Quote:
Originally Posted by acalliste
Setting aside the idea that speaking while driving is the same as drinking 10 tequila shots and driving, when you are driving sober you have the option of answering the phone or not. Making a call or not. Choosing to keep your primary focus on the road while talking or listening, and hanging up if needed. When you are drunk, you can't turn it off. You are drunk until it wears off.
So no, I don't think we should repeal DUI laws.
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First, please read what I actually write; it reduces the risk of responding inappropriately to things I didn't say. I have been *very* careful each time to write that driving while phoning is about equivalent to driving
at the legal limit of drunk -- about 0.08 to 0.10 %BAC, about 4 times the accident/death risks. Very few people will be anywhere near that limit with "10 tequila shots"; that will put anyone *way* over that limit, unless those are spread over 6 hours or so.
Second, yes it's a choice whether to answer the phone or not. Just like it's a choice to get behind the wheel drunk or not. In both cases that choice should be "not". How hard is this to grasp?
Quote:
Originally Posted by acalliste
Going back to whether speaking = being drunk, I don't really buy it. If that were true we would see a lot more crashes. I can see 10 people noticeably talking on their cell phones on my way to or from work on an average day, but I don't see them weaving in their lanes, running over curbs or stopping in the road for no reason the way drunk drivers do. The most I see is them being unable to maneuver a turn with one hand on the wheel because they have their phone in the other hand. Or they can't be bothered to check their blind spots because that would require removing their phones from their heads.
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What I wrote above indeed addresses this item as well. Being on the phone isn't equivalent to being completely falling-down blotto. It's about equivalent to being at the current legal limit of drunk. At which level, most drunks make it home safely as well, but not all -- four times as many don't compared to sober drivers.
So no, driving while phoning isn't a guarantee of an accident, and I never said it was. Driving drunk isn't a guarantee of an accident either. But both are a guarantee of increased risk, at a level that causes large numbers of unnecessary deaths in this country every year. Which is worth preventing to the extent that it is possible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by acalliste
... I think if people had to actually prove they could operate a vehicle safely, and make it harder to get a license, they would more conscientious drivers.
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This may or may not be true. Since the main problem now is already a lack of conscientiousness rather than a lack of skill, I don't see any evidence that this is true. The problem is NOT that it's too easy to get a license; the problem is that people aren't paying damn attention. Therefore making the license more difficult doesn't address the real problem. Measures to promote attention and punish inattention do. And it appears, if this thread makes nothing else clear, that there are those who will insist that they are "different", somehow exempt from the problem, no matter how much information, evidence, and education is applied to them, and thus will apparently only respond to punishment.
And of course, no matter how hard it is to get a license, those people STILL won't be "special snowflakes" immune to the laws of biology and physics.
And they STILL won't have the right to wilfully and callously endanger other people. Period.
PhilB