Let the punishment fit the crime!

[XT225]

Well, if smaller fines aren't getting the message across then the solution seems obvious doesn't it? I'm surprised, no, appalled how often I still see drivers with a phone pressed to their heads even with all the publicity this issue has got so far.

It's really getting scary out there. Drivers on cel phones (even hands free ones) just don't see properly. Studies have shown that driving while using the phone can impair a persons vision so much that their eyes cannot see a pedestrian right in front of them. Compare a human brain to a single core processor in a computer; its just not capable of processing much more than one major activity at a time. We aren't super human quad cores. Here's an interesting link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 113154.htm

ps: and those who say that they can function just as well while driving on the phone are the same types who think that .08 means nothing; they can drive just fine after a 1/2 dozen beers. Get real!

[Roadster]

A hardship for those having to take a course on driving??? TFB,,, maybe people will think about how hard it might be should they be the ones living out in the boonies,,, move to town then if you must drive with cell phone in use. Any hardship for doing so could only prevent someone from doing so if they have half a brain. I am all for making bad choices pay the price when it could involve other peoples lives. Dont Do It.

[Woodenhead]

You could make it punishable by death and people would still do it.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

[KL3-Something]

Changing the law to include mandatory seizure (impounding) of the phone won't work. Most cops would stop enforcing it. Here's why:

Police are already over-burdened with administrative duties. Right now it takes 5-10 minutes per violation ticket between the stop, serving the ticket and making the required notes. For non violation ticket police work five minutes of active enforcement duties usually translates into 15-30 minutes of administrative duties (i.e. paperwork). Now if the law were changed to involve phone seizures that would now mean that the member would have to document that seizure. Instead of only a ticket the member would have to open up an operational file to document the circumstances, account for the seized property, transport the phone to the exhibit locker for holding and then hold the file in their work queue along with all the other files that are still under investigation for the various reasons until the disposition of the phone (i.e return to owner). It will result in about an additional hour of follow-up It would result in the F.I.D.O. approach. They would see someone on their phone and decide "*bleep* It Drive On". It isn't worth the paperwork that will take them off the road for up to an hour to deal with that one offence while letting the 5 or 10 others they could get in that time go unenforced.

Then there would need to be powers of search included in the legislation. Because you know that as soon as the driver sees the lights in their mirror that phone is going to go under the seat, into their pants or tossed into the far reaches of the vehicle. Powers of search would be required in order for the member to locate and then seize the phone. Which is fine and dandy, until the member finds some stolen property or drugs or illegal firearms during the search. Then, as soon as that goes to court it would be found that the legislation empowering the police to search for the phone is unconstitutional and gets struck down because peoples right to privacy outweighs the governments right to search for phones for punitive reasons only (as opposed to evidentiary reasons).

I just think that the police should start using Drive Without Due Care tickets for electronic device users ($368 and 6 points). Electronic device tickets at $167 with no penalty points is not enough of a deterrent. And the texting section which does have points attached was written with such a narrow scope that it is almost impossible to prove in court.

[underscore]

I like this approach: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/2 ... 16700.html

[Ken7]

Perhaps if the offending item - the cellphone - were confiscated for a period of time; the law might have more impact? I would not be against raising the fine however.

Years ago, the Police used to confiscate Radar detection devices. You had a option is out of Province, drive over the $400- 600.00 device.

How would that impact you as a owner of a Blackberry or IPhone??

I think that would be greater then any fine.

[Ken7]

A hardship for those having to take a course on driving??? TFB,,, maybe people will think about how hard it might be should they be the ones living out in the boonies,,, move to town then if you must drive with cell phone in use. Any hardship for doing so could only prevent someone from doing so if they have half a brain. I am all for making bad choices pay the price when it could involve other peoples lives. Dont Do It.

I would suggest that there is not one persons you know who, if they missed a text or a phone call until they could pull over would be financially devastated by the miss.

Let's get with it people.

I like asking these kids who are scraping their pockets to buy a coffee, "How much does that phone make you a month?" Then I ask them, "what does it cost you?"

[XT225]

Ken7: Bang on! I asked a local business man who is continually on the phone while driving, that very question. He answered that he was afraid to pull over to the side of the road, as his vehicle could be hit from behind, while he was parked and taking the phone call. Ya, right....what a dumb excuse. Much more chance of HIM hitting some innocent bystander while he is driving and on the friggin phone!

[Roadster]

Many years ago my cell phone made me money by having it with me and getting right back to my caller but never once did that happen by me answering while on the road. I called right back after pulling over. It was my only phone and it had an answering service on it so I never really missed a call. Some calls were worth a good amount of money and that was why I didnt even bother with a land line at home. Having my phone with me was all I needed. When I look back at all them important money making years of catching those calls I am glad I didnt kill anyone to get them.
I am noticing peeps and even the odd cop pulling in front of my house to make calls, its damned good to see it happen.
If a business man is Scared of pulling over then he should turn into a side street off the main road, no excuse. Thats even worse IMO then a friendly call because business to some is What puts bread on the table and lets say a realtor,,, not wanna mess things up so is the mind on the road? No, its on talking smart and fast in many cases so as not to do or say the wrong thing. Numbers are big to those people, tell the caller to hold on to their panties a minute and pull off, get it done and then drive again.
No call even one from your kid is so important that you should answer it and kill someone else.
I was about to hire a woman once, she sat in the interview and her teen called, they yakked a short bit and the mom said "Ok, wait till I come home then and we will decide" seemed that wasnt good enough, the kid called back. She excused herself again and answered it, they slammed a comment at each other hung up and that was it for me,,, and didnt that kid call back again while she was leaving,,, Mom lost a job and kid dont care,,, sorry kid you wont get them designer jeans for the dance next week. Some parents dont even know they can tell their kid to wait till they call them, after a drive, or an interview. So kids get in their cars now and do what they saw mom and dad do, yak.
I have seen more swerving by cell users then drunks lately, no wonder its becoming a record high over drunk driving, it all needs to come with high consequences when a life is lost, drunk or busy doing other crap besides driving. You dont know anymore then a drunk that you are swerving because you are not paying attention.

[jimsenchuk]

Don’t Text to a Driver!
Could you be sued for sending a text to someone who’s driving? A New Jersey court says yes.

By Emily Bazelon|Posted Thursday, Aug. 29, 2013, at 6:59 PM



Texting while driving is probably the most dangerous thing generally law-abiding people do on a regular basis. We’ve only just begun to face up to that—and figure out how to stop ourselves. This summer, we got a new tool in Werner Herzog’s amazing documentary about the disastrous consequences for texters and the victims of the accidents they cause. Meanwhile, new research suggests that the vast majority of states should do more to crack down on this hazard.

But what about texting to drivers? This week an appeals court in New Jersey suggested that if you text a driver, you too could be in legal trouble. It’s a ruling that’s probably the first of its kind, and it’s at the outer limits of legal liability. I’ve never really thought seriously before about not texting someone when I know they’re likely behind the wheel. The New Jersey judges said we all have a “duty” not to text in that circumstance.

In the New Jersey case, a couple was riding a motorcycle in 2009 when they were sideswiped by a Chevy pickup after it crossed the double yellow line. The husband and wife, Linda and David Kubert, each lost part of a leg. The 18-year-old driver of the truck, Kyle Best, was texting moments before the accident. He settled with the couple. But they also sued Shannon Colonna, 17 at the time of the accident. She was friends with Best, and she sent him one text message that he received on that fateful drive.

The New Jersey appeals court had to decide whether the Kuberts could go ahead with their suit against Colonna. The judges said no, because there was no proof that Colonna knew Best was driving when she texted him. That’s the right ruling: To impose liability on someone who isn’t even in the car, at a minimum courts should have proof that someone in Colonna’s position knew the person she texted was behind the wheel and would open the message to read it, as the New Jersey judges said.

What’s more controversial is a further step that two of the three judges on the appellate panel made—to treat the texter who is outside the car like a passenger who is in it. (The third judge dissented from this part of the ruling.) For the majority, Judge Victor Ashrafi wrote:

When the sender knows that the text will reach the driver while operating a vehicle, the sender has a relationship to the public who use the roadways similar to that of a passenger physically present in the vehicle. ... [A] passenger must avoid distracting the driver. The remote sender of a text who knows the recipient is then driving must do the same.

The other obvious parallel is the bartender or party-giver who lets someone he or she knows is about to drive get drunk or keep drinking. States tend to write laws that impose this kind of liability, but not necessarily to enforce them. The basic insight here is that it’s hard to hold one person responsible for another’s bad behavior. There are pockets of law that impose a duty on one person for another’s safety, but they usually involve a particular kind of “special relationship,” as the legal doctrine puts it, for example between a parent and a child, or an employer and an employee, or a hotel and its guests.

Adding bartenders and their customers to that list, or texters and drivers, is a stretch. It creates a legal standard that is not really meant to be enforced in court, but rather to remind citizens of their responsibilities. The New Jersey judges made that explicit in their decision about the Kuberts and Shannon Colonna: “Just as the public has learned the dangers of drinking and driving through a sustained campaign and enhanced criminal penalties and civil liability, the hazards of texting when on the road, or to someone who is on the road, may become part of the public consciousness when the liability of those involved matches the seriousness of the harm,” Judge Ashrafi wrote.

Court rulings like this also expose a weakness in bans on texting while driving. On the one hand, 41 states have enacted these prohibitions since 2007, when Washington state became the first to do so. Simulation studies show slower response times for drivers who text than drivers who are drunk or high on pot. But a study published in June strongly suggests that most state bans aren’t having much of a deterrent effect. University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee economists Rahi Abouk and Scott Adams divided state laws into categories. The weakest kind only bans texting for some drivers—like new ones—and only allows the police to charge it as a secondary offense (in other words, if they had another reason to stop the car). Stronger bans universally outlaw texting, for all drivers, and give police the authority to charge it as the primary offense. And the strongest laws of all ban texting along with all other uses of hand-held phones—talking as well as texting.

Abouk and Adams looked at the rate of fatalities in accidents involving single cars with single occupants (in other words, just the driver). They found no drop in the rate of these fatalities in states with weak texting bans. States with stronger bans experienced an 8 percent drop. But in the states without universal bans against using hand-held phones, there was a rebound effect. Four months after the law went into effect, the accident rate was back to its previous level.

The rebounding was lower only in states that bar drivers from using their cellphones entirely. In the Atlantic, Eric Jaffe gives a good reason why: “If drivers are allowed to use their phones sometimes, enforcing specific types of phone use becomes nearly impossible.” It’s too hard for the cops to know, or to prove, who is picking up his cell in the car for what reason. Jaffe takes the next step to argue that “the easiest way to facilitate strong enforcement is to ban handheld mobile usage in general,” but points out that “according to the Governors Highway Safety Association, only 9 states (including D.C.) currently meet all these criteria.”

Passing stiffer state laws to crack down on drivers is more logical and useful than imposing liability on texters who are not in the car, like Shannon Colonna. The New Jersey judges, though, can be forgiven their howl of frustration. Texting while driving is such a massive and bedeviling problem that it's natural to look beyond drivers to solve it. In the end, though, this is really about them.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... nding.html

[Captain Awesome]

Anyone caught twice should be banned from owning a cell phone for a full year. That should do the trick!

You can't ban people from owning a cell phone.

[Roadster]

Even if you could a person could use his/her spouses or even thier kid's phone or get one under those peoples names. I can easily buy two or three different phones with all different nuumbers on my same account and give them out to family or even employees.

[mexi cali]

None of us should be surprised that this happens regularly. By now everybody has heard horror stories about the dangers of leaving pets and kids in cars on hot days but it still happens. It just happened tragically in Arizona of all places and don't you think that anyone living in that region would know enough not to leave a child in a car but dad did and kid is dead.

The Wal Mart incident a couple weeks back with the dog and the police smashing the window and the owner being furious that her car was damaged.

That is the problem. There are so many freakin morons out there and I mean developmentally challenged to the point that you cannot hope to ever convince them or show them how dangerous a behavior is. They simply do not have the capacity to perform rationally or to understand that the statistics that are published to support the real danger of engaging in risky behavior applies to them to. There are so many who truly believe that the rules do not apply to them and that they will never be affected by their actions.

Idiocy, narcissism, megalomania, egomania; we are surrounded by it every day and unless and until the laws are reshaped to where they have the effect of truly F...ing up the lives of the scoff laws (good one hey Fluff?) nothing will change.

[HoboJo]

Not fool proof but the newer phones often have GPS. Simply code the cell towers to refuse connections or terminate connections to moving phones?

As a plus, public transit commuters won't have to listen to others "private" calls. Often loud, always inappropriate.

[Roadster]

Not fool proof but the newer phones often have GPS. Simply code the cell towers to refuse connections or terminate connections to moving phones?

As a plus, public transit commuters won't have to listen to others "private" calls. Often loud, always inappropriate.

So would this mean you couldnt even use your phone if you were walking? I am all for not hearing other peeps private calls but that happens even while sitting in a restaurant. Its about the worst thing because people tend to talk louder on a phone then they do to each other at a table. Too bad people couldnt be required to go through a phone etiquette kind of course before being allowed to buy a cell phone.before cell phones we were told we had to make our calls in the house so someone else could hear the TV instead of us. Now a kid can sit right on the couch and yak right beside their parents during a movie, no wonder they disrespect others on a bus or on a restaurant or while on the road ignoring all rules of the road leaving others at risk.