Do You Text and Drive? Should You Be Allowed To?

"...him who must not be named."

Who's that... Walks-in-Storms?

Did you mean this guy:

Storms as He Walks is one of the great Thunderbirds who assumed human form and came to earth to help mankind. His special skill was in warfare, and he often scouted out the enemy by walking in the clouds above them. When Storms as He Walks was on the warpath, a drizzle of rain always marked his presence in the sky. When he attacked, his warcry was "sons of war!"¹ A warparty containing the Twins, Redhorn, Wolf, Turtle, and Storms as He Walks once went after two dangerous Red Waterspirits. In the attack, Storms as He Walks climbed higher into the air than any of the other spirits, and was the first to attack. Just the same, his efforts were said to be feeble when compared to the Twins.² In another raid with Redhorn, Turtle, Wolf, and Otter along, Storms as He Walks won first war honors.³

His love for humanity was so great that he stayed behind on earth with Redhorn even after his uncle went back to the Thunderbird spirit village. This occasioned some resentment, and when Storms as He Walks got into trouble while wrestling a Giant, his fellow Thunderbirds would not answer his thunderings for help. As a result, the Giant killed him, although many years later the sons of Redhorn restored him to life

Re: Do You Text and Drive? Should You Be Allowed To?

I should be allowed to... the rest of you shouldn't because you need to keep an eye out for me!

I believe that people should have as much freedom as possible without impinging on the freedom of others. In this case, texting while driving definitely does affect the safety of others. We all have to share the same roadways.

It should be illegal and the law should be enforced.

Enforcement is the difficult part. How does a policeman determine you are texting, for certain? "Sorry officer, but I wasn't texting - I was trying to kill a bee in the car with my finger tip ..... Uh, yes, very strange to see one in January." Perhaps we let the state trooper out on the super slab have the ability to intercept any cell phone broadcast to determine if someone is texting? Like that idea? So if not that, we allow them to stop any and all who appear to be texting. (???) I can see where this will go - there will be records kept and some particular race / age group / sex / whatever will be targeted more often, and lawsuits and protests follow. Or perhaps the government intercepts all cell phone calls, which they already do, and compares the timing to when the GPS tracker in your car is on the road, and sends you a ticket 3 months later? No - that won't work either. Good idea to enforce this, but only total idiots will ever get caught.

I agree that enforcement is a problem, and I don't have a solution. (Ironically, when there is greater enforcement, some texters keep their phones in their laps to avoid detection and drive even more recklessly.)

Having been forced off the road by a distracted driver coming from the other direction in my lane, I am afraid that I have no tolerance.

Never had that happen....yet. I drive a lot of back country roads where speeds in the range of 40 to 50mph are moving along pretty good. I have on more than one occasion, come up behind someone driving about 10 to 20mph, and it was fairly easy to see they were probably texting, by observing their body motions. At least on very winding roads, some have enough sense to at least slow down. However, getting slammed from the rear because you are moving too slow and in the middle of the road is not necessarily a good thing either.

Basically, the get caught after the fire and rescue has to use Jaws of Life to retrieve what is left of them from the smoldering wreckage. That is if there is also enough left of the cell phone to pull it up.

Also, if the occifer has another reason to pull someone over (lane weaving, erratic driving speed, near misses, tail light issues, etc.) He should always have the right to ask for their cell phone (unlocked) to review recent activity on texts, calls, web browsing, etc. The law is the law, and there should be no exceptions made on enforcement... Hillary.

Probable cause is always a reason to search, and should not be resisted.

If I were the king, the punishment would be so disproportionate that no one would dare risk it. Drag hanging comes to mind, naked through a cactus patch, but there again that is always my knee-jerk punishment of choice for idiots.

There really is an excellent breed of men and women out there right now enforcing the good laws we have. Let us not make things more complicated for them.

Ahhhh...yes....probable cause. You know what happens with that don't you? At some point a particular group with similar traits, be it age, race, gender, country of origin, whatever will say that a disproportionate number of them are being pulled over under the guise of probable cause and the practice of stopping for probable cause will have to end, and politicians will appease them by making it so, or there will be a completely random stopping of drivers with totally phony probable cause reasons, just to appease the group that feels picked on, and the ensuing annoyance of so many people for no reason at all, will lead again to a political end of such practice. Won't work.

The only solution to totally end this practice is to make cell phones not work inside a vehicle. That could be done, but it will be 15 or more years until most cars were so equipped. Either that or speed up the integration of autonomous vehicles - then who cares if you are watching the road - the car is and it certainly won't be texting. That assumes the Dooms Day scenario never happens as on Terminator.Then, they might be texting other machines.

But, again, if we are so concerned about distractions, there are legally inserted options on cars right now that require you to push a little button and read a display. I say we should also require those to come out of cars. Heck, you ought to see the Scion XB speedometer. It is perfectly centered in the dashboard so you must not only glance away from the road ahead of you, but also look to your right. It is not good for paying attention to the road ahead of you. (my Wife's car is an XB)

Well, if a statistically significant subset finds themselves in that position, perhaps they should review their collective behavior, instead of blaming those out there who are only trying to help them help themselves, kind of silly don't you think?

Other than that, build a Faraday cage into the vehicle itself, so that no XMTr will work.

At least until a window gets rolled down. There really is no solution short of shooting people that have cell phones terminally stuck to their ear, looking down for that all the time, etc.

When I first had the cell phone, for calls in the 90's yes. But it quickly was apparent to me it was a distraction. That I'd pull over to answer. I started to hate it, what other device or situation interrupts you and you feel you HAVE answer it. Only now with a cell phone, it's can be 24/7. I was beginning to despise it.

Until I started to treat for the most part it like a land line. And returned calls when I was available to do so. My friends were a little irked on why I never answered the phone.

So for texting while driving, never.

But I loved the GPS.

We also need to ask if you text and walk. I narrowly missed hitting a patron of a local bar who was walking to his car from the bar while texting. He stopped, without looking up from his phone, for the car that preceded me, presumably from noise recognition only. He stepped right out in front of me on my road bicycle. I was going around 15 mph and did some fancy swerving to miss him. At that point he looked away from the cell phone with a shocked look on his face. Now maybe alcohol had a small part in this, but definitely his full attention was on the cell phone.

When I leave work, there is a school near the plant so you'd see kids walking on the sidewalk. And one spring, Snow melted and there's puddles everywhere. As I was walking to my car in the parking lot, I notices all the kids staring at their phones. crossed the street, without even looking not breaking a stride. Fortunately, the car saw her and stopped.

Where my car was parked, there was a deep puddle on the sidewalk where she was heading to, so I just watched her. And sure enough she walk right into with the water to her ankles... she stepped out of it and saw me leaning against my car and she laughed and said she should watch where she's going....

I asked her when she crossed the street back there if she saw the car she walked in front of.... her response was "What car?"