New technology could warn drivers about cell phones [Telecom]

On Mon, 29 Mar 2010 00:50:06 -0700, Thad Floryan wrote: ........

So those people irresponsible enough to recklessly use phones while driving also ignore road laws that they probably view as inconvenient, whoda thunk?

Any law like this has the greatest effect in discouraging those who do have at least some respect for the rest of the road laws, those who believe that such things never apply to them will continue to speed, use phones etc as they always have.

Such laws are there to eliminate the excuse for the rest of us to behave in these ways.

-- Regards, David.

David Clayton Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a measure of how many questions you have.

My car issues so many tones and beeps all the time your driving to constitute a distraction themselves. It is hard someimtes to tell what some of them are for, and where to find a display relevant to the noises. The manual has a full page listing all the icons they use for various purposes and warnings on the dash display. And there is another display overhead you've got to look for. Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

Cell phone users who insist that they are not a danger when they phone and drive are either self delusional or they are narcissists. Sales people got along very well for over a thousand years without the damned things: saying "They might loose the sale to the competition" is the same "Me First" bullshit that is causing dozens of deaths a day on the highways as the direct result of impaired or distracted driving. If we were loosing dozens of people a day in structure fires the whole country would be shouting for immediate change. It's not just these "Me First" clowns who are dying out there: it is also the people in the cars they are running into. You only have to cover a dead baby once to believe that there has to be *something* that can be done. Driving a motor vehicle is not a right: that is black letter law. The privilege of operating a car on the public roads can legally be withheld from anyone whose operation of a vehicle poses a hazard to others.

The solution is at hand. Current law requires that the cellular carriers be able to locate a cell phone's location to a certain standard of accuracy by an as-yet-not-reached deadline. Once you can do that you can determine how fast the cell phone is moving and where. It's then just a programming problem to shut down calls in any case were the phone is in motion on a roadway, rather than on a train, at greater than a walking speed and to send calls to such phones to voice mail automatically. I know that there may be another person in the vehicle who is using the cell phone. I also know that is a very small minority of users. Since those of us in Fire & Rescue are now cutting people out of cars with their cell phones still calling out to them from wherever the crash forces deposited it, I believe that last inconvenience is worth it to achieve a reduction in the carnage. As far as I'm concerned, those who talk on cell phone while they drive are all in the same class of people - those who put their personal needs above those of the others whose lives they endanger.

-- Tom Horne

Well we aren't no thin blue heroes and yet we aren't no blackguards too. We're just working men and women most remarkable like you.

***** Moderator's Note *****

My brother is a Master Firefighter/Rescuer, and has been doing it for as long as I can remember. Although his post is certainly blunt, I'm allowing it because he's one of the people who see the results of distracted driving "up close and personal".

Bill Horne Moderator

My car is pretty high-tech but it is silent while in motion unless I activate a route in the GPS Navigator. But, that is my choice, not forced upon me.

My car also has a factory-installed hands-free BlueTooth link to my cell phone...again my choice for the resultant noise if someone calls.

....... And to follow up on using phones while driving, here is something the state government I have has just come up with:

*****ad-new-vicroads-online-campaign-targets-young-drivers?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheMotorReport+(The+Motor+Report)

-- Regards, David.

David Clayton Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a measure of how many questions you have.

***** Moderator's Note *****

If the above URL doesn't work, try

- and be sure you're not driving when you see it, because it's a side-splitter.

Bill Horne Moderator

It probably doesn't help that TV shows and movies routinely show characters talking on the phone while driving. Many of them are police detectives, who should be setting an example rather than ignoring the law. It's understandable that Jack Bauer might not feel he has time to pull over when that clock is ticking, but most other characters on TV are not under such intense time pressure.

Since it's obvious people continue to flout the law and phone/text while driving, how about 15-30 second "shock" videos aired on broadcast and cable TV at dinnertime showing the uncensored aftermath of local accidents caused by phoning/texting drivers? Sort of like the therapy used in Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange" though it's unlikely we could hold the eyelids of home viewers open. If Penn & Teller can show and say what they do during their "BS!" show, such eye-opening "shock" videos of real accidents should be able to be shown, too, to drive home the point [that phoning or texting while driving is a dangerous and dumb thing to do].

Something HAS to be done. I drive less now (finally retired) but I see more and more idiots driving around oblivious to what's around them. I now totally avoid certain shopping centers and stores because driving or walking in/around them is asking to be hit by distracted drivers. I do my food shopping now after 11pm, buy gas around 3am, and totally avoid the streets and freeways/highways between 6am-9am, 12noon-1pm, and 3pm-

8pm which is what I've observed to be the danger times.

It works because it is a SXS Cell phone.

Where you see Law Enforcement using phone while driving is because Law Makers allowed that under the law. I was rear ended by a Police Car several years ago and I'm pretty sure he was using a cell phone at the time. He would not admit it, but the city paid the claim in just a few days. As to hands free, no matter, if I have to use mine I find a place to stop or just let it go to voice mail.

I have been using radios since the 60's, so I agree it is not juat holding the phone, but not paying attention what you are doing. California has had the law on the books and has made little difference, even after they changed it to allow a stop just for using the phone.

Someone posted that there should be a way to disable a cell phone while the car is moving, what if the phone is being used by a passenger?

Oh, that's one of the many unusual features of his alternate universe. I don't watch 24, but I hear that in his world, unlike this one, people tell him the truth when he tortures them.

R's, John

His view is justified. But, it presumes there is adequate highway law enforcement to make a different. Certainly in California there is not. Plus, I see cops alone in a squad car using them all the time. What is so special about his training that he can do it safely?

Well, he cannot. And, you know they are chatting with their S.O., or other non-essential calls. We taxpapers paid a whole lot of money putting those two-way radios in those squad cars.

Today, at least in California, most of the abusers (other than cops) are women that don't look like salesladies to me.

It is out of control in California because people know there are very few cops around.

Why couldn't the cell phone manuafacturers make all phones sense motion and shut down while in motion?

Quite a few years ago I was talking to the safety guy for our company and he said "shock" and gory videos are not effective. He said people tune them out, either pyscially or mentally and they show little result in improving safety. Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

Interesting observation. I can corroborate the vast majority are women, but I don't understand what "look like salesladies" has to do with this -- would you please clarify?

And, when they are around, they don't seem to nab the cellphone abusers. My town's local paper has a "Police Blotter" section and they've never listed cell phone violations though they do list the occasional DUI, etc. Odd, because several studies have shown that cellphone use while driving is equivalent, in terms of a driver's distraction, to DUI. I'm in the downtown area biweekly for a pizza lunch and if I were a cop I could easily writeup the 20+ violations I see each trip downtown, so it's not clear why they don't do that.

Motion and position sensing is easy; one company's sensors I use can be seen here . The difficulty, as mentioned in the original article I cited, is distinguishing the driver's cellphone from the passengers'. Here's the article again:

I really have no issue with a passenger using a cellphone while I'm driving especially if the purpose is getting directions. :-)

You would ban people from using their phone while on an amusement park ride, or passengers using their call phones in a car, or while on a bus or train where they have nothing to do with the operation of the vehicle? Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

Just because it's allowed doesn't make it a good idea. LEO's are also allowed to exceed the speed limit and shoot people, but there has to be sufficient justification. Are they allowed to use cell phones for personal calls while driving?

But it's not just police, it's everyone. Have you EVER seen a TV/movie character pull over to make or take a phone call?

It is hard to tell what they are using them for, having been a Reserve Sheriff some years ago; before cell phones, a lot of time we had to call the station via land line. Now they use voice and computers in the car, so they may be using cell phones to contact their station. When I was hit by the police car I was pretty sure he was using one, I have no idea why, but there were a dozen other police units there within seconds after being hit. I had just left the freeway and hit a school zone speed limit, I guess he did not see me slow down.

Heck, that's an _easy_ one to answer!

"Everybody knows" (even though it isn't true) that the IP network was designed to continue to function even in the event of a nuclear attack.

Thus, he's "obviously" using a VoIP phone.

Actually, yes. Just last week a television show called "Cougar Town" had a character drive into a pool because she was distracted by a cell phone call, later in the episode she pulled over to make a call and specifically said to her passenger she wasn't going to drive and use the phone at the same time anymore. That's one. Good luck finding another example . . . ;-)

Bill Ranck Blacksburg, Va.

Please don't use it while driving.

It irritates me a lot whenever I see some commercial selling a hands-free solution to "talking on the phone while driving" which can pretty much only be used to talk on the phone while driving.

For those advocating a technical solution, I think it's going to be very difficult to meet all the desirable characteristics of such a system, and when it malfunctions, someone will be sued:

1. You don't want the driver talking on the phone while he's driving, free hands or not. Ditto texting, dialing, answering, surfing the web, and watching mobile TV (the next big cause of distracted driving), hands-free or not.

1. You don't want to prohibit the driver from talking on the phone when his car is disabled at the side of (or middle of) the road. Or parked somewhere.

2. You don't want to prohibit the driver of that Toyota that wouldn't stop and was stuck at 90mph from calling 911 to get help, even if he was faking it.

1. You don't want to prohibit the driver who's having medical problems (e.g. heart attack, epileptic seizure) with cruise control on who can't stop the car from calling for help.

2. There's nothing wrong with *passengers* talking on the phone while driving. On several long trips with lots of people in multiple cars, it's proved useful to assign a "communications officer" in each car (not the driver) to coordinate navigation, rest stops, look up directions on the Internet, and such, with the other cars rather than having all of the cars try to guess what the first car is going to do and try to follow it. I think that takes a lot of distraction away from the driver.

1. There's nothing wrong with passengers on buses, trains, trolleys (some of which follow roads), amusement park rides, boats in runaway flood waters, etc. using the phone. Especially for emergencies.

2. You don't want the driver suddenly moving right 5 lanes and pulling off the road and stopping so he can answer a call before it stops ringing. That's what you get if you turn off the cell phone while the car is in motion but still let it ring. I've seen this several times from just behind the guy. One was a tire blowout; my bet is the others were incoming cell phone calls. You want a brain-free cellular answering machine (voice mail) which does *not* notify of an incoming call while driving. That's going to upset people who want to call the driver to say "come back; meeting cancelled" or "you forgot your presentation".

1. You don't want the driver talking about subjects that require concentration, such as talking to the boss about a promotion, or talking to a soon-to-be-ex-wife about child custody, even as fellow passengers. Probably the only saving grace of passengers is that the passengers may act to save their own lives by yelling at the driver if he's neglecting his driving.

Precisely. People are used to watching horrible violence in Hollywood movies all the time, so horrible stuff on the screen doesn't have much effect any longer.

--scott