Cellphones and driving [Telecom]

The concept is:

1. Husband
2. Wife
3. Mother-in-Law
4. Adult Child #1 Living at Home
5. Adult Child #2 Living at Home

If all five get in the car at once you have to tell the link which one is its phone for the day. The other 4 phones will then be ignored.

Bill,

It is a far different state today.

The towns in California that have their own police departments are doing the same.

Where the enforcement is spotty (at best) is in a town like mine that has contract sheriff for policing. The city buys the absolute minimum. We used to have our own police department. Unlike today, the city was well policed then by cops who cared about the city.

The freeways are terrible because the California Highway Patrol has about 60% of the staffing level needed to really do the job like in Arizona.

Another thing Bill, [unlike] when you lived here, cars with 4 or 5 probable gang members involved in an traffic violation on the freeway will likely not be stopped. During the day there is only one highway patrolman in a squad car. He needs at minimum, two backup cars, which often aren't sufficently close to be there in the short time necessary for a traffic stop.

In a city like Santa Ana, however, with lots of local police and lots of gangs, the police won't hesitate to make a traffic stop of a car with suspected gang members. First, the Santa Ana Police always field mostly two man cars, and second back ups are always very close by.

Yes, a very different state than 30 years ago.

Plus which, situations requiring active and near-instantaneous response by the vehicle operator (child runs into street, or guy in front of you slams on brakes) are a h-ll of a lot more common and frequent on the road than in the sky.

You have to wonder? He'll cause a serious collision including traumatic injury and death, but will walk away with cuts and bruises. Then, he'll set up his next car the same way.

If I have to take a call, I pull over, then answer the phone, or let it go to voice mail, pull over, then call back. I just won't take a chance.

It is a bit incongruous that for an environment many, many times more hazardous than flying we allow people to control a vehicle with only a fraction of the training and skills required to pilot an airplane.

In theory some people could be allowed to use cellphones while driving, provided they can pass some sort of test clearly demonstrating their exceptional abilities to do this as well as remain in full control of their vehicle - then they can have the special endorsement allowing them to use a phone on that vehicle that particular vehicle (like flying, you need specific endorsements for specific vehicle types).

Perhaps the many hours of training and hundreds (thousands?) of dollars of costs in obtaining this special qualification may put a few people off the desire to have a chat while driving?

Forty years ago, when I was going through Reserve Sheriffs training, my instructor told me to forget that I know how to drive and learn the way we were trained: I would say that because of this I became a much better driver. Over the years I have had to drive at very high speed and even in my own car I was able to avoid things; with the exception of a drunk driver driving a large Ram truck who ran a red light and t-boned me.

I guess my eyes, mind, hands, and feet work differently than the folks you are concerned about. I see those as specious arguments against hands-free units.

Happened to my co worker too...she found herself in my cubicle then after hanging up asked me why she was there :)

This kind of thing happens even when you are just driving. I was on my way to a work site in Phoenix along Interstate 10 from Riverside; the last thing I really remembered was crossing the border from California and then seeing signs I was coming into Phoenix, that means I was driving some 200 miles, after that I kept the radio on and the window opened a bit.

The Australian "Cellphones In Accidents" study would suggest that you are wrong. You see, there is no privacy right in Australia while operating a motor vehicle, [and] Australian police always check the cell phone records of persons involved in wrecks. One of the things they found was that hands free drivers are no less likely then hands on drivers to have an accident: the difference in accident rates between the two groups was not statistically significant. [The study] also [showed that] cell phone users have a higher rate of accidents then drunks.

And _I_ don't want them to know they've [even] _had_ a call until they next set their parking brake. I just don't know how to make that happen. -- Tom Horne

"This alternating current stuff is just a fad. It is much too dangerous for general use." Thomas Alva Edison

Here [in Maryland] our firefighters, including yours truly, can ticket for hydrant and fire lane violations. Hydrants are thirty dollars and fire lanes are two hundred fifty dollars. I have seen several repeat hydrant offenders but never a repeat fire lane offender.

I believe that 100%.

The last real drunk I've seen on the road was about 20 years ago 4am -- vehicle kept veering right and sliding along a bridge railing with an incredible display of sparks. I stayed w-a-y behind until finding a payphone, calling it in, and diverting to an alternate route home.

What I see nowadays with cellphone-using drivers is the same, actually worse since there seem to be far more cellphone-using drivers than drunks on the road. I actually now avoid shopping in certain centers and areas due to the cellphone-using people attracted to certain stores per my observations.

Ditto.

Look here , scroll down to the 6th thumbnail, "Eldorado substation, Boulder City NV", for a 9 second video that's an eye-opener. :-)

A few years ago the NHTC did a study on cell phone usage while driving and found out that it made no difference if it was hands free or holding the phone. The director at the time withheld the report for political reasons. It was recommended that cell phone usage by the driver be banned nationwide; how many people died because of this action by a political hack?