Were they braking hard to avoid breaking something? 
Seriously, people are fuckwits. It was only a few weeks ago that a girl was texting and ran into a police cruiser with her vehicle. A NTSB report: Motorcoach Collision with the Alexandria Avenue Bridge Overpass, George Washington Memorial Parkway, Alexandria, VA, 14 Nov 2004, driver stuffs a 12’ high Prevost tour bus into a 10’ 2" overpass. Bendage ensues. Driver was yakking to his sister on a cellphone at the time of collision.
What do you mean you have heard about the possibility? Are you saying it would be automatic? I don’t think even DUI establishes automatic fault. If I’m drunk off my ass, stopped at a red light and a completely sober semi driver gets distracted and plows into the back of my car – I might get a DUI, but I’m not at fault for the accident. I’m fairly sure that at least in California there’s a blanket law that would cover texting while driving as being automatically illegal (not necessarily automatically causing fault).
California Vehicle Code Section 23123
When you are texting you are not using the telephone in the specially designed and configured manner of hands-free listening and talking.
**groman
**:
(h) This section shall become operative on July 1, 2008, and shall remain in effect only until July 1, 2011, and, as of July 1, 2011, is repealed.
Hey I didn’t claim I read that far. I got distracted by a text message 
Edit: Also note that it is in effect a non-law. $20 fine for first offense, $50 for subsequent, no points against the DL. It’s just a PR stunt really.
For such a thing you absolutely DO have to be very very careful what you say.
I often receive text messages while driving, and just as often have my passenger read them to me and reply on my behalf. The only time I text while driving is when stopped at a red light.
While the fact that a text message was sent from the drivers phone is worrying, and warrants further investigation, we should not jump to any sort of conclusions.
I had heard about the possibility of charging people who were found using their cellphone while involved in a collision with undue care and attention or dangerous driving; I don’t know if the collision would automatically be considered their fault at that point, but from my layperson’s perspective, it isn’t going to help you in court or with your insurance company.
For the record, I don’t know this for a fact (and I’m sure there are legal eagle Dopers who can correct me), but it seems to me that if you are discovered to be legally drunk while involved in a collision, you actually might be held automatically responsible.
And in the interest of fighting ignorance, talking on a cellphone with a handsfree device is just as distracting and therefore dangerous as talking on a cellphone held to your ear. It isn’t your hands being free that is the issue; it’s your attention being taken away from your driving.
That’s why I said the NYS law was stupid. It only outlaws the use of non-handsfree cells.
For that matter, I hate the whole idea of specifically outlawing anything because it may distract the driver. Not everyone has the same ability to multitask. I have seen serious calls to ban all sorts of things because they can distract drivers: Roadside memorials, books on tape, or even talking to a driver. (BION - AIUI that last is Federal law about long-haul bus drivers - it is illegal to try talking to the bus driver on Greyhound.) For myself, I’m a safer driver when I have a passenger in the car with me to help keep me aware.
The example I use to explain why I think outlawing things that may distract a driver is the following: I can think of nothing as distracting to a driver as a toddler (or younger) aged child in a snit, or tantrum. So, are we going to outlaw people driving alone with children under the age of five?
Hammer people who get into accidents while it seems likely that they were distracted by cells, or anything else, in the car, sure. But I really don’t think that these anti-cellphone laws have done one thing to make the roads any safer. Hell, I’ve seen people talking on cells while driving who seemed to be putting more attention to hiding their cell phone use than to their driving. :eek:
NOW we’re talking - mandatory, extensive driver training for everyone, including comprehensive lessons on why driving is the first and foremost thing you should be paying attention to in your car.
::shrug:: I text while driving. I’ve got the numberpad down to where I don’t have to look to type, so I type it with one hand while driving, and then when I stop, I proofread to make sure the text prediction didn’t suggest anything goofy.
A year and a half ago I posted this about a texter killing someone and one thing that bugged me was the number of folks whose attitude was very ‘Meh, it happens, deal with it’. I’m glad to see that attitudes towards those who text and drive this are stiffening.
Damn, when you’re driving, you need to be driving and not diverting your attention. Eyes on the road, hands on the wheel – what’s not to understand?
When I have a passenger, yes, we converse; but I keep watching where I’m going and merely quick-glance occasionally at the person I’m talking to. Cell phone call to make? Pull over off the road for the duration. Hell, even to change the CD in the car stereo I get out off the road and stop. Laugh at me for overkill as you will; I don’t believe one can do this stuff while driving and do it safely.
Og bless whoever thought up putting buttons for the radio/stereo on the steering wheel.
While I don’t support anybody getting killed on the roads, I entirely disagree. Driving is a fundamentally dangerous activity – little things like not texting, not talking, keeping both hands on the wheel can never compare to the safety of not being on the road. Creating this illusion that driving is anything other than a fundamentally dangerous thing by adding more and more rules that imply “As long as you don’t do this, this and this it’s OK” is a risky slippery slope. Some stand up comedian once proposed an ultimate driving safety law – ban seatbelts and mandate giant rusty metal spikes sticking out of the middle of all steering wheels. It’s merely an extrapolation from normal driving being safe that allows people to think that texting and driving is just as safe.
When I drive I’m well aware of the fact that I can be very easily killed and also kill somebody very easily. The people that scare me the most are those who do pay attention, keep their hands on the wheel but think that makes them invincible. My anecdotal experience is that people who try to merge into me, cut me off, go on the freeway going too slowly, etc. creates a stereotype of a middle aged parent staring straight ahead with hands at 10 and 2 in a silver Honda. As much as I’d love another reason to hate teenagers in their saleen beemers going 120 weaving in an out of traffic, talking on their phone, I’m yet to have to react to one or see one be involved in an accident.
groman, I agree with your post (driving is horrifically dangerous, and we’d all do well to remember that), but for clarification’s sake, it sounds like you are saying that you think teenagers are one of the safest driving groups. I agree that middle-aged people are probably the most complacent group, complete with tons of bad habits, but I think the very young and the very old are the most dangerous groups.
I wouldn’t want to say that teenagers are safest or even safer. However, I’m aware that absolute statistics can be very deceiving. Most people are exposed to traffic during rush hour (almost by definition). I don’t have anything to back it up but I think that teenagers and the elderly are a fairly minor menace in the rush-hour freeway traffic – most people on the roads are working adults. To me personally, teenagers are one of the safest driving groups because for every teenager on the road when I’m driving to/from work there’s fifty soccer moms. That doesn’t mean they don’t crash and kill more people than any other group overall, but it might or might not have anything to do with them being teenagers.
Consider three pieces of statistics (completely made up, just an illustration):
a) A teenager is just as likely as an intoxicated driver to be involved in a fatality car crash
b) Any person driving on weekends between 10pm and 4am is more likely to be involved in a fatality car crash than either a drunk driver (anytime) or teenager (anytime).
c) The overwhelming majority of people on the roads between 10pm and 4am on weekends are teenagers and drunk drivers.
Now, even though I just pulled all those out of my ass, if they were real, most people would react to a) a lot differently than a + b + c. This is the reason I hate statistics, especially driving statistics. According to this cite in the year 2000 approximately 32% of fatalities on the road involved an intoxicated driver or pedestrian (the way I understand it, if a drunk stumbles onto the street and I swerve to avoid him, hit a telephone pole and die, I make it into that statistic). Well that’s probably indicative of a problem, but it’s almost impossible to tell how big of a problem. The unspoken assumption is of course that drunk driving is rare and less than 32% of all drivers are intoxicated on average. A reasonable assumption, but still an assumption. We literally have a very vague idea of how many people actually drive drunk and don’t get caught or crash. It might be obvious and common sense, but it’s almost meaningless scientifically, so why should I care about the statistic?
Ok, I just spent 40 minutes reading all that and while none of it supports my position none of it contradicts it. Some of it is completely useless factoids that don’t even make any sense “In 2006, 23% of drivers killed were aged between 18 and 25 years. And yet, this age group only represents 14% of Victorian licence holders.” What is this even supposed to tell me? Umm, well, "After a brief survey of my refrigerator I found that only 54% of the contents were edible by weight, but near 96% of the items were at least in part edible! :eek: "
So, I’m just back here to clarify, were you talking to me or somebody else?
It means that people between the ages of 18 and 25 had a higher rate of automotive deaths than those in other age groups. In fact, they died at almost double the rate of the entire population of drivers.
I understand what it literally says, and you just restated it. You did not explain what it’s supposed to tell me or did you make it make any more sense in the safety context. It’s in no way adjusted for the amount of driving done. This tells you about as much about safety as the average body temperature of a hospital wing (including the morgue) tells you about health.
That’s a good point, groman. As someone’s sig line says, statistics, when sufficiently tortured, will confess to anything. No, teenagers usually don’t drive a twice-daily commute like most adults do, and if they do, it’s usually in off-hours. They also don’t have anywhere near the experience of thousands of person-hours logged behind the wheel. In some ways, that can be better, because they don’t have decades of bad habits built up; in some ways it’s worse, because they do stupid things without knowing why you don’t do them (haven’t had the plethora of near-misses us old folks have had yet).
I think, pound-for-pound, teenagers are worse drivers than adults. I think, en masse, adults are worse drivers than anyone because we make up the bulk of drivers and do the bulk of the driving. Your point about teenagers and drunks the only ones out driving late is good; I try to avoid driving late because of this. I can be the best driver in the world, and some fool can still hit me.
Drive now, talk later.