Regulations to outlaw temptation won’t work. It’s a band aid on a melanoma.
The problem is cultural. people don’t take driving as a serious full-time job.
The real solution would be better training of new drivers and enforcement to get the knuckleheads off the road.
How do they prevent knuckleheads from flying planes?
@starman1 – Thank you. Obvious as a bluetooth helmet is, I hadn’t even thought of that. Just chalk me up as a dinosaur Luddite! LOL
“How do they prevent knuckleheads from flying planes?”
Answer…they don’t:
I think that circuitsmith nailed it. 100 years ago one had to have a good knowledge of how to repair a car in order to drive one. When I learned to drive (60 years ago) I had to at least know how to manually shift gears. It was seen as DRIVING in those days. These days the automobile is seen as an extension of one’s living room that will convey the occupants from point A to point B. The emphasis is on being comfortable, including entertainment, during the transition. Even Consumer Reports devotes a significant amount of discussion to the infotainment system when they test cars. Spend more than 15 minutes on the road today, and one realizes that a person doesn’t really need to know how to drive in order to get a license to pilot over a ton of metal, glass, and steel on the roads at high speeds.
Yes, Yes, YES! I rejoice every time I see a driver NOT talking on the phone. Phones are used for so much these days, navigation, as mp3 players or streaming music all connected to the cars as they drive. Is impossible to confirm someone texting while driving. They might be navigating or changing the channel on Pandora or iHeart Radio, you can’t tell the difference. It would be nice if they’d take a second and actually drive.
Is it just me or does it seem like more drivers are being very sloppy about wandering across the center line these days?
Since the passage of many cell-phone use laws in the past couple of years…many people are hiding their cell-phone use. Many times when I go away on business we call this company call Flight-Line. They have these big vans/buses that sit high up. Last time I rode it…I lost count of the number of people using their cell phone while it sat in their lap.
So just because you don’t see them using their phone…I’ll wager a vast majority of the lane wanderer’s are using one.
My wife finally convinced me that I should have a smartphone, so two days ago, I replaced my cell phone with a smartphone. At 72, the learning curve is rather steep, but I have mastered a few things. I do know that there are some things I can do with the smartphone that I couldn’t do with my old cell phone, but most are things I really never thought I wanted to do. My wife thought I should have the smartphone because we are taking a rail trip later this month. The train we are taking doesn’t have wi-fi and she found that she could tether her tablet to a smart phone. We bought a tablet for my son for Christmas. My 12 year old grand daughter figured it out in less than 5 minutes and my 40 year old son figured it out in less than 15 minutes. In January, I bought a tablet for my wife. She had it figured out in about a day. It’s taking me a little longer with the smartphone. I did pair it with the Bluetooth system in our Toyota Sienna so I can answer the phone in the car without taking my hands off the wheel.
My wife thinks that it is important for geezers like me to keep up with technology and I agree. So far, I like the buttons on my cell phone better than the touch screen on the smartphone, but maybe I’ll get used to it. If I live long enough, I’ll have to get used to a touch screen in a car. However, I still liked the controls in my 1954 Buick. It had a “Selectronic” radio and there was a button on the floor between the clutch and brake pedals to advance the radio to the next station. That simple radio where once I turned it on, I didn’t have to take my eyes off the road to change stations made the most sense to me. I didn’t have to go through a bunch of menus to adjust the radio. Setting the clock with a knob as I did on the old Buick made more sense to me than having to go through a couple of menus to set the clock as I do in my Sienna. I guess that is the old geezer in me.
I agree it is important for an old geezer like me to keep up with technology, but some of the new technology in cars doesn’t seem to make them any better than the older cars that didn’t have this technology. If this technology is so distracting that it causes drivers to wander out of their lane, I don’t think it is so great.
“Setting the clock with a knob as I did on the old Buick made more sense to me than having to go through a couple of menus to set the clock as I do in my Sienna.”
Actually, those menus are not the latest technology when it comes to setting a clock.
On my 2011 Subaru, it automatically picks up the correct time setting from the government’s atomic clock in Colorado. All I have to do twice a year is to choose between Daylight Savings Time and Standard Time.
@VDCdriver–I guess Subaru is one up on Toyota as my Toyota Sienna is a 2011. We do have an atomic clock in our house that I bought at WalMart for about $10. My wife lost the instruction manual and when I had to replace the battery, it took me over an hour of fooling with it to get it to work. I much prefer the pendulum clock manufactured by Seth Thomas before 1900 that I inherited from my grandmother. However, I guess having a pendulum hanging down under the dashboard wouldn’t be practical.
I’ve started using my GPS on my motorcycle, but I keep the smart phone in my pocket and only respond to the audible instructions I hear through my ear buds. I can’t imagine mounting a GPS on the handlebars. In fact, that’s one reason I’ve never wanted a Goldwing. That thing has too many controls that I don’t want to even look at while riding a motorcycle.
@circuitsmith: “Regulations to outlaw temptation won’t work.”
That depends on what you mean by “work.”
Is the purpose of every law prevention and deterrence? If that is the case, our legal system is failing us by every conceivable metric. We incarcerate such a large percentage of our population that it’s obvious we’re failing to prevent and deter crime. I submit to you that the purpose of most American laws is to serve as a mechanism for punishment through legal prosecution, not necessarily deterrence.
The death penalty and laws making homicide illegal aren’t effective deterrents either, but we make and keep homicide illegal anyway for moral reasons and to facilitate prosecution.
If deterrence was our only reason for making things illegal, we could eliminate at least a majority of our laws because they don’t act as a deterrence, and often aren’t even designed to act as a deterrence.
“…a majority of our laws because they don’t act as a deterrence, and often aren’t even designed to act as a deterrence.” I think you’re being generous when using the word “designed.” The vast majority of our laws are created by a group of people haggling over their own self interests, and whose primary qualification is the ability to sell themselves. In addition, the haggling is often lubricated with a generous amount of alcohol. I’m surprised that the system works as well as it does.
This is for sure troubling. On two-lane rural highways I generally try to hug the right line to stay away from the center line - and always have my lights on to be more obvious when passing or to other passers. In town I do the same, unless there’s a bicyclist - then especially with huge trucks and SUV’s oncoming, it becomes a needle-threading experience.
It really behooves us all to maintain better alertness - and a good helper too could be the judicious, pro-active use of the horn. Beep-beep!
I’m not surprised at people wandering all over the road while talking on their cell phones or texting. I retired as a college professor in 2011, but during my last years even the sidewalks became dangerous. I got bumped numerous times by a Little Iodine on her cell phone talking to her boyfriend Crudney or by Crudney having to be in constant communication with Little Iodine.
Just as dangerous were students with earbuds who had to be listening to music 24-7.
I, personally have never found anyone with whom I want to be in constant communication; If today’s students can’t walk the sidewalks or halls without bumping into someone because of texting or being on the phone, these students are even more dangerous behind the wheel.
A while back I was walking across the college campus where I taught (retired in 2004). I was musing about the number of students who were walking around wearing earbuds with wires connecting to small boxes. If my grandfather came back today (he died in 1956), he would be shocked at what would appear to him as an epidemic of hearing loss among our young people.
@rplantz-Unfortunately, a number of younger people do have a hearing loss from listening to loud music. I won’t listen to loud music and my hearing is still good at age 73. I went to two Dave Brubeck concerts back in the 1960s with his original quartet and I really liked the performances. There was no amplification. I had played my Brubeck recordings around the house and when my son was 5, he became interested in the music. I took him to a Brubeck concert in the late 1970s when Brubeck was appearing with his sons. I had admonished my son to sit very quietly during the performance. I looked over at my son and the tears were running down his face. When I whispered to him what was wrong, he whispered back “The music is too loud”. My son was right. We left after that selection was played. In the mid 1980s, Brubeck and his sons were the featured guests with an orchestra in which I played horn. They didn’t use the amplification and it was so much better. I think that many performances, particularly with the heavy amplified bass is really harming the hearing of our young people.
“students with earbuds who had to be listening to music 24-7.”
It isn’t just students, Triedaq!
When I take my power-walks in the nearby state park, I am both amazed and appalled by two factors:
Instead of reveling in the sounds of nature and the total lack of mechanical noise, it seems that almost all of the hikers, runners, and walkers are plugged into an I-pod or some such device. I don’t know about you, but I do most of my really good thinking and contemplation when I am on my walks. Being constantly “entertained” means that these people are likely not leaving very much time for the type of quiet contemplation that is so important for one’s…health…personal relationships… and financial success.
and…
Young people who are–supposedly–walking for their health, but who are walking slower than a man heading for the electric chair. If you’re not raising your heart rate, you’re getting almost no physical benefit from those walks!
The death penalty is not a deterrent? Are you kidding me, it sure is a deterrent. You don’t use the argument that if it was a deterrent, then there would be no murders. You count by how many murders were NOT committed because of the death penalty.
“Young people who are–supposedly–walking for their health, but who are walking slower than a man heading for the electric chair”.
@VDCdriver
My wife and I walk three miles five or six days a week and try to do the walk in 45 to 50 minutes. When we aren’t able to walk the three miles outdoors in the course we have measured off, we go to the basketball arena at the university where we worked until retirement and walk around the concourse. There are often physical education walking classes in the arena and we walk much faster than most of the college students. We call these slow walking college students “geezer wannabes”.
When the weather is bad, I use our local WalMart. Its about a third of a mile around the inside, so three laps are a mile. You do get held up by shoppers sometimes but a 5 min lap is about normal.