Texting or talking when it’s your turn at the counter ?
NEXT IN LINE PLEASE !
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There are some stores doing that. When the clerk did that to the woman in front of me she told the clerk he was very rude. I then told the witch that SHE was the one who was rude. But of course she didn’t want to hear that.
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About two months ago I bought and installed a new device called CellControl. I don’t want to hijack Random Troll’s post here, but if anyone is interested in how it works LMK. If not, I’ll reserve my $0.02 on the matter.
Yeah this is just plain another stupid idea. How in the world can you tell who is driving?? So my wife should not be able to use her phone while I’m driving?? That’s how weather is checked now and hotel reservations are made while traveling.
Its maddening that our Acura does not allow plugging in destinations on the nav system unless the thing is in park. Same thing. I’m driving but my wife can’t use the nav system. I’ll bet its a DC regulation somewhere or will be.
I’m not sure if @bing meant the Cell control was dumb, but I wondered how it might handle that issue too (allowing a passenger to text, look at a map, etc). In practice, the device does know driver’s side and passengers side. So, if my son and I were in the car together with him driving, and both phones were registered, mine would work and his would not. It can be cheated, but the “owner” of the account gets a text when that happens. Our car has an aftermarket nav system and hands-free calling, call accepting. Both work with the Cellcontrol also working. The hands-free can be disabled. It is a setting the owner of the account can choose. 911 always works.
How would the car possibly know whose phone is connected to the bluetooth? My car has no clue. Only one phone can link at a time but there is no way to know which one.
Or how would the phone provider know if you are in the left seat or the right seat? They can’t. They can really only determine how fast you might be travelling based on the GPS feedback to the phone provider and GPS position is not plus or minus the 6 inches required to determine left or right seat. Once you stop, speed update is defeated unless a delay is built in, and THAT would annoy customers, too.
There really is no transparent reliable way to disable a driver’s phone without also disabling the passengers’ phones.
And I agree with others here, I want my phone’s GPS to guide me in my car as well as play my streaming music. Just take personal responsibility for the use.
Normally I like to have the technical answer, but in this case all I can say is the Cellcontrol gadget does know. Bluetooth is connected when it operates. The device has a “right side up” when it gets mounted and I was surprised it could tell side from side. The Cellcontrol FAQs includes this: “ALLOW PASSENGER ZONES
This policy controls the passenger zones. With this policy checked and a DriveID unit in place, the phone can be used in the passenger areas of the vehicle. As soon as the phone returns to the driver’s seat zone, blocking will resume. The default delay timing from driver to passenger zone is 30 seconds. You can adjust the delay in the DriveID passenger delay field.” The thing is not perfect, but it does work. We are now on month three and have worked through most of the small issues one must learn to deal with.
I went to Cellcontrol’s website. Their “how it works” section did not really explain how it works nor have other sites I googled. Having had some experience in directional radio control fields, I’d guess the device has a directional antenna to determine the location in the car. I notice it requires an app to be installed on the phone.
So just uninstall the app to defeat the device? Would take a teen about 30 seconds to defeat this.
I’m guessing it has two broadcast antennas in the windshield and uses power levels for basic range and a comparison of phase differences in receipt of the signal to determine azimuth (angle). The are other methods similar to cell phone triangulation using the delay in the return of a broadcasted signal as well. Guess it depends upon accuracy required, cost, ease of implementation.
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Or, alternately, car makers could start fitting cars with automatic brakes triggered by short range radar or sonar or some sort of optical system that senses an imminent collision.
Oh wait! It’s already being done.
And the people who drive in a way to activate this system deserve to have hot coffee spilled on their laps.
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Why the hate toward my remark? @gorehamj just asked a question and I gave a reasonable answer.
Don’t confuse your remark being quoted with the person quoting your post “hating” your remark. Sometimes we just wish to add to it or point out that there might be an alternative way to increase safety.
I kind of think that active collision avoidance systems may be the air bags of the future.
Those things actually kind of scare me to a small extent. Once had a hub cap roll across the highway where I had to run over it because locking up my brakes would have been a worse option with a semi-tractor trailer hitting me from behind. If the radar return signal is strong enough reflecting off a hub cap to approximate the rear end of a vehicle, I probably would have been toast if the active collision avoidance stopped me in the middle of the highway going 70mph.
I agree with you, @always_fixing, about the mistaken brake apply. That poses a tricky situation; if the CAR applies the brakes for a hubcap, or a blowing sheet of plastic or other non-critical target and the following car rams you, the following car will be sited for failure to provide clear distance. The car company is held blameless yet an accident happened where it might not with the driver in control.
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I don’t even know where to begin on that article. It really is about the lawsuit that essentially says that if someone has a product that can be dangerous (pick one-saws, drills, guns, pots, lawn mowers) and they have a way to make it safer and they don’t, they can be held liable-according to the lawyers. This is so fraught with faulty logic and dangerous thinking that I just can’t begin to even discuss it. Terrible terrible legal precedent if it would ever go anywhere and put any product development or manufacturing even in a tail spin. Like I said, how silly but more than silly-dangerous.
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