I’m not sure if your were joking, but I don’t interpret the law as requiring a Bluetooth device. An ordinary, wired headset (earpiece and mic) would suffice, wouldn’t it?
You can’t be serious, can you? What about emergencies? And don’t give me that “well, OK, emergencies are fine” stuff, because it’s completely impossible to enforce the difference, and anyway the loss of liberty would far outweigh the lives saved.
All smokers in CA, serious or not, are quite used to refraining from smoking indoors and inside vehicles. Plenty smoke in their own cars, sure, but it’s not a big difference. I know I hated it when my dad smoked in the car when I was a kid, even though I grew up to be a smoker later.
You have no idea just how many strange quarter measures they are. For example, it’s now illegal to smoke anywhere in the city of El Cajon, CA except inside a residence.
That said, the state government needs to build up to criminalization gradually, since CA is a direct democracy state. I’ve seriously wondered if they might want to make smoking illegal: on the one hand, a fair amount of state funding seems to go toward a government program called “Tobacco Free CA”, whose stated aim is, I shit you not, to rid California of every gram of tobacco, albeit through non-legislative measures; but OTOH, tobacco brings in a lot of tax money, and it’s an easy product to levy more and more taxes on when you need money for Proposition Whatever, since non-smokers are happy to heap all the financial pain they can on their addicted brethren.
No, but it was a quick and simple way to refer to hands-free wireless communications, like how girls and adults called every videogame-related-product “Nintendo” back when the industry wasn’t mainstream enough for anyone other than boys and young men to know anything about it.
Emergencies? Pull over and talk, if you must, on the side of the road. You speak as though you somehow need a phone while in a car. Many people seem to do without one. Everyone managed to do without one up until a few years ago.
At the moment you are not able to talk on a phone while in an aeroplane. Do you think that that should change as well because of all these emergency phone calls you need to make?
You post as though you somehow need Internet access while in your house. Many people seem to do without one. Everyone managed to do without one up until a few decades ago.
At the moment you are not able to use the Internet while in an aeroplane. Do you think that that should change as well because of all the Straight Dope posts you need to make?
How is the ability of you or I to talk on the phone while driving going to save any lives? I don’t know about you, but even though I’m pretty smart, people never call me and say things like “Shannon! Seabrook is about to melt down! How do we prevent a nuclear disaster?!” or even “Timmy stopped breathing! Walk me through CPR!” Never. If such a thing happened, what are the odds I’d be driving when the emergency happened?
Hell, if you called me up and told me about an emergency that was happening elsewhere and there was nothing I could do about it, odds are greater I’d drive stupidly and cause an accident than be able to help you.
Some moron nearly killed me at an exit this morning. There are three lanes - left left turn only, middle left or straight back onto 237, and right right only. Our friend, yacking on his phone, when straight ahead in the left most lane right in front of me as I was turning left. He’s lucky we didn’t collide, or I would have shoved that thing so far up hiss ass it would come out of his nostrils.
Now, it would be nice to ban cellphones altogether, but we have to take what we can get. I pay particular attention to people being stupid - the vast majority are on phones. I’ve seen people putting on makeup and reading also. I believe these are already illegal as driving while distracted. I haven’t particularly noticed that many people with hands free devices being idiots, but it is a small number and I might not notice the Borg-like earpiece.
And bringing up emergencies is bullshit. Unless you are a cop, and EMT, or Jack Bauer, what percentage of your calls are emergencies?
It’s a start. Stronger laws on their way, thank Og. I am tired of dogding and having to go around “driving while blabbing” drivers. Already teens (under 18, I think) can’t use cells at all while driving. Yay!
Calling 911 (etc) is an exception, so if it is a real emergency, you’re OK.
Currently AFAIK you can’t be stopped just for this violation, either- it’s an “add-on”.
(Bolding mine)
Uh, what? Pretty sure I was playing my Atari before I’d ever heard of Nintendo, so I for-damn-sure did not call it a Nintendo because “lalala, I’m a girl, I don’t know what all these funny little buttons do, I need some man to explain it to me”. FWIW, no older brothers/male cousins/etc exist to have helped me “see the light”.
How does the speakerphone option play into this? I use my phone constantly while driving, but I have memorized the button presses necessary to call anyone in my contact list and put them on speakerphone without looking down. I also keep the phone resting against my leg incase a call comes in, instead of keeping it in my pocket.
Would I be violating any of these new laws? (if I were in California of course)
And for the inevitable “You don’t NEED to be using your phone while driving” comment, you are right. I don’t, but I am bored. Expressway driving doesn’t thrill me like it apparently does for some of you people, and I don’t think that any more of my attention is going to make it all that more interesting.
Take it easy, Master of Offense, I wasn’t talking about you, I was talking about my grade-school classmates in the early 90s. If you knew my history of supporting feminist causes here, or if you had an ounce of restraint (to be fair, I don’t think I do either), you would have been able to piece together the fact that, no, I couldn’t possibly have literally meant that not a single female and/or adult in the early 1990s understood gaming. Jeez, I’m usually perceived as a member of the so-called offenderati and even I feel like I have to walk on eggshells in this thread.
That’s bizarre. I don’t give a shit about the internet. You, on the other hand, seem to think you need to be able to use your phone while driving.
Whatever you need to tell yourself. Just keep in mind that it was you, not me, who used the word “need”.
ETA: You also completely missed the point, FTR.
Yes, driving is boring. I did it five hours a day in stop and go traffic last quarter. Let me tell you about bored! Yet somehow I managed not to yak on my phone while I was doing it. It’s called being a fucking grown up, and accepting that commuting is fucking boring.
Personally I’m all for ticketing the Escalade-driving-USC-bimbo-trophy wife set for yakking on the phone while on the fucking freeway. I probably hone in instinctively on that particular subset of people, but it seems like 9/10 times that’s the type merging blindly into people without a turn signal or a glance in the mirror while blathering on the phone.
You said “what about emergencies?” in response to the idea that talking on the phone while driving should be banned. That implies that you think there are times when you need to use the phone while driving. If that’s wrong then how about you clarify what you meant.
Well of course not in stop-and-go traffic, you’d hit something! There is too much going on, I think we agree on that point.
I’m specifically referring to expressway driving, which is when I don’t see a problem with using my phone on speaker. Now on further contemplation, I realize expressways may be busier in other parts of the country than around here in central Michigan. For argument’s sake, let’s say 70mph, 2 lanes going the same direction, on-ramps about every 4 miles, and cars spaced about 10 seconds apart (or about 4 vehicles within visible range). Oh, and no weather problems like rain or snow. I base my argument on conditions similiar to this.
The conditions you describe are not typical of California freeways in metropolitan areas.
ETA: Or even in non-metro areas, like where I live.
Yeah, we can all drive whilst on the cell phone :rolleyes:
from here
Sadly there are plenty more cases such as these.
Use of a mobile phone whilst driving has been shown to impair driving as bad as drinking
http://www.greenflag.com/news/press/release_0702_2.html
Here in the UK, if you have a crash, the police will check both your alchohol levels and they will routinely demand your mobile phone logs, because it is so common for accidents to be caused by these things.
So to the OP and all those selfish fucking bastards who talk on their mobiles whilst drving, a big hearty FUCK YOU!
A nice tall glass of FUCK YOU to you as well. Has it not occurred to you that some people might be capable of driving and talking at the same time, while others are not? I’d prefer that governments not paint everybody with the same brush. And I’d also prefer that they not miss the point entirely and mandate the use of handsfree kits when that clearly won’t solve the problem. If that’s selfish, then so be it. Sometimes a little selfishness is okay in my book.
The thing is, some people could drive 120MPH safely, but other can’t, so you have blanket laws against it because you can’t have some doing it while others can’t. If poor phone drivers ruin it for everyone else, well blame them.
As for emergencies, a real emergency could be easily explained to the officer, same as if you’re speeding for a good reason, like youre chasing a car who just stole your kid- a cop wouldn’t ticket you for that, same as he wouldn’t ticket you if you were on the phone with a real emergency.
Any legislation that restricts our inalienable rights to right to yak on cell phones while operating a motor vehicle at 70mph in heavy traffic is obviously too onerous to complicate.
Also, that legislation that restricts the free flow of cocktails while operating said vehicle are equally odious. I feel perfectly fine after five or six martinis and therefore any studies that scientifically demonstrate a causal link between alcohol levels and driving ability belong in the trash next to my children’s cigarette butts.