

August 17, 2009 10:40 PM

Why you shouldn't text while driving (NSFW, dramatic reenactment of a car accident)

_{via kottke}

posted by flatluigi (117 comments total)

People on the road can turn an LOL into a great big OMG.
posted by ShawnStruck at 10:46 PM on August 17 [2 favorites has favorites]

Some do it better than others.
posted by Burhanistan at 10:59 PM on August 17 [8 favorites has favorites]

Those keyboards are too fiddly - use a laptop!

I have seen people doing this.
posted by Artw at 11:01 PM on August 17

Oh, and mainlink is down.
posted by Artw at 11:02 PM on August 17

I have seen people doing this.

I see cops doing this all the time. Swerving bastards.
posted by Burhanistan at 11:03 PM on August 17

But anyway, most teenagers don't really respond favorably to fearmongering because they are laboring under the impression that they are indestructible and consequences are something that grandma thinks about. If this is meant to scare, why not really take it further and show montages of news video of crash aftermath and then actual dead, mangled bodies in the morgue. It's easy to laugh off dramatic reenactments, not so easy to laugh off real footage.
posted by Burhanistan at 11:08 PM on August 17

Actually, yes, last time I saw this it was a cop. The time before that some dude on the 520 bridge (between Seattle and Redmond. Presumably some Microsoft guy - those guys are awful for this sort of thing).
posted by Artw at 11:08 PM on August 17

I laughed. Then I put up against Yakety Sax, and I laughed even more.

I am a bad person.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 11:14 PM on August 17 [17 favorites has favorites]

I see a billboard on the way home saying "hang up and drive" with a bloodied hand and cell phone. Why don't we see "put the damned phone away and drive" instead?
posted by crataegus at 11:16 PM on August 17

Why you shouldn't text while driving (NSFW, dramatic reenactment of a car accident)
posted by flatluigi

Eponysterical.
posted by not_on_display at 11:16 PM on August 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

why not really take it further and show montages of news video of crash aftermath and then actual dead, mangled bodies in the morgue. --Burhanistan

You mean like the ones the Ohio police made 50 years ago?
posted by eye of newt at 11:18 PM on August 17

Here's a direct time stamped link to the "People on the road can turn an LOL into a great big OMG." segment.
posted by delmoi at 11:21 PM on August 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'm of two minds about this:

The cynical part of me wanted to see the helicopter get into a crash as it was airlifting the girl, thus continuing the chain.

The dad in me choked up when the child was asking why mummy and daddy wouldn't wake up.

End result: effective ad, even for a cynical basterd like me.
posted by mazola at 11:26 PM on August 17

Cell phones don't kill people. Cars kill people.
posted by loquacious at 11:34 PM on August 17 [2 favorites has favorites]

Something about the devastating nature of texting-while-driving accidents makes me want to throttle any person I see doing it. That, and I have kids.

What gets me is that the people I see texting the most are middle-aged adults who supposedly have enough life (and driving) experience to know how small the safety margins are that separates them from an accident. Driver education isn't an option with minds that have slowly closed through passage of time and complacency in their skills.

There are few bad driving habits that provoke me more than this one, probably because it's not a risk like drunk drivers that I can largely reduce by not being on the road at night. Astonishing (read: enraging) how many risks to other peoples' lives that some people take.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 11:38 PM on August 17

Burhanistan But anyway, most teenagers don't really respond favorably to fearmongering because they are laboring under the impression that they are indestructible and consequences are something that grandma thinks about.

Apparently not:

Newer studies have dismissed that notion. They say that most teenagers are quite cooled-headed in assessing risk and reward -- and that is what sometimes gets them in trouble. Adults, by contrast, are more likely to rely on experience or gut feelings than rational calculation.

Asked whether it would ever make sense to play Russian roulette for a million dollars, for example, most adults immediately say no, said Valerie F. Reyna, a professor of human development and psychology at Cornell University.

But when Professor Reyna asks teenagers the same question in intervention sessions to teach smarter risk-taking behavior, they often stop to calculate or debate, she said -- what exactly would the odds be of getting the chamber with the bullet?

Okay, it's an article about auto-erotic asphyxiation, but the point about teens and risk assessment stands.
posted by fatbird at 11:50 PM on August 17 [5 favorites has favorites]

I auto-erotic asphyxiate while driving. Then sext.
posted by qvantamon at 11:51 PM on August 17 [10 favorites has favorites]

>But anyway, most teenagers don't really respond favorably to fearmongering because they are laboring under the impression that they are indestructible and consequences are something that grandma thinks about.

Which is why teenagers should be limited to subcompacts. Or skateboards, whatever.

>why not really take it further and show montages of news video of crash aftermath and then actual dead, mangled bodies in the morgue

Because people get bored of them, and no-one knows if they work.

"For both Country Kids and Morgue, there was no reliable evidence of reductions in the risk of serious casualty crashes involving the target groups of the advertisements after the commencement of the advertising campaigns. These findings could have resulted from the crash numbers being too small to show statistically significant reductions or from the effect of the advertisements being relatively small."

The TAC here make some pretty gruesome ads. I'm not sure if they make any difference, personally, between my having become inured to them, and also my having got much better at avoiding TV ads.

That all said, if you can't work out that texting while you drive can distract you to a dangerous degree, I know a nice telephone pole you might want to meet.
posted by pompomtom at 11:51 PM on August 17

Nearly got hit by this car pulled out a quarter length into the road. Driver was on his cell.

The government really needs to make this illegal on the scale of DUI. A primary, pull-over-able offense, punishable with loss of license.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:51 PM on August 17 [12 favorites has favorites]

This ad needs to finish up with J. Walter Weatherman entering the frame and saying "...And THAT'S why you don't text while driving."
posted by hifiparasol at 12:09 AM on August 18 [9 favorites has favorites]

The government really needs to make this illegal on the scale of DUI.

Studies show that driving while talking on a cellphone caries the same risk as driving with a 0.08 BAC, which is legal. What's ridiculous is the fact that DUI laws are written the way they are. It would be like treating someone driving 70 in a 65 the same way as treating someone doing 120.

But anyway, driving with a level of intoxication that reduces driving skills the same amount as talking on a cellphone is legal.
posted by delmoi at 12:20 AM on August 18 [1 favorite has favorites]

Studies show that driving while talking on a cellphone caries the same risk as driving with a 0.08 BAC, which is legal.

I think you meant illegal.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:30 AM on August 18 [3 favorites has favorites]

It's interesting how many people see the issue as texting.

Isn't it the driving that kills? Perhaps if we encouraged texting, maybe stop privatising the ass out of public transport infrastructure and slowed down on the oil wars, kids would be fine texting all they wanted.

But we're all so addicted to private driving privilveges that we're too blinkered to consider that the motor vehicle could be the root of these problems. No, it's drinking, no it's texting, no it's talking to the driver, no it's distracting posters, no it's drugs.

The sad thing is that car-induced injuries and death are nearly all completely avoidable. But we would need to invest in public infrastructure rather than the self of the car to make this change.
posted by davemee at 1:09 AM on August 18 [12 favorites has favorites]

Nothing is going to work with teenagers except limits imposed by adults. They showed us the scary films in driver ed class. You could have shown us a thousand scary films when we were teenagers and we would still have driven high or drunk or both, still have Evel Knieveled our cars over railroad crossings, still have fumbled with seventeen other things while steering the car with one knee. Cars were like amusement park rides for us. After one particularly gory crash left several classmates dead or wishing they were, the school principal had the wreck dumped in front of the main school entrance to remind everyone about it, but I don't recall it making a bit of difference to our insane driving habits. What would have worked was just not giving us access to cars. Unless a kid is driving to and from school or work, there is no reason for a teenager to be driving.

I'm not really sure what sort of limits you can impose on phoning and texting while driving, but I am sure that others would have to impose the limits and not expect teenagers to voluntarily follow such limits, because kids aren't going to listen. Changing the law is a good start. Make phoning while driving a jailable offense. You could also make phones that don't work (don't even ring) in moving cars, or even make cars with teenager mode (no phone, no operation after certain hours or outside certain areas, etc.), but you'd have to modify cars and phones to do this, so I'm not betting anything like it will ever happen.
posted by pracowity at 1:10 AM on August 18 [1 favorite has favorites]

Since I've moved to the UK, I'm kind of surprised that texting while driving isn't straight up illegal. Isn't talking on the phone already illegal?
posted by like_neon at 1:18 AM on August 18

The way you solve this problem is to work with the mobile phone companies to pull the plug on phone coverage -- or at least texting coverage -- for drivers. Technically, this whole lethal problem can be fixed as a design issue.

Can you hear me now? No?! Good.
posted by markkraft at 1:33 AM on August 18

Texting while driving? That's nothing. Around here, I regularly see people reading tech manuals, printouts, newspapers, and who-knows-what else while driving. Whenever I hear news of an accident, I keep expecting the reporter to say, "There's a 3-car accident on 880--Highway Patrol is on the scene, and the Bookmobile is en route."
posted by mattdidthat at 1:48 AM on August 18 [1 favorite has favorites]

It's a great vid, they got it right, except for the sounds in the wreck(s), and they got those right except that they should have been at least three times louder than any of the rest of the video; the sound of the wreck should have exploded out at you. You just can't (I wouln't have anyways) imagine how loud a bad wreck is unless/until you experience it; it's LOUD.

I knew a guy a number of years back killed a family of four, driving a garbage truck drunk, didn't know what happened til he came out of the blackout in jail. He served time in prison but another quite real prison is carrying that family around in his mind; I'm not certain he ever forgave himself. The vid linked here kept on showing this kid looking at her friends, trying to make that exact point; it'd be a big job to live the rest of your life knowing you've taken lives through your foolishnesses, through carelessness. That said, I think that pracowity is right in saying that there's not too much would stop most reckless kids from doing whatever, they really do think it's 'the other guy', I know I did.

This prior thread on cell phone usage while driving helped me see a lot of the fact of this matter. It's completely irresponsible yet it's the elephant in the room, seems no-one wants to acknowledge it, damn sure not the phone companies and damn sure not most drivers. I did it for years and only luck has kept me and you safe. I don't do it now. Old dogs can learn new tricks it seems.
posted by dancestoblue at 2:02 AM on August 18

Texting while driving? Pah!

I still remember the day I saw a guy behind the wheel reading a fully-opened newspaper.

That's hardcore stupid.
posted by bwg at 2:26 AM on August 18

@like_neon - texting whilst driving is illegal in the UK. It's not 'making a call' that's illegal, it's 'using a mobile phone'. At least, that's what the newspapers are claiming after a van driver was given points after picking his phone up to see who was calling...
posted by twine42 at 2:30 AM on August 18

I used to text while driving all the time. Then I changed phone to a touchscreen and I could no longer touch type. It's probably just a case of "the way I do it is safe", but true touch typing never struck me as dangerous...
posted by twine42 at 2:32 AM on August 18

Is texting while driving a mostly-teen phenomena? I ask because I do not know, although many people in this thread seem to know. Can anyone point me to some statistics?
posted by moonbiter at 2:44 AM on August 18

Teens 0, Gene Pool 1.
posted by Gamien Boffenburg at 2:50 AM on August 18

I don't believe it to be a mostly teen phenomenon, but I don't have statistics to back that up. Granted, I mostly drive at night, but the majority of suicidally texting drivers I've seen have been above 25 (including a state trooper).
posted by crataegus at 2:53 AM on August 18

What gets me is that the people I see texting the most are middle-aged adults who supposedly have enough life (and driving) experience to know how small the safety margins are that separates them from an accident. Driver education isn't an option with minds that have slowly closed through passage of time and complacency in their skills.

It's because they drive 10 miles an hour under the limit thinking they're safer drivers.
posted by Talez at 2:55 AM on August 18

Now that I'm old I've admitted to myself that I can't keep up with "type A" behaviors and so now do no more than one thing at a time. And even that I'm sometimes less successful at than I care to admit.
posted by From Bklyn at 3:06 AM on August 18

This is a really great video, but I can't help but be irked by the SLYTiness of the post. Am I the only one who is tired of seeing bare-bones posts like this on MeFi? There is no doubt that this particular video is worth posting, but MeFi has always struck me as the type of place I could view a video like this accompanied by some fact-based, topical links and an educated discussion.

More and more these days I'm disappointed by posts that fall short on the links aspect that I know and love about this place, and am left to the same recycled/viral (and only occasionally valuable) crud that I already saw on digg/[other forums] in the last week.

Youtube has both enriched and ruined MeFi, in my opinion. I suppose all I can do in defense is start making my own 'real' FPPs.

Like I said though, this truly is a great video, worthy of posting even, but I seriously would have enjoyed some statistics and other articles on this subject, rather than just the slyt.
posted by sunshinesky at 3:25 AM on August 18 [1 favorite has favorites]

Teens 0, Gene Pool 1.

To be fair, two of the three teens in the vid were mostly innocent of any wrongdoing. And then there are the other collision victims. Everyone loses in these situations, even Mr. Pool.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:40 AM on August 18

Interesting, and I like the way it was shot. Still ...

1) The other passengers should have something to occupy them. Usually other passengers can throw in some additional attention (sometimes detract from it) when it comes to looking out.

2) It would have been more effective had car #3, the red car, also had a driver who was mucking about on their cell phone, who would look up just a couple of seconds too late to avoid an impact. Too often, people assume that, hey, someone else will take the burden of attention for me as I fiddle about with whatever.

3) Lane-weaving isn't what I primarily see from cell phone users. When driving, I like to play a game called "spot the cell phone user." As I scan traffic for threats*, I look for drivers up ahead who are either ignoring the auto-body language of various nearby vehicles or are making excessively wide turns (especially left turns that resemble something a cruise ship where a stoned captain might say, "You know what, let's not make it hard to port ... let's make it mellow to port this time.")

4) Could they have called in skin graft sous chef for some screaming?

5) More time before police and medical help arrive. It's not like they're waiting down the corner. You're going to be stuck there watching your best friend make fewer and fewer blood bubbles and you can't even hear a siren. Your cell phone is nowhere to be found, but, look, there's a couple of your teeth! Then you try to make yourself presentable for Mr. Fireman and smile at him while trying to hold a flap of your forehead in place.

* Yes, this is how I drive. I've discovered I have far fewer close calls if I drive and simply look for the person who is most likely to kill me.
posted by adipocere at 4:05 AM on August 18 [2 favorites has favorites]

I just don't understand this phenomenon in general. We have laws against this sort of behavior, under the general umbrella of "driving while impaired." If using a cellphone to talk or text isn't an impairment, I don't know what is. I simply can't believe that there aren't more politicians or police chiefs willing to just re-affirm those laws and crack down on violators.
posted by explosion at 4:08 AM on August 18

I just don't understand this phenomenon in general.
It's the exceptionalism of driving. "I drive great. It's all of you who're the problem."
posted by Jon-o at 4:28 AM on August 18 [1 favorite has favorites]

Bus driver texting and driving.
posted by bigmusic at 5:00 AM on August 18

"I drive great. It's all of you who're the problem."

I recently learned a new term for this: optimism bias. Once you know what it is, you will see it everywhere. It could be the next confirmation bias!
posted by TedW at 5:09 AM on August 18

Fairly recently I saw a bloke driving with a kid on his lap doing the steering. It was an articulated lorry.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:17 AM on August 18

I suppose all I can do in defense is start making my own 'real' FPPs. (sunshinesky)

Yup, that's pretty much it. That and flagging posts you think are poor.
posted by ocherdraco at 5:19 AM on August 18

This is why I give the phone to my wife to respond to the texts I receive while I drive.
posted by grubi at 5:32 AM on August 18 [1 favorite has favorites]

On the one hand I really, really hate people who recklessly endanger the lives of others.
On the other I hate preachy films that try to impart common sense to people who have obviously built up a resistance to it (see Shake Hand With Danger for comparison purposes).

I mean, some risks are more obvious than others, but I want to go "well, duh" almost constantly when I see someone explaining that you shouldn't drive while texting, drive drunk, climb into heavy machinery without notifying its operator or fly kites near power lines.
posted by PontifexPrimus at 5:45 AM on August 18

I've noticed a new trend on the streets of Gainesville lately: texting while riding a fixie while swerving wilding back and forth across the streets.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 5:46 AM on August 18

The way you solve this problem is to work with the mobile phone companies to pull the plug on phone coverage -- or at least texting coverage -- for drivers. Technically, this whole lethal problem can be fixed as a design issue.

Can you hear me now? No?! Good.

I'm curious as to what mechanism you think would make this possible. Theoretically eliminating the ability to text while driving it's not a bad idea, but I see no way of making it happen. There's obvious ways of blocking out all mobile phone use (Faraday cages come to mind), but this will never happen. Even accepting that the public would someone sign off on eliminating mobile phone use entirely when on the road, emergency situations (like the crash in this video) may necessitate someone dialing 911 while still in their vehicle.
posted by Patbon at 6:00 AM on August 18

but the point about teens and risk assessment stands.

Except the fact that cars are the biggest killers of teenagers, but somehow mysteriously not adults. Wonder how that works?
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 6:10 AM on August 18 [1 favorite has favorites]

about a week ago I was about 5 cars behind a kid who died while texting. I vaguely remember him passing me, then saw a big line of traffic stretched in front of us, construction in the mid-west during the summer - go figure. Apparantly, he missed the several miles of traffic lined up in front of us, and hit the back of a semi - that was nearly stopped at over 70 MPH. Crash, I didn't hear it, i was singing Raffi songs with my 3 YO son. Suffice to say, it scared the bejezus out of me, I'm sad about the kid, but so grateful he hit the truck. It was inconvenient for the trucker, would have been fatal for a car - like mine. Autos and trucks are so insanely dangerous and we in general think NOTHING about it. If one chooses the risk for themselves alone, so be it, but irresponsible driving makes so many others at risk. I'm not sure that a shock short can really instill the real responsibility of the task, somehow seeing the car squashed under the truck did for all of the drivers stuck behind the accident as we waited for 3 hours to get routed around. That obviously isn't a practical solution for all drivers, but when I see a teen driving a car, i think of the line "I shot an arrow into the air. . . . "
posted by oshburghor at 6:14 AM on August 18 [2 favorites has favorites]

About the only way I can see a technology that would block mobile use without being too much of a pain is to put mobile cell phone jammers along the middle of a divided highway, with their range carefully calibrated such that cell phones would only work if you pulled off onto the shoulder.

I find the idea unlikely, from scientific and political perspectives, but there you go.
posted by adipocere at 6:23 AM on August 18

About the only way I can see a technology that would block mobile use without being too much of a pain is to put mobile cell phone jammers along the middle of a divided highway, with their range carefully calibrated such that cell phones would only work if you pulled off onto the shoulder.

About one second's consideration leads me to think that this would lead to people driving on the shoulder so they could carry on their very very important conversations.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:42 AM on August 18 [3 favorites has favorites]

Texting while driving is a colossally dumb thing to do, but it's arguably more foolish to assume that other drivers will always follow the laws and rules of the road and refrain from texting and doing even dumber things than that. Your first duty as a driver is not to obey the road rules, it's to do what the road rules are for: prevent your car from intersecting any other object, especially another vehicle.

Accordingly your best protection from an accident is keeping a wide gap between you and the car in front of you (normally under your control), a wide gap between you and the car behind you (not quite as controllable, but do your best), and a general absence of cars beside you as much and as often as you can possibly contrive to make that happen. If you stay away from other vehicles, the only accidents you can have are either a single-vehicle accident for which no-one but you is to blame, or a bolt-from-the-blue situation where some idiot does completely unexpected and arbitrary act too quickly for you to react to, like T-bone you in the middle of an intersection, or swerve into your oncoming lane (perhaps because they were texting, as in the video).

Even if you were the safest driver/pedestrian in the world you can still be in an accident, it's just that these accidents are unpreventable by any action on your part except one: not travelling on the road. If you're unprepared to make that drastic choice, accept that there is a tiny chance, every time you go onto the road, of you dying there. No matter how shocking advertisements are made, how hysterical the cries of lobbyists get, how absurdly vigilant the police are expected to be, and how ludicrously drastic the punishment of offenders becomes: if you travel on the road, you might die. (Be aware that the same warning applies every time you eat solid food, or walk under a tree branch.)
posted by aeschenkarnos at 6:43 AM on August 18

If they're not going to make cell use illegal while driving, then at the very least they should make it legal to punch cell-drivers in the face if they ever complain about the driving of those around them.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:56 AM on August 18 [1 favorite has favorites]

> Isn't it the driving that kills? Perhaps if we encouraged texting, maybe stop privatising the ass out of public transport infrastructure and slowed down on the oil wars, kids would be fine texting all they wanted.

That sounds like an easy solution. Please tell me when it's in place. We've got far too much invested in how things are done right now, and short of some cataclysm -- which I really don't want to have happen, ever, because it'd ruin my life as well as everybody else's -- there's never going to be a significant change to that. It's considered remarkable (and professionally fatal) for a politican to suggest that the best solution for our current method is something else entirely rather than more massive highways.

Our national transit system has become so biased around individual vehicle control, and we've become such a nation of sprawl, that in many parts of the country a one-hour commute is enviable. That's two hours a day, every day, in a car where you're not allowed to read, text, talk on a phone, or just catch up on sleep; you are obligated to observe all activity around you, act accordingly, and transport yourself in a responsible manner. And by those terms, it's a bullshit arrangement. Who wouldn't rather spend half again as long every day with somebody else driving while they doing some extra work or playing games or doing almost anything they want and not put anybody else in danger by doing it? How much more productive is that than cutting commute times by half and being able, at best, to listen to a book on tape or some frothing right-winger on the radio?

Seriously, I'm all for your idea. I bike whenever I can. I live three miles from work. I love not being car-bound. Your ideals are great and I share them, but while we're at it we shouldn't settle for ponies. We should be asking for unicorns!
posted by ardgedee at 6:58 AM on August 18 [4 favorites has favorites]

most teenagers don't really respond favorably to fearmongering because they are laboring under the impression that they are indestructible

That and the fact that by age thirteen, the average American teenager has been exposed to as much fear mongering as all of humanity had been since the days of homo habillius to the first half of the seventeenth century. They think they're indestructible because they've been convinced the Main Street USA is about as dangerous as Iwo Jima was in early March, 1945.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 6:59 AM on August 18 [7 favorites has favorites]

An illustration of what sheer random chance can do while driving (ironically, to a telco executive).
posted by aeschenkarnos at 6:59 AM on August 18

Except the fact that cars are the biggest killers of teenagers, but somehow mysteriously not adults. Wonder how that works?

Well, surely at least in part because the adults are more likely to die from illness.
posted by palliser at 7:03 AM on August 18

put mobile cell phone jammers along the middle of a divided highway

If you were going to go that far, you might as well require jammers in cars (no phoning while in motion) or in the phones themselves: unless you were an emergency worker, you wouldn't be able to buy a phone that doesn't silence itself when it receives a certain low-range encoded signal that, for example, all cars are required to emit while in motion or that teachers would be able to trigger in all classrooms or cinemas would be able to trigger during all movies.

Make it still possible to send a message to or from a silenced phone, but you have to press the Emergency button on the sending phone, and then the call costs you a hundred bucks. In a real emergency, spending a hundred bucks for a call would of course be worth it; to text your boyfriend, probably it wouldn't, but it would be up to the caller. Make it super easy to get the charge refunded for a real emergency, and actually give the caller a Good Samaritan's bonus payment (five hundred bucks?) if the caller is the first to report the emergency. Then you have a system that discourages stupid calls at stupid times but enables and encourages important calls all the time.
posted by pracowity at 7:04 AM on August 18

If anything, this video was fairly mild; a teenager near here died in an accident while texting, and she was ejected from her vehicle. So, yeah, bad things can happen. (I still mentally inserted a shot of a bloodied thumb slowly punching out "ZOMG WTF", though. I'm no saint.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:08 AM on August 18

I drive between MA and OH pretty often, so I hit two entire states (NY and CT) that don't let me use my handset while I'm driving. Fine. i have a Bluetooth earpiece. But:

(1) My phone is also my iPhone. Which means I play music on it while driving. I occasionally look down to move a song ahead. Since this is my phone, should it be illegal for me to do that? If so, how is it different from changing stations on my radio?

(2) My phone is also my GPS/mapping gadget. I occasionally have to look down to check my next direction, or check my GPS position on the map to figure out about how far I am down the freeway. I set the directions before I leave, but I'm still fiddling with it to figure out particular directions. Should it be illegal for me to do this? If so, how is it different from anyone else fiddling with their GPS while driving?

(3) What if I'm sitting in traffic at the red light by my house (which usually takes 2-3 cycles for me to get through at rush hour)? Can I check my email, or Twitter, while my car is sitting still?

I agree with the "no texting", and can buy the no handset rule, but it seems like if we're going to do this right we need to go straight to "no mobile devices used by the driver" in the car. But then we've also got the problem of the built-in DVD players and navigation systems in some of the fancy newer cars; should those be illegal too? "No computer interfaces"? What's the right extent? Because just focusing on texting is pretty ridiculous.

It looks like the laws I'm finding via Google right now do extend to things like surfing the internet and email, but all the news panic is just about texting. I wonder if public reaction would be different if the Blackberry-wielding businesspeople of the world realized this would include them, and not just those dumb teenagers and their texts.
posted by olinerd at 7:21 AM on August 18 [2 favorites has favorites]

That was pretty crazy. I wish I could find this Irish drunk-driving advert which was shockingly violent and scary. It had a killer song playing in the background to boot.
posted by chunking express at 7:23 AM on August 18

I'm not meaning to derail but I do want to address a point brought up further up thread.

What would have worked was just not giving us access to cars. Unless a kid is driving to and from school or work, there is no reason for a teenager to be driving. - pracowcity

Teenagers have all the same reasons to drive as adults. School and work, yes of course, but also recreation and basic transportation. My parents, having been to countless athletic matches (let alone the associated practices/training), school functions, and volunteer sessions were more than willing to let me make my own way (where reasonable) once I was deemed mature or responsible enough. If they wanted to come, I knew I had a ride or could drive them.
Growing up in DC, I was fortunate to have a BMW; that's Bus, Metrorail, and Walk. And when I could, I supplemented that with a car. Unless you, as a parent, want to chauffeur your kid to all the inconvenient places they need to be, there's a demonstrative need for mobility when you're a teenager.

I'm all for parents being involved with their teens, but there's got to be a limit. I'm also not saying give your 14-year-old the keys and hope they come home alive. I'm not sure what you did as a teen, but my adolescence was enhanced by being able to drive.
posted by now i'm piste at 7:30 AM on August 18 [2 favorites has favorites]

Found it! This advert is crazy.
posted by chunking express at 7:36 AM on August 18 [1 favorite has favorites]

A few here are talking exclusively about teenagers and texting (myself included), but it's not just teens (and it's not just texting). Adults do it as well, and rightfully get into trouble.
posted by now i'm piste at 7:39 AM on August 18

Interesting, and I like the way it was shot.

I don't: Cronenberg's Crash was noted for the brutality and brevity of its auto accidents. The only time I've seen this repeated was in Adaptation. Typically accidents are filmed in a victim's slow-mo POV and though the point of this PSA was the aftermath, I'd "prefer" a quick, violent smash instead of silly rocking about like passengers of Toonces.

most teenagers don't really respond favorably to fearmongering
--
Newer studies have dismissed that notion.

This link (and the ones suggested, but not included in the "most teenagers" comment) would have enriched the original post.

work with the mobile phone companies to pull the plug on phone coverage

I'm going to make a "phone in trunk" bumper sticker. Maybe social pressure could work where legislation and scaring haven't and technical solutions can't? I see that phoneintrunk.com is available.
posted by morganw at 7:40 AM on August 18

And yeah, this one seemed a bit cheesy. The Irish one I linked to is also batshitinsane, but I think is much better put together. (It's about speeding.)
posted by chunking express at 7:44 AM on August 18

In a real emergency, spending a hundred bucks for a call would of course be worth it

Who do you think called for the ambulances in the video? The girl in the car? If I witnessed an accident like this one, I wouldn't be able to afford a call to 911 for that girl. I'd sit there feeling like an asshole just because I'm unemployed.
posted by 23skidoo at 7:47 AM on August 18

Technical solutions to social problems rarely work out well.
posted by chunking express at 7:50 AM on August 18 [5 favorites has favorites]

What needs to happen is that people need to be arrested for driving while impaired. You don't need to outlaw cellphones, unless you also outlaw PSPs, and books, and newspapers, and CBs, and funny billboards, and attractive people walking down the street, and captivating passengers, and driving while exhausted, and....

When someone endangers others, give 'em a ticket. "But officer, I wasn't using my phone!" "Who cares!"

Unfortunately this would require that we give police somewhat more leeway in making stops.
posted by RikiTikiTavi at 7:52 AM on August 18

I tells ya, Minority Report style vehicles...
posted by edgeways at 7:53 AM on August 18

...[I]if we're going to do this right we need to go straight to "no mobile devices used by the driver" in the car. But then we've also got the problem of the built-in DVD players and navigation systems in some of the fancy newer cars; should those be illegal too? "No computer interfaces"? What's the right extent? Because just focusing on texting is pretty ridiculous.

Agreed. There are myriad causes, but the end result is still unsafe driving. Rather than having one set for texting, one for phone usage, one for computers, one for nav systems, one for makeup, &c... why not have one law for distracted driving? With DWI/DUI* we already ignore the distinction between poor driving because of too much alcohol VS cough syrup.

*Yes: MADD is crazy, yes the laws are inconsistent, yes driving stoned is different then drunk is different from tweaking, yes sobriety check points are another discussion.
posted by now i'm piste at 7:55 AM on August 18

>Technical solutions to social problems rarely work out well.


You haven't tried the Trunk Monkey.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:56 AM on August 18

Here in Japan, where I haven't had a car for years and ride my bike all the time and sometimes the train, the bane of my existence is kids texting on their bikes, swerving all over the place. At least the drunk ojiisans have their heads up looking forward sometimes.
posted by greasepig at 8:00 AM on August 18

aeschenkarnos : Accordingly your best protection from an accident is keeping a wide gap between you and the car in front of you (normally under your control), a wide gap between you and the car behind you (not quite as controllable, but do your best), and a general absence of cars beside you as much and as often as you can possibly contrive to make that happen.

This is one of my preferred tactics. My job is far enough from home that I spend a bit more than an hour a day on the interstate in my commute, and I've seen all manner of stupid. The best suggestion I can make is to keep a good four car lengths in front of you at all times and strive to never, ever drive in, or allow other to drive in your blind spots.

That and I use my horn a lot more. If I'm along side someone and they start drifting into my lane while texting, I'll honk and let them know that they could have just killed us both.

Basically, I just assume that everyone around me is actively trying to kill me at all times and drive accordingly. But then, I love to drive and get pissy when inattentive assholes on the road turn something that I enjoy into something to be afraid of.
posted by quin at 8:06 AM on August 18

Metafilter: just assume that everyone around me is actively trying to kill me at all times

sorry, can't resist
posted by Burhanistan at 8:11 AM on August 18

Asked whether it would ever make sense to play Russian roulette for a million dollars, for example

What if there were a way to combine driving, guns, and cell phones? (NSFW video)
posted by zippy at 8:42 AM on August 18

I just got rid of a car because of the radio (it had other issues, but the radio was the deciding factor). This radio had a bunch of tiny buttons for changing the volume and station and it was impossible to do anything with it while driving without swerving all over the road. I'm also keeping an ancient money-pit of a shabby-chic European car because it has an old school radio with two knobs & easy-to-use & set mechanical tuner buttons. This car certainly has its own issues, but the radio renders it a keeper.
posted by squalor at 8:45 AM on August 18

Squalor, I recently looked at new radios and couldn't find any with simple controls and non-blinky displays. I finally went to a junkyard and got an OEM old-school radio for $10. Knobs for volume and tuning, no animations, no extra glow or lit up descriptions of features.

I guess new radios have to compete for a buyer's attention in a crowded display and so are very visual, while a car shopper is looking at the car rather than the just radio, and so the radio display doesn't have to stand out.
posted by zippy at 8:57 AM on August 18

Most new cars (even budget models) have radio controls on the steering wheel that you can easily use with your thumbs without taking your hands off of the wheel.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:02 AM on August 18

I just got rid of a car because of the radio

You're getting rid of and keeping cars based on their radio, something very easily and cheaply changed. That seems incredibly dumb. Not to mention if you want to really be safe forget the 'knobs'. The volume and tuner controls should be on the steering wheel so your eyes don't leave the road, your hands don't leave the wheel. Or are you stuck in 1982 where these things don't exist?

This is a really great video, but I can't help but be irked by the SLYTiness of the post. Am I the only one who is tired of seeing bare-bones posts like this on MeFi?

1. You're shitting in the thread and completely off topic.

2. If you have a complaint beyond flagging it bring it to metatalk. But be warned, you're covering ground that's been discussed many times already.

3. Looking at your last post, you might want to look in the mirror before playing hall monitor.
posted by Dennis Murphy at 9:07 AM on August 18 [2 favorites has favorites]

No, see, the problem is that their steering wheels are one the wrong side of the car.

That, and anyone who calls shotgun is the lookout and driver B. It's actually her fault that they hit someone.
posted by asfuller at 9:11 AM on August 18

Technical solutions to social problems rarely work out well.

Locks and alarms are two successes that come immediately to mind. Plenty of social problems are alleviated or resolved with technical solutions. Telephones solve several. The printing press. The computer. Laws. Pants.

If you mean that no single solution, technical or not, is perfect if the problem is large and complicated enough, then you are of course right, but you can't dismiss the many technical tools we use to help us resolve social problems.

Road traffic is a big system that could use some tuning. Ultimately, no one should be allowed to pilot a motorized vehicle manually -- all of them should be automatic -- but until that happens, smaller things should be done to make the system safer and more efficient.
posted by pracowity at 9:19 AM on August 18

Technical solutions to social problems rarely work out well.

This old saw is often repeated but--as pracowity has pointed out--has little validity. It has the stink of received wisdom and should be discarded.
posted by adamdschneider at 9:35 AM on August 18 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'd sit there feeling like an asshole just because I'm unemployed.

Or just because you failed to read the rest of the paragraph.
posted by pracowity at 9:49 AM on August 18

Or just because you failed to read the rest of the paragraph.

I didn't really want to poke more holes in your idea than was necessary to let all the air out it, but if you really want me to...

Any system that's "charge first, get it turns out you deserve it" is all well and good, assuming you have $100 in the bank. Seriously, that would so totally screw up people's bank accounts and make it impossible for people to buy groceries. $100 is a lot of money if you don't have it.

A "Good Samaritan" credit to the first person to respond to an accident is not going to make me any more likely to call 911 unless I'm the ONLY person to witness an accident. In fact, I'd wager that the MORE people to witness an accident, the less likely any of them would be willing to call, knowing that only one person will get $500 and the rest of them all would be charged $100, which as I noted above is alot of money.
posted by 23skidoo at 10:14 AM on August 18 [1 favorite has favorites]

What if I'm sitting in traffic at the red light by my house (which usually takes 2-3 cycles for me to get through at rush hour)? Can I check my email, or Twitter, while my car is sitting still?

Is there any email or Tweet so important that it can't wait until you're parked somewhere? What in the world did folks do before we had cheap cell phones/texting? Oh yeah, I remember, we waited until we got to a pay phone or back to the office before we returned our calls and checked mail. Granted, back then I saw lots of people reading the newspaper or applying cosmetics while behind the wheel.
posted by Oriole Adams at 10:27 AM on August 18

Technical solutions to social problems rarely work out well.

What about seatbelts? Airbags? Anti-lock brakes? Collapsible steering columns that don't impale your chest on a front-end collision?
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 10:27 AM on August 18

No, 23skidoo. See, they would all be charged nothing because they were all calling in an emergency and, besides that, all calling an emergency number. Only people who used the emergency line to make a non-emergency call would be billed for it, because it would be a little like using 911 to make a non-emergency call. Christ.
posted by pracowity at 10:29 AM on August 18

KTHXDIE
posted by mattholomew at 10:32 AM on August 18

No, Pracowity would have a point if any of the technologies he mentioned were created to solve social problems, but none of them were, so he actually had no argument. Okay, actually, laws solve social problems, but also aren't technological solutions, so... yeah. No actual argument.

When people talk about "technological solutions to social problems" they're talking about things like DRM or breathylizers in cars or the $100 Emergency line thing - ideas that sound neat from a system design perspective but will always ultimately fail because they ignore the root causes/real issues, because people will universally resent the shit out of the policy, and because when you use technology to make something more restrictive to the user, as is always the case here, there will always be a way to remove the restriction.

The problem here isn't that phones work in cars - the problem here is that there are apparently a lot of fucks out there who think that texting - mankind's least essential activity ever - is a good way to multi-task with a dangerous activity that requires both your hands and your eyes. Drivers with the mindset that sees this as at all acceptable aren't going to become alert and aware just because you take one toy away.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:35 AM on August 18 [1 favorite has favorites]

My solution for all types of driver stupidity: Fill the airbags with manure. Now go ahead and text. Sure that's right. Yer passengers'd be pronto on yer ass because they don't want to be brown-faced by yer stoopid. See? Everyone would be extra careful because those shitbags are sitting inches from their clean faces ready to detonate on noobity.
posted by storybored at 10:40 AM on August 18

No, 23skidoo. See, they would all be charged nothing because they were all calling in an emergency and, besides that, all calling an emergency number. Only people who used the emergency line to make a non-emergency call would be billed for it, because it would be a little like using 911 to make a non-emergency call. Christ.

I have no idea how I was supposed to know you meant that when what you originally said was "Make it still possible to send a message to or from a silenced phone, but you have to press the Emergency button on the sending phone, and then the call costs you a hundred bucks. In a real emergency, spending a hundred bucks for a call would of course be worth it; to text your boyfriend, probably it wouldn't, but it would be up to the caller." Thanks for taking time to properly express what you were trying to say.
posted by 23skidoo at 10:41 AM on August 18

What about seatbelts? Airbags? Anti-lock brakes? Collapsible steering columns that don't impale your chest on a front-end collision?

Were these all put in to address speeding? Drunk driving? They make cars safer in general. I don't think they are a technological solution to a social problem, in the same way building cars that won't start unless you are sober or cars that scold you when you drive too fast or etc.
posted by chunking express at 10:41 AM on August 18 [1 favorite has favorites]

My phone is also my GPS/mapping gadget. I occasionally have to look down to check my next direction,

And during those few seconds, your chance of an accident probably leaps by a factor of a thousand.

Just look at the causes of road accidents over the years - the number 1 is always "lost control of the vehicle". Very few of these involve mechanical failure - a huge quantity involve a momentary lapse of attention like, "I looked down to change the CD player..." (that was someone I met in a hospital), "I turned back to tell my friend...", etc...

Every year over 40,000 Americans die in car crashes, so this is not a hypothetical. If your driving setup requires you to periodically look down, you are driving irresponsibly.

In the same way, you are behaving irresponsibly if you take a call while driving for any reason whatsoever. Handsfree or no, you are suddenly an impaired driver. If you wouldn't go driving when drunk, don't you ever take that call.

If people truly understood that a huge percentage of accidents involve basically decent people being inattentive for a moment and then doing something they will regret forever they would drive like I (attempt to) do - trying to relax as much as possible and direct absolutely all my attention to the dangerous and fragile world beyond the car, and secondarily to my car's instrumentation and everything else is unimportant. I won't even play music I love - I tend to put on either jazz or dance music which I can deal with but doesn't occupy my attention.

I love driving, I don't do enough of it, but I do treat it as a life and death situation, just as I do getting onto a ladder or riding a bike in the city. If you are driving a car, there is literally nothing else as important while you are doing it.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 10:44 AM on August 18 [4 favorites has favorites]

I do treat it as a life and death situation, just as I do getting onto a ladder or riding a bike in the city. If you are driving a car, there is literally nothing else as important while you are doing it.

I suppose that's a laudable attitude, but unfortunately the overwhelming majority of people just aren't going to afford that kind of intensity to what they view as a daily chore. At any rate, we'll probably be letting the computers do the driving by 2025 so we can sit back and holo-text our brains out.
posted by Burhanistan at 10:49 AM on August 18 [1 favorite has favorites]

Also
posted by Navelgazer at 10:50 AM on August 18

If you are driving a car, there is literally nothing else as important while you are doing it.

I would love to have this sentiment printed on roadsigns and billboards all across the country. Some kind of constant media barrage to firmly implant this concept in people on the roads operating vehicles.

Because the other choice I've been looking at is turning my car into some kind of spiked and armored Mad Max creation that will make people afraid to be within a half mile of it in any direction.
posted by quin at 10:57 AM on August 18

"About the only way I can see a technology that would block mobile use without being too much of a pain is to put mobile cell phone jammers along the middle of a divided highway, with their range carefully calibrated such that cell phones would only work if you pulled off onto the shoulder.

I can think of a few involving actual phone design that would be a lot less problematic. Cell phones travel from cell to cell, and are quite capable of GPS, which makes it easy to tell when they're moving. It wouldn't be too hard to require that the software for texting on phones be redesigned to not allow texting out unless relatively stationary.
posted by markkraft at 11:04 AM on August 18 [1 favorite has favorites]

Of course, that would suck if you were on a train. But anything that reduces the constant blather ("I'm on the bus!") and clickety-clicking of cell phonies on public transport is also good.
posted by pracowity at 11:19 AM on August 18

A "Good Samaritan" credit to the first person to respond to an accident ...

Apropos of nothing: in 19th-century Toronto, because of frequent fires, a law was enacted to give a monetary reward to the first person to sound the alarm for a fire. Of course, the best way to be the first person to report a fire is to set the fire. Arson skyrocketed.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:20 AM on August 18

"Of course, that would suck if you were on a train."

Considering the alternative, it could suck quite a bit more.
posted by markkraft at 11:32 AM on August 18

It wouldn't be too hard to require that the software for texting on phones be redesigned to not allow texting out unless relatively stationary.

Urg, this would be utter and complete bullshit. It's already irritating enough that you can't set a GPS destination as a passenger, now you can't text or call, either?
posted by adamdschneider at 11:57 AM on August 18

Scary like the kind of stuff they show you in driver's education class. Oh, I bet they do show that in driver's ed.

Would be nice here in the more rural areas of the US if we could make driving less of a necessity, thereby somewhat reducing the need to drive everywhere all the time, reducing driving risks altogether. But, American culture eschews the idea of public transportation, especially rural American culture. You'd think that rural areas would then take advantage of the idea biking conditions offered by a lower population density, right? Not so. Even in my small town of between 10k and 15k people, there are a number of areas that are inaccessible to anyone with an aversion to riding long stretches on shoulder-free stretches of 4 lane highways.
posted by polkadotninja at 1:44 PM on August 18 [1 favorite has favorites]

The automobile: A means of transportation, or a life-threatening speed-casket? You decide. (6:30)
posted by buriednexttoyou at 2:22 PM on August 18

lupus_yonderboy there is literally nothing else as important while you are doing it.
That's a fair point, and you do mention that you try to relax, but I for one would far rather be on the road with (or a passenger in the car with) a driver who is calmly making and taking phone calls, than with one who is wide-eyed, tense, white-knuckled clutching at the wheel and frantically thinking "OMG OMG I'M DRIVING IT'S SO DANGEROUS I MUST NOT HAVE AN ACCIDENT".
posted by aeschenkarnos at 3:21 PM on August 18

This is utter bullshit. An obvious right-wing conspiracy to take our cell phones away.
posted by CountSpatula at 6:17 PM on August 18

Well certainly, aeschenkarnos. My mother in law is one of those terrified drivers and I hate being a passenger in her car for exactly that reason.

But I think that in the grand scheme of things, that type is actually pretty rare. The more common threat, and the one that would most benefit from understanding how important it is to focus, are the "average" drivers who, through lack of understanding of the risks, believe that they can safely do things like text and drive.

They feel bored by the whole operating-a-motor-vehicle thing, and want to use that time to get some other stuff done, maybe not comprehending how trivially little it would take for them to lose control or misjudge something and suddenly find themselves in serious trouble.

More broadly on the subject; I really can't think of anything more destructive to the kind of attention required to drive a car than texting. Between having to focus on small precise movements with one hand and careful even control with the other, to shifting focus between a distant object (the road) and a close object (the phone) and finally, to be doing all this while trying to be coherent in their communication? There just isn't enough bandwidth left to be conscious of what's going on around them.

Do I believe that there are no people that can pull this off safely? No. I'm certain that there are multitaskers who can do this, but I'm equally certain that the vast majority of people out there don't fit this description and shouldn't even try. They are putting everyone around them at risk.
posted by quin at 6:47 PM on August 18 [3 favorites has favorites]

I feel compelled to add that I almost got run over by a woman staring at her mobile phone yesterday. I was biking, and she was staring at that thing while pulling out of the driveway; I locked up the brakes and stopped a couple of feet from the fender.

I am actually not a very good driver; I'm easily distracted. Biking is no problem as I'm fully immersed. I think the problem with doing other things while driving is that the driving becomes the secondary task. When I'm doing it "right", my attention is on the driving and anything else is not given my full attention. This means I'm distracted in my phone conversations too, since I'm focusing on the road and what drivers are doing.

Unfortunately I can be distracted by little else than my mind, and I am lucky I haven't hurt myself or others because of it.
posted by RikiTikiTavi at 9:59 AM on August 20

Those of you who think this video was funny or saying you laughed at it, I'm guessing you've never been in a serious crash.

If you think the video was cheesy or overdone, as someone who was recently in a bad crash, it was fairly accurate. I didn't start screaming when my friend passed out, but I did freak out a little. Fortunately there was already someone in my back seat holding her head who calmed me down by telling me she still had a pulse and was breathing.
posted by IndigoRain at 6:50 PM on August 21

Huh, I was about to post this in the now deleted double. Oh well.

Has it ever been shown that those kind of "graphic" fictionalized PSAs do much to deter the activity in question? I know when I was a teenager I and -- I think -- most of the people I talked to pretty much laughed off any moralizing or fear mongering foisted on us by the adult world.

The only PSA of this type that ever really had much of an impact on me was this Canadian one about workplace safety, which was so much better done then this. The timing was almost like a horror move, and who really wants to engage in unsafe workplace behavior? On the other hand, people really like texting while driving, just like they sex, drinking and drugs -- all of which pose risks and all of which get fear mongered and moralized about to teenagers.

Ultimately these fictionalized stories won't work if they don't convince the kids it "could happen to them" Maybe by having kids try to text while in a driving simulator.

If you think the video was cheesy or overdone, as someone who was recently in a bad crash, it was fairly accurate.

Yeah, but someone who had been in a bad car accident is already not going to be texting while driving (I would assume)
posted by delmoi at 10:32 AM on August 24

(She never became the head chef, but she was routinely called "that chef with the head.")
posted by markkraft at 10:48 AM on August 24

The video delmoi linked to is pretty horrific. I remember there being a bit on controversy when they started getting played on TV. Still, the YouTube comments suggest even this video is seen as silly. ("still funny to this day", "The beginning of her transformation into super villainy.", "Fuckin Classic", "THIS VIDEO MAKES ME LOL SO HARD" Oh, YouTube.)
posted by chunking express at 10:54 AM on August 24

When I was 17 - way before cell phones - I was on a rural stretch of Illinois interstate. I looked down at the radio in an attempt to find one station that wasn't country music, and didn't realize I'd sped up to 85 and was drifting into other lanes. Of course, neither me nor my (sleeping, teenaged) passenger were wearing seatbelts. A sheriff pulled in behind me and I was so oblivious that I didn't notice him for a few miles (according to him). Finally he switched on his siren and pulled me over.

I also can't count the number of times I dropped a cigarette on the floor and fumbled around to find it while I was driving (this was ages 18-23, after age 23 I didn't own a car, and I no longer smoke).

Texting is A problem, but it's not THE problem.
posted by desjardins at 11:01 AM on August 24

Also, I was hit about a year ago by a guy who was talking to his passenger and not paying attention. (No injuries as it was only about 30 MPH; about $3000 damage to my car.)
posted by desjardins at 11:04 AM on August 24

Made in Gwent with £10,000: the road safety video taking YouTube by storm
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:32 PM on September 3