Limitations of subaru/iphone pairing

General Discussion
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@jesmed1‌ I have no problem with, and actively encourage, throwing the book, hard, at people who drive stupidly. I don’t particularly care why they drive stupidly - after all, if I get T-boned by some idiot who ran the red light and end up in the hospital, I don’t particularly care what his reason was for being distracted. Whether he’s texting, or reading a book, or drunk doesn’t matter - either way, I’m still in the hospital.

Nothing in this conversation indicated that anyone was driving unsafely. The guy wanted to pair his phone to his car. That lets you play music without fooling with your phone, and it lets you make hands-free phone calls without fooling with the phone. He wasn’t trying to pair a bluetooth keyboard to the phone so he could type faster while driving.

There’s a real kneejerk reaction to blame the object rather than to blame the behavior. There’ve been a lot of calls to ban cell phone use while driving, and I think those calls are stupid because I’d much rather the cop pull over someone who is driving dangerously than pull over someone who is driving perfectly safely while talking to someone on the phone. Target the bad behavior, not the object that the driver allowed himself to be distracted by.

Basically, the argument that cell phones are universally bad is cars is I think equivalent to calls to ban McDonalds because someone didn’t restrain themselves and ate Big Macs every day until they got fat. We’re blaming the wrong thing.

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“Basically, the argument that cell phones are universally bad is cars is I think equivalent to calls to ban McDonalds because someone didn’t restrain themselves and ate Big Macs every day until they got fat. We’re blaming the wrong thing.”

The difference is that people who eat too many Big Macs are not endangering the health of others, too.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible for the rest of us to know the difference between “good cell phone users” and “bad cell phone users.” We only find the “bad cell phone users” after they’ve injured/killed another innocent driver/bystander.

Don’t worry, no state is going to ban cell phones completely from cars. Your cell phone is safe. But for the rest of us who don’t use cell phones at all in our cars, don’t be offended if we’re wary of cell phones in cars. We’ve seen too many instances of abuse and it’s impossible for us to know in advance who is going to crash into us and who is not. We only know that if/when it happens, it won’t be pleasant.

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The difference is that people who eat too many Big Macs are not endangering the health of others, too.

That difference is not relevant. Whether overeaters hurt other people does not have bearing on whether to blame the food, or the eater.

Whether people get hurt by distracted driving or not does not have bearing on what is to blame for distracted driving.

People get distracted by lots of things while driving. Phones, radios, books, magazines, kids, makeup, sex (yes, I’ve seen it), bees… You name it, it’s probably been a distraction to a driver. The only constant in all of those distractions is that all of them involved a driver.

If a driver gets distracted by a cell phone, that’s the driver’s fault. I think an idea from aviation needs to be very heavily pushed in driving: The first rule of flying, no matter what, is fly the plane. Plane crashes have been caused by something minor going wrong, the pilots get distracted trying to fix it, and forget to fly the plane, which flies itself right into the ground.

Back in 1972 Eastern Airlines flight 401 crashed because an indicator light was out in the cockpit, and the entire flight crew focused entirely on that light, and why it was out, and what they could do to make it turn on, and never noticed that their plane was descending into the Everglades. It crashed and killed 101 people.

No one blamed the burnt out light bulb. They blamed the pilots for not flying the damn plane. The aftermath of the crash was sweeping changes in how crews react to abnormal situations, not banning light bulbs.

I view cell phones the same way as I view that burned out light bulb: It’s not the cell phone’s fault that the driver forgot to drive the car. It’s the driver’s fault.