Has anyone been a passenger with the driver on the cell phone in a heated disscusion and your trying to tell them to pay attention , that they just almost sideswiped the old lady on the corner,and they look at you like ( no i didn’t, your crazy) and DO YOU MIND i’m on the phone here…
I no longer drive with a ( Gabber)…
or in public transportation , had a driver of a bus on the phone asking her 5yrold what she did today…
there needs to be some ( not much ) refinement.
i guess it depends on how the conversation is going as to if they have an accident of not…
Honey…you slept with who?-- will cause bodily harm
oh Honey, yes …oh…yes…— will also cause bodily harm…
Pilots have another advantage. Things happen much more slowly in most airplanes. Except during takeoff and landing, a pilot can devote a few seconds to a conversation without crashing. In an automobile, you are, at all times, just a second away from disaster.
My wife totalled my 2000 Honda Accord last year in April when she made a left turn into the path of a Chevrolet Suburban that was going 45mph. She swears that she looked before she turned, started to turn and then WHAM-O. She was quite fortunate and suffered only minor injuries (a testament to the safety of airbags and Hondas).
I took the time to drive to the crash scene and noticed that she had a sightline of over half a mile so it would have been IMPOSSIBLE not to see the Suburban.
Yes, she was on the phone when she turned into the path of the Suburban. The police say that if she had turned a half second sooner she would be dead due to the dynamics of the crash. She was so intent on her phone conversation (and she was even using a hands free ear piece) that she could have DIED. If using a hands free phone can make you NOT see a Suburban headed your way at 45 mph imagine what dialing a phone must do!!!
Unfortunatly I have had many occasions when someone has drifted into my lane or sat at a green light while talking on a cell phone. So far I have not been involved in any accident related to them, but I am sure many have.
I for one would hang up on someone if I knew they were calling me while driving (except for the rare occasion where they are getting directions to someplace they don’t know and then they should dial while parked.).
It should be illegal and it should be prime facie evidence of guilt in an accident.
Airplane pilots have a fairly concentrated subject matter to talk about
You’ve never fired up a scanner down at the local airport have you? 
and can do that with hands free equipment,
I have a bluetooth headset for my phone. Check.
no telephone numbers to look up
No, they just have to flip through frequency books (or a flight computer if they’re lucky enough to have one) to look up radio frequencies, and they have to change those frequencies quite a bit. 3-7 times within 20 minutes of takeoff.
and are talking to people who are also limiting their subject matter, not to mention that an airliner has a copilot.
A cessna does not necessarilly have a copilot, and many’s the time I’ve heard both airline and private pilots chatting about lunch, the football game, etc, over the radio.
Car driving requires intense concentration all of the time to stay between the lines and to avoid random unexpected events.
And flying an airplane doesnt? You’re on the radio the most where your concentration must be the highest - takeoffs, landings, and transiting airport airspace.
Auto drivers on cell phones with a variety of things to discuss and airplane pilots on radios, in my view, are not similar enough to make this a valid comparison.
We disagree. The primary difference between the two activities is that the pilot has been highly trained and is thinking about flying first, talking second. The driver has been barely trained and probably is thinking more about the conversation than the car.
It’s not the cell phones’ fault, it’s the idiotic way in which they’re used.
[/quote]
Don’t ya know that that’s the only time people have to talk on the phone? sarcasm Some people, I swear, don’t even make calls unless they are driving. It’s crazy!! I can’t even begin to count how many morons I see on cell phones who are so distracted that they don’t see anyone around them.
Going 50 in the fast lane and not getting over.
Making a left turn into oncoming traffic.
Not going when the light turns green.
Merging without looking first.
Lane changes without looking first.
Most of the time I see this stuff it’s people on cell phones. Pull over when you have to talk on the phone and quit putting everyone elses life in danger because your to good to pay attention to what you’re doing.
i HATE Chicago, its so dang hard to get around
About a year ago I was headed to work when the usual happened. I was in the fast lane about to head down a curve when I noticed that cars in the lane ahead of me had stopped for a dumptruck retrieving trash from the median. I managed to stop behind a Jeep with tinted windows with no problem and checked my rear view. Here comes a Ford F-250 like a BatOutOfHell, phone at his ear and no sign of stopping. Long story short, he hit me so hard that I bounced around like a pinball between him and the jeep, so long that both ends were crushed. The guy in front of me jumped out with his phone attached to his ear just like the guy behind me. They were both on their phones. In the police report, the guy in front said I hit him before the guy hit me. I was at a complete stop. The guy who hit me was a tow-truck driver, who knew the cop sent to straighten out the incident. This was a no-win situation. I’m just thankful that the Nissan Exterra was tough enough. If I had been in my wife’s Civic Hybrid, I’d probably just be a spot in the road. Most people are reasonable but these 2 are on the top of my list of numbnutz.
The real problem is trying to do two things at once, with one of them being driving a car.
The only two reportable accidents I was ever in were caused by the other driver not paying attention because she was on the phone.
The first accident was in 1998. I was signaling a right turn from a highway into a driveway. The driveway was about 50 feet beyond an intersection with a side road on the left of the highway. Often, cars went around the cars waiting to turn left onto the side road on the shoulder. But the shoulder ends at the driveway, passing under the driveway in a culvert.
As I started to turn right into the driveway, the other car passed me on the right on the shoulder. Her rear quarter panel hit my front bumper from behind. My van was built like a tank, and suffered no damage. But it destroyed the plastic panel on the other car. I’m still trying to figure how the other car jumped the culvert. The trim strip from the other car was wrapped around the mailbox post of the house I was visiting.
The accident was caused by the fact that the other driver was on the phone, and didn’t observe that I was signaling a right turn, instead of a left.
The second accident was in 2003, and put an end to that same van. I was driving straight ahead in the left lane of a three-lane one-way street. The light ahead of me turned green as I approached, and the driver of the other car, which had stopped for the light, turned left from the center lane, right in front of me. There was no way I could stop in time. After we hit, she drove away at high speed ,going the wrong way on the one-way street, and further damaging my vehicle. But she then came back.
This driver was also on the phone. She said that she had been in the left lane, but the position of my undrivable stopped vehicle showed otherwise.
In both cases, the drivers continued talking on the phones until the officers made them put their phones away. And in the case of the second accident, the phone kept ringing during the discussion.
The 450 feet is supposed to be 50 feet. I accidentally hit two keys, and didn’t notice until I had posted.
WHY CAN’T WE FIX MISTEAKS???
(Hey! Now we can! And I did!)
“Often, cars sent around the cars”
The word “sent” is supposed to be “went”.
(fixed now that it is enabled)
We have seen a number of roads like this one and very suprised not to find alot of accidents the way people drive on them and they dont have to be on the phone either.
What ever happened to slowing down and waiting for someone to turn left instead of using the shoulder?
We were on Teton Pass going into Jackson Hole last year (very windy and hilly mtn pass from ID to WY) when a truck pulling a trailer was on the shoulder to allow people to pass him but there wasnt alot of room to pass (2 lane road in most places) and traffic was on the other side and people passed us just to get around him on a double yellow too. Gee too bad they didnt go over the embankment and down into the ravine!!! teton county sheriff doesnt care either so thank god for the WY Hwy patrol. Just imagine if these folks were on the phone and trying to negiotate these turns too.
I agree completely. When I took driver’s ed in high school, I can remember my insructor saying: “When you get behind the steering wheel of a vehicle, the ONLY thing that should have your undivided attention is the road and the others drivers on it.” I used to eat while driving but I came to realize that I was engaging in similar behavior that cellphone users do. Recognizing my own hypocrisy, I now only drive when behind the wheel.
Cell phoney drivers are something that I experience every day of my life. I sincerely believe that every person who drives while talking on a cell phone believes that he or she is the exception to the rule and can drive and talk just fine.
Those people don’t see any problems driving while on the phone.
And why don’t they see problems?
Because they’re too distracted and unfocused to see the problems they and others like them are causing!!!
If I drive for a half hour in my neighborhood I will see on a typical day - people on cell phones driving and they are-
Stopping at a green light
Going through a red light
Not going when a light changes from red to green
Driving extra slowly and weaving with a trail of cars behind him/her
Swerving and not realizing they are causing someone else to maneuver to avoid an accident
In the fast lane and driving slowly
In the slow lane and driving quickly
to name a few…
P.S. AND why do cell phoneys have to talk on the phone when they are trying to park their SUV’s?
Is there a moment in their lives that they might possibly want to stop and think about what they are actually doing in the area they are occupying?
Cell phoneys have a completely opposite philosophy from those who live a normal life.
Remember ‘Be Here Now’? or Live for the moment?
Nowadays it is ‘Please stand by. I’ll get back to here & now when I get off my cell phone’
Pilots on the radio are talking to the air traffic control to get instructions on where to fly. And oncoming planes are not just feet caway from their planes.
Clowns on cell phones are just yabbering (or worse, trying to do business, with all kinds of facts and figures).
I agree.
They paved the shoulder because cars going around in the dirt caused severe erosion.
But if the driver hadn’t been on a cell phone, she would have seen that I was signaling a right, not a left.
Every time some maniac almost hits me, invariable it is a dope on a cell phone!
But even worse, is listening to some fat, white-trash momma, yacking loudly in line at the supermarket, about, god knows what moronic topic, and you can’t escape… god, if ONLY I had a cell phone jammer!
Hey its not just white trash talking mommas doing this at the grocery store. Just as many men have cell phones and are seen by all yakking away!!!