Ohio’s anti-texting while driving law takes effect tomorrow. Yes, our little backwater here is finally catching up with the rest of the country.
Included in the law is a provision that bans all usage of wireless devices, including GPS and Bluetooth devices, for anyone under 18.
Not letting teens talk on their phones while driving? OK, I can see that.
But banning Bluetooth too? How is that significantly different than talking to a passenger in the car with you?
That part is a bit extreme.
First offense: $150 fine and a 60 day license suspension!
Of course the law makes exceptions for emergencies, etc.
So what’s it like in your state? Do you notice anything different? My instinct tells me that people ignore these types of laws. In Ohio the law is secondary so an officer would have to pull you over for something else to ticket you for texting while driving. For teens, it’s PRIMARY, and good Lord are cops going to be pulling a lot of these kids over. It’s going to be an enforcement nightmare.
God, I wish they’d enact something like that in Michigan. As far as I’m concerned, doing anything with a cell phone while driving should be illegal.
I’m in a college town. School just started. The number of twits driving around and texting (!) and talking on the phone while driving is at an all-time high. It’s taking your life into your hands to drive within a half mile of the student area.
As I said: I don’t have a problem with not allowing young, inexperienced drivers to talk on the phone (literally holding a phone to their ear) while driving. But why deny the use of Bluetooth? Or a GPS even? I mean…how is using Bluetooth different than talking to a passenger sitting next to you in the car?
If they wrote the law in such a way that any cop who caught someone doing that could confiscate the device and toss it into the middle of a busy highway, we’d get more compliance.
Mythbusters took this one on - is driving while talking on a cell phone as dangerous as driving while drunk? The conclusion was yes, that was confirmed. Part one of three parts can be viewed here.
I would hypothesize that a cell phone is more distracting than a passenger because the passenger is at least partially aware of the driving situation, and may alter the flow of the conversation depending on how busy the driver is. In a cell phone conversation, the person on the other end can’t tell if traffic is calm or heavy. (Admittedly, the cell phone conversation Adam and Kari were having with Jamie was deliberately constructed so as to be distracting.)
Either that (which would be funny) or make these laws primary so the officers can pull you over for it. As its a secondary condition for adults, they have to have another reason to pull you over to write you a ticket for breaking the law. Which of course means most people will ignore it.
Indiana has already totally banned any type of wireless device usage while driving for everyone. But its also secondary, so people ignore it.
There’s a level of intensity while talking on the phone that you don’t get while talking in person. If you’re talking to a passenger, they can see that traffic just got heavy, or someone cut you off, or there’s a kid on a bike on the side of the street and everyone in the car pretty much takes the entire situation into account.
The person on the other end of the phone doesn’t. They just keep talking and the driver keeps listening and is distracted enough that they may not see the impending traffic issue.
There’s been times where I pick up the phone while driving and I know I’m more distracted than when talking to a passenger in the car. I pretty much now never answer the phone while driving unless I think it’s something incredibly important. Even then, the first words out of my mouth are usually “Hey, I’m driving, hold on while I find a place to pull off.”
And, for the record, those times are really rare. One that comes to mind is when a very close relative was in the hospital with a life-or-death condition, and I got a call from the doctor while I was driving. You better bet I was going to answer that, but I did make him wait until I pulled over.
In NJ, cops can pull you over just for cell phone usage. It still doesn’t work, with the added unintended consequence of drivers spending more brain resources on looking out for cops in lieu of focusing on their driving.
For one thing, some states have restrictions on how many passengers a teen driver can have in the car (cite).
For another, I believe that, from personal experience, I can say that, when I’m at home or at work, I’m less “present” and aware of my surroundings when I’m talking to someone on the phone than when I’m talking to someone who’s there in the room with me.
Yeah, Ohio is like that. They only allow one other teen passenger in the car with a teen driver.
I still don’t know about the Bluetooth thing. I do agree about the possible intensity level of the conversation…the part about the passenger knowing the driving conditions doesn’t really matter as the passenger isn’t driving…but I don’t think talking on the phone while driving (and I don’t have bluetooth) is all that distracting. It can be a bit of a pain, especially while simultaneously smoking a cigarette, drinking a cup of coffee and shifting a manual tranny in city traffic…but it can be done.
I did get into a minor accident on the phone once, it taught me to be a bit more careful about when to talk. Nowdays I’ll only talk if I’m stuck in traffic and obviously not going anywhere for a while, or on an empty intersate in the middle of nowhere. I’d only support banning all cell phone use if we build our roads wide enough that there’s no more congestion, and then only in the cities. Since that’s not going to happen, no I’m not in favor of banning phone use.
I agree there are people out there that don’t get distracted talking on the phone while driving, but what about other people? While you may not hit anyone while on the phone, you still want to avoid other people hitting you.
There are some people I wouldn’t trust letting chew gum while driving.
This is why I would never ride a motorcycle. I operate a pair of car washes…sometimes people have extreme difficulty getting loaded onto the conveyor entrance, which is two feet wide and I always think to myself “these are the people I am sharing the road with”.
DC has a ban on the use of handheld devices while driving, and compliance is almost zero. I see people using the their cell phones while driving everyday. They are usually the ones who don’t react when the lights change until someone hits their horn.
I have a friend from California who drives to Las Vegas fairly regularly (this coming weekend as a matter of fact) and he has a habit on long drives of driving with his elbow on the side panel of the car and his left hand up and against his head.
California Highway Patrol stopped him for using a cell phone while driving. He explained that is just how he drives - and he showed his cell phone and that he had not made any calls for hours. They let him go.
About half an hour later he gets pulled over again - same patrol officer - took one look at my friend and waved him on.
Nevada has this law and, at least in my neighborhood, it does seem to have lowered the number of people I see driving and talking on cell phones. Still see the occasional idiot doing so, but I think it has had at least some effect.
They are everywhere around DC. Just like with speeders, I could sit by the beltway (yes, not actually DC, except for a little piece) and point out people using cell phones, texting, even driving with a cell in one hand and some paperwork in the other, all day long. If I was a traffic cop I could spend each day hauling in the people texting and driving and never make a dent in the problem.
When I see someone driving 45 on the beltway, weaving back and forth between two lanes - they are talking on the phone 100% of the time. I see them every day and wonder how they are any different from a drunk driver. At least the drunk is looking at the road sometimes.
the part about the passenger knowing the driving conditions doesn’t really matter as the passenger isn’t driving…QUOTE]
Of course it matters. Are you saying that because the passenger isn’t driving they are completely unaware of whats going on around the car? While you are blindly blabbing on about the most pointless thing and staring at the passenger instead of the road the passenger can noticed that traffic is slowing down and say “Holy shit traffic is stopping!”
I used to have a friend and after a time I refused to be a passenger in her car because when she would talk to me she would completely turn her head to the right and stare at me for a good 5-10 seconds while she talked. She almost hit my car once because of that and she would have if I didn’t yell, “Watch out for my car!” Last I heard of her, many years ago, she had totaled two cars.
