I haven’t been over since before Covid, but I do recall a news item where a woman was ticketed for taking a drink of bottled water, while sitting at a red stop light. There were discussions about police overreach, and I’m not sure if she had to pay and take the insurance points in the end, but it made the local news.
I’m pretty sure that there are no jurisdictions where, so long as it is appropriately mounted and you are not holding or operating it, using a GPS is grounds for a charge of distracted driving. So, such a defense wouldn’t be necessary in the first place.
Especially since your phone doesn’t have little sayings that the local government thought would be pithy and catchy, silly things like “Eyes up, phones down” to distract you.
If you are touching the phone to accept/decline a re-route, you are operating it.
My phone mount is high on the dashboard in line with my eyes on the road. But that can still distract me if I allow that to happen.
I see LEOs driving while typing on and reading from a laptop mounted lower near the center console. That can certainly lead to distracted driving.
Just like you would need to do to operate the radio in your car, eg, changing stations.
It has already been pointed out that in many if not most GPS apps, you wouldn’t ever need to do so, but it sounds like you are saying that looking at maps while driving causes less distraction than hitting a button?
So, do you not signal your turns, as flicking on the turn signal counts as a distraction to you, or turn on your windshield wipers when it rains, as that too, would be just as distracting?
Different people have different levels of distraction. Some get distracted while picking their nose while others don’t, while others can drive pretty well while doing some texting while others would get in an accident.
“Lord, take the wheel! I’m busy reading!”
My employer prohibits any type of cell phone use by the driver while the vehicle is in motion, or face up to a $5,000 fine and six months in prison.
My phone sits higher on my dash board than most of my car’s instrument cluster. If I want to look at my car’s speedometer, or the fuel gauge, or any of the other things that most driving instructors will advise you to keep an eye on, I’m diverting my eyes lower than if I were to look at my cell phone.
In either case, the time my eyes are away from the road for any of these tasks is a second or two at most. Now you have me wondering how you drive such that you feel one or two seconds of not having your eyes on the road constitutes an inexcusable flirtation with disaster. Are you a habitual tailgater or something?
I’ve seen similar reports. It definitely is a grey area. The police have a lot of latitude in interpreting that concept of “distraction”.
Your employer can imprison people? Do you work for a government?
This sounds ideal!
Unfortunately, my iPhone usually thinks I’m driving whenever I hold it. I think it’s hand tremors that do it. I have to set the phone down on a surface to use it, unless I keep the driving sensing feature disabled - so that’s what I do.
My phone mount is on my dash, above the radio, etc. It’s as much in my line of vision as the roadside signage you are perusing.
Yeah, mine, too. Why wouldn’t you mount your phone/GPS where it’s easy to see?
I really like GPS, and i think the idea of turning off your phone instead of using it to help you drive is dumb. Although i do intend to get Android auto in my next phone, so I can use the car’s interface and not have to use a mount that blocks an air duct. I will also have larger controls that way, although that might make me less safe, as currently, i just don’t touch the mounted phone while i drive, and with a larger interface i might occasionally add a stop or something.
A lot of people also use their phone as their source of music, and that seems useful and constructive, too.
And yet the very law referred to in the PSA explicitly says that it doesn’t apply to simply touching the phone with a finger.
however, this does not preclude the minimal use of a finger to activate, deactivate, or initiate a function of the device
“Dangerously distracted driving” is also a traffic infraction but it refers to
a person who engages in any activity not related to the actual operation of a motor vehicle in a manner that interferes with the safe operation of such motor vehicle on any highway.
These are two very different laws - one prohibits certain uses of electronic devices whether they interfere with safe operation of a vehicle or not and the other prohibits any behavior that interferes with the safe operation of a vehicle. No one has an issue with the latter , but some of the former ones just don’t make sense - why is a phone held in front of my face on speaker distracting while a two-way radio microphone held in the same place is not? Why would touching my phone to accept or decline a reroute automatically be a violation when touching a button on my touchscreen to change the radio station isn’t?
I don’t think glancing at a satnav is necessarily all that different from glancing at a rear view mirror. It’s not especially unsafe to take your eye momentarily off the road, if it’s done in a very controlled fashion, when the way is clear ahead.
I think it’s possible that trying to recall a set of memorised route instructions could for some people actually be more distracting, because it may involve switching modes of thinking.
If a satnav is in a fixed position, requires no interaction when driving, it’s the opposite of a distraction - it’s a reassurance that you can maintain your attention on the road ahead, not the destination. If you need to change the route, find somewhere to stop, tinker with the machine, then resume.
I don’t believe that anyone is able to drive well while taking their eyes off the road long enough to read or send a text.
I have met some who claim that they can, and what actually happens is that they stop paying attention to the road, and don’t know how badly they are driving. I was in a vehicle with someone who claimed they could text and drive, so they would pull out their phone, swerve all over the road, then say, “See, easy.” only having avoided accidents due to the actions of other drivers on the road.
Here is a flier from the National Safety Council advocating turning off cell phones and putting them in the trunk or glove compartment.
https://www.nsc.org/getmedia/aa35aab0-50bc-4c00-9da9-84be89d7e6b7/tip-sheet.pdf.aspx