How 'bout society, ya know THE LAW.
Like speed limits!
I just wasted fifteen minutes reading that entire other thread, looking for the post where somebody proposed that.
I want those fifteen minutes back, you bastard.
Further, I doubt he had that tracking number memorized. groman was reading a fifteen digit number, reciting it into his cell phone, and going 80mph. Is taking your eyes off the road also perfectly acceptable? Gosh, good thing you were using voice recognition instead of keying numbers in. Because it would be really dangerous otherwise!
groman, you so crazy!
I really don’t understand how anybody can say talking on the cellphone isn’t a distraction. I confess to using my cellphone sometimes when I’m driving on the highways out here in Montana without another vehicle within a mile of me forward or backward, but I still keep the calls short (“Hi, honey–I’ll be home in a half hour”) because I want to be able to react quickly if a deer jumps out in front of me.
When I’m driving in town with heavy traffic and trying to find a parking space while watching cars and pedestrians in all directions, I turn off the radio and tell the kids in the back seat to be quiet. I wouldn’t even consider talking on the cell phone under such circumstances.
Groman, you’re missing the key point that you are needlessly endangering people. Your FedEx package won’t be there any sooner or later if you make the call next time you stop. Pulling off to the side of the road to make your call will only cost you a few minutes. Maybe you can find some flowers to smell while you’re stopped 
Talking to another passenger in the car can be distracting. I think the distinction is that a passenger may recognize that you are busy at the moment (passing, making a left against traffic, whatever) and won’t be asking if you “can you here me now”, while you have other things to concentrate on.
Exactly, the passenger is “in the loop” they can see what’s happening and can moderate the conversation to account for the driving conditions.
That is an idiotic response. Anyone driving while eating, combing their hair, looking at driving directions, shaving, applying makeup, drinking etc is just as much of an idiot as you.
Personally, I don’t do any of those things other than have the radio on, quietly, and I’ll sometimes even turn that off.
You are just a menace, and rather than having the balls to admit it, you’ll defend your right to be a menace right up until it injures someone. Nice.
“But…but, but but…everyone ELSE is being dangerous too! So I don’t care! I’ll take responsibility for it, even if I plow into a car full of children, killing an entire family!”
This is why I never respond to calls from the tower or ATC unless I’m in a really easy flying space. If it is tough, or I’m in IFR conditions solo, then I just scream at them to shut up because it is unsafe for me to be distracted under these conditions and I have ‘studies’ to back me up.
Where do you all get the great passengers that know when to be quite, help look for trouble and don’t keep changing the radio to loud RAP? I only got about 1% of my total passengers like that and only after I wave my .45 auto at them.
Driving along and they scream and dig their nails into my leg and I jump and look all around for what I missed. (real safe doing that) … Oh, it was a yard sale…
Ever notice that police cars now have laptops in use in single officer cars?
Why are there not bills in every state legislature in the country for the banning of cell phones of any kind…??
Those saints amongst you that will refuse to speed even a little bit on the way to the hospital with your screaming in agony wife about to have a baby and will tell her in advance that no injury or emergency will ever make you break any moving traffic type law, should be given a bull horn and a stand and 30 minutes of air time to say your piece. If you are ever caught breaking the law however, we get to …
I’ll grant you, talking while driving is not only unsafe, but highly fucking annoying for those of us who have to contend with these witless bastards as they careen around in their cars oblivious. I personally won’t let my hubby use the phone in the car when I’m with him if we have to dial out, and if I happen to call him while he’s driving home, I generally hang up with him asap (minus 45 seconds or so where I make sure he’s otw home, and tell him to stop at the store if I need something on the way home, and ask him to call me back once he’s gotten into the store so i can tell him what it is I actually need).
However…how do you propose to legislate banning cell phones while driving?
Sure, a cop can video someone talking on a non-hands-free model, but hands-free models are widespread enough all you’d have to do is claim you were talking to yourself, ranting at something you heard on the radio, yelling at your kids, etc. to make enforcing such a law a lost cause.
I agree laws should be passed if they’re generally in the interest of promoting public health or safety, but passing wholly unenforceable laws seems largely a waste of time and money.
"The Law
On 1 December 2003, a law came into force to prohibit drivers using a hand-held mobile phone, or similar device, while driving. It also made it an offence to “cause or permit” a driver to use a hand-held mobile phone while driving, or to use a hand-held mobile phone while supervising a driver who only has a provisional licence.
The penalties are initially a fixed penalty of £30 or a fine of up to £1,000 if the offender goes to court (£2,500 for drivers of goods vehicles or passenger carrying vehicles with 9 or more passenger seats). The government intends to make it an endorseable offence, resulting in three penalty points on the driver’s licence and a £60 fine."
Except they’re not ‘wholly unenforceable’, and although I still see some people with a phone clamped to their ear, I don’t see it half as much as I would have done before 2003.
Similarly, I still see people driving at 40mph in a 30 zone - is that unenforceable too?
So, it’d be okay with you if somebody went out into the middle of the street at 2 a.m. and started throwing hand grenades? There are very few people on the street at that time, the odds that anybody would get hurt are fairly small; there might be some property damage, and the person throwing the grenades is the one most likely to get hurt. Personal responsibility, people. :dubious:
Don’t most drunk drivers get caught when they get in an accident or are seen driving erratically? Couldn’t it work the same way for talking on a hands-free cell phone? If the cop who pulls you over, or pulls you out of the wreckage, sees you wearing a headset…
I don’t see how it can be presumed that talking on the phone while driving is not a distraction. The brain simply cannot devote its time to two simultaneous streams of information; it’s one or the other or bits of both. Try getting into your favourite television program, then calling someone on the phone. Now, try and follow both the conversation and the dialog and plot in the TV program as you would if you were only doing one or the other. You’ll either miss bits of TV dialog or bits of phone conversation depending on which you place more importance on, or become so confused trying to follow both that you will catch neither.
Driving while on the phone – or “putting your face on” or tracking a shipment or even listening to a particularly interesting morning show segment is no different.
*But…
To play devil’s advocate for a moment, anyone who has driven for a number of years has grown accustomed to distraction. Virtually no one drives in a vaccuum. Whether it’s the rambunctious kids in the back seat, an idle conversation with a passenger, that aforementioned morning radio show, nursing a coffee, noshing a bagel, concern over the upcoming presentation, or any of the other things that have become an integral part of our daily lives, we have become so used to doing certain things that they have become almost unconscious reactions. We learn to split our attention appropriately as the situation demands and the more we have been called upon to do this the more adept we become at it.
This is not to say that we can reach a point where it becomes so reflexively ingrained that it’s completely autonomic – our attention is still split, and thus still poses a threat. Rather, it is that one learns to manage it to such a degree that one can switch gears rapidly when the situation demands. Not as rapidly as if one didn’t have to switch gears at all naturally, but to a level where the danger is diminished somewhat.
While I agree that carrying on a conversation on a cell phone, hands-free or otherwise, is ill advised – even stupid – brief calls aren’t as bad as some make it out to be; they’re just about as bad as taking a bite of that bagel, a sip of that coffee, a backwards swipe at the kids in the back seat, a chuckle at the morning drive DJ, etc.
A friend of mine decided to reload his laptop back in summertime while we drove to the beach. I recited, from memory, the 25 alpha-numeric characters to him since it was a volume license copy of WinXP which i memorized at the beginning of the fiscal year. Later that trip, i did the same thing with Office 2003. I was driving the whole way there. 15 characters is nothing. 
…and if you want to fight the ticket, they’ll subpeona your cell phone records to see if the phone was in use at the time of the alleged violation.
Which reminds me: the one time that I was in a vehicle of any sort that got rearended, the driver that hit it was wearing a headset. Make of that what you will.