maemo.org - Talk - View Single Post - Use the N900 responsibly while driving

	Texrat	2009-12-22 , 21:29
	Posts: 11,700 \| Thanked: 10,045 times \| Joined on Jun 2006 @ North Texas, USA	#72

Originally Posted by fatalsaint

Well.. even though I said you and I won't agree on the laws I'll continue for a bit.

First: I don't think Texting while driving is a good idea for the vast majority of people. I just don't think it should be a law to such.

How is the cop expected to judge who's adept when he/she pulls someone over?

Should that even be his/her job? Or do they realize that, again, laws are not designed around the gifted few but rather due to the sloppy many?

For your argument about holding a conversation taking more brainpower than yelling at your child I disagree. Both require similar amount of cognition. Holding a conversation with the neighbor sitting next to me actually takes more of my thought than texting (there's a caveat explained below).. because I am focused on what they are saying, or what I'm yelling to my kids, or looking at my kids in the mirror instead of focused on the road.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. This isn't about brainpower per se, and certainly not about opinion fatalsaint-- exhaustive studies have proved the point and been verified time and time again by peers.

Please read the actual studies. The important finding here is that we don't engage visual processing for someone with us-- only when we speak to someone remotely. That finding is so fundamental here that it has to be given more consideration than a casual read-through. Remote conversations highly compete with the attention we need for driving. That's no longer up for debate-- the evidence is conclusive... and the conclusions scary.

So IMHO, the risk of texting while driving increases and decreases with the type of phone you are using - and is heavily dependent on how responsible the person doing it is. However, a swerving vehicle is a swerving vehicle, no matter what the reason is. And this is where the "Reckless Driving" should be employed.

I don't think the risk is worth it... hence my agreement with the laws and their (unfortunate) need.

Now, if I were king, I'd simply equip every phone with GPS that disabled conversations when motion was detected. Downside: geeks would circumvent this, die in accidents, and we would go an entire generation without programmers, air traffic controllers and science teachers.

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