I’m sure it does.
Spoken like a true Floridian. I have to laugh when the President talks about being able to gather in small groups, get our freedoms back, in the near future. What?
We don’t have any stink’n rules here. I play golf with groups of guys nearly every day, there’s been indoor and outdoor dining, bars are open, gyms are open, schools have never closed, masks are optional at stores, our elevator is shared with others, simultaneously, in our building many times per day, etcetera.
Oh, did I mention, our economy here isn’t in shambles and everybody I know is gruntled.
CSA
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I am sure, also.
Driver distraction has always been a problem, and with the advent of cellphones, distraction became much more prevalent. With fewer cars on the road, I think that more people believe that they can look at their phones while driving without causing a problem. That might be true in many cases, but then there are always going to be other cases where that fairly brief phone-gazing session will be just long enough to cause an accident.
I don’t look at my phone while driving, and even though my personal policy recently caused me to lose my place in line for a Covid shot, I will still avoid looking at my phone while driving. Back in late January, I got a text from my county’s health department at 10:27AM, with a link for vaccine administration the next day. At 11:03, they sent a second text stating that all slots had been filled. Unfortunately, because I was driving at the time, I didn’t see either text until I arrived at my destination at 11:05. 
If I had selfishly looked at my phone while driving, I could have gotten my Covid shots about 1 month earlier than I actually did. In essence, I screwed myself out of the earlier shots by not looking at my phone while I was driving, but even that experience will not cause me to look at my phone while driving.
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I truly wish everybody was like you.
Every time I drive, I see people fiddling with their phones at lights, while driving down the road, on their motorcycles, on their BIKES and even on their skateboards, everywhere… even though it is illegal to do so. Smartphones are like heroin.
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+1 to @bing. These discussions haven’t gone well before, and they don’t have much to do with cars.
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On more than one occasion, I have had cars in the opposing lane that wandered into my lane on a country road, and when I blasted my horn at them, it was obvious that the drivers looked-up from something that was below the level of the windows. In almost every case, I’m sure it was a cellphone.
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I wonder if anyone has done any research on the correlation (if any) between an individual’s willingness to accept personal risk, their willingness to expose others to risk and their driving ability/record?
Right now the person caught driving 100 mph on a deserted highway (personal risk) would have their license suspended but the same person doing 60 mph on a freeway while chatting on their cell (exposing others to risk) would hardly merit a ticket.
Do we have this right?
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"Beancounter,
Do we have this right?
I believe you do.
You have this right but WE as a society don’t have this right!
Not sure risk takers have poor driving records. I raced cars for over a decade, still do track days and I don’t drive like an idiot on the road. I get my jollies away from the general public.
In Minnesota I can’t even pick up my dead cell phone while driving and the penalty can become severe. I never know who is calling so I told the wife if she is calling me, call twice right away and I’ll pull off the road and call back.
But I get your point. I always argue the reasonableness and risks posed to others and the gray areas of the law as the penalties are charged but the legal system is not always “fair”. A guy driving 100 on an empty autobahn in Germany in a new BMW with 140 mph tires is perfectly fine, but the same circumstance on I 35 is a horrendous crime. But a guy driving the 30 mph speed limit in a congested area with school kids around and weaving in and out would be a clear danger. Like I said though before, I never realized going in the ditch on an icy road warrants a ticket for failure to maintain vehicle control. Gray area, gray area, gray area.
Or get an updated sound system with Bluetooth or get a newer vehicle. Then you won’t have to touch your phone. Can even make calls hands free…After pressing call button say " Call Wife". It’s simple.
Bluetooth has been standard in most vehicles for a decade.
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I agree but… yet I see many, many people driving later model cars with their phones stuck to their faces. Apparently the technology is too complicated for many to master! They need to ask their 11 year old to help them. 
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I observe the same thing, fairly often.
This is one of those - RTFM moments. Each system is a little different…but the steps are clearly spelled out in the owners manual.
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But how many poster come here to ask questions clearly spelled out in the manual? Maybe a $500 ticket would encourage drivers to RTFM?
There seems to be a lot of resistance to that kind of fine in state legislatures.
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Consumer Reports recently posted a “What does this light on my dashboard mean?” lesson on their website. Perhaps we should include a link to that site when the inevitable “oil light” and CEL questions crop up. There is really not much there that couldn’t be found in the Owner’s Manual, but maybe it would help.
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I decided not to join in this thread, but then I realized that, for months, the only thing I could do to get out of the house and enjoy something completely different was to take a ride on a motorcycle or scooter. That was completely unaffected by the pandemic, and the light traffic was a pleasant bonus. It has been clear to me that accidents and single car fatalities could rise because people were letting off steam in the same way, and not everyone is a 75 year old man with not much physical aggression left.
I think it was Ray Magliozzi who said the epitaph on many tombstones should be the person’s last words, “Watch this!”.
+1
In my case, the rides were in my car, but–all the same–those rides were almost the only “normal” thing that I could do at the height of the pandemic.
I can’t quantify it, but it seems to me that there have been a lot more one car fatalities over the past year than we had previously. Whether these were the result of inattention, or extreme speed (or a combination of the two…), or whether some of these incidents might have been an act of suicide I can’t say, and it seems that there is rarely any follow-up to the initial reporting of the incident, so we almost never find out the cause of the accident.
Really looking back, it’s something to behold how much we have given up. Way back in this crazy state, we were not allowed to leave our house except for certain errands. I remember driving to check on the cemetery and in my mind if I was stopped, I would plea that I was on the way to the lumber yard which was “allowed”. Who the hey decides where I’m allowed to drive to? I’m doing a couple western civ courses and I never ever thought we would ever come to this slippery slope.
All of that is really “in theory”, IMHO.
Do you actually know of any cases where cops pulled somebody over at the height of the lockdown, and demanded proof of their destination? Perhaps you know of an instance, I but I have never heard of one.
I am an exceptionally law-abiding person who doesn’t want to ever see the inside of a jail cell, but I never hesitated to get into my car and take an extended ride a couple of times each week.
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