one more gullible person who apparently believes the urban legends that are propagated via spam e-mails nowadays.
I can attest that some people believed cruise control was auto pilot, way back when. I remember my folks getting a vehicle with cruise control in it when I was a kid. They were showing it to my grandparents, and mentioned the cruise control lever. Grandpa got very upset and told them “Don’t you trust that thing. You’re the one with eyes and can see the road. YOU steer the car!”
Wow, I thought I’d seen it all! Texting/GPS/Movie at the same time, Wow.
I’ve seen people driving while reading newspapers, books, playing the french horn, having sex (well HE was), juggling (3 balls), watching porn, texting, talking on the phone, applying makeup, blow drying hair, curling hair and eating cereal driving a stick shift in city traffic.
Whew, Darwin never envisioned soooo many ways to kill oneself and, sadly, others.
@Mustangman. And don’t forget the woman who pulled up beside me at a stoplight and started flossing her teeth. When the light turned green she took off, still flossing and steering with her ELBOWS!
@Docnick, Now THAT’S funny! Imagine the crash investigators’ task when the airbag goes off!
…Now HOW did her head end up in the backseat?
They were showing it to my grandparents, and mentioned the cruise control lever. Grandpa got very upset and told them “Don’t you trust that thing. You’re the one with eyes and can see the road. YOU steer the car!”
Very funny! However, it appears we’ve come to the point where an autopilot might actually be a good thing. Lots of people act like they are being chauferred anyway…
Cell phones seem to feed many people’s need to feel wanted and popular. Look, I’m on the phone talking to someone who is interested in hearing me talk! I’m important and have many friends!
Thankfully, push to talk seems to have fallen by the wayside so you don’t have these dolts on perpetual speakerphone with their inane musings. But I fear the phone part is here to stay.
What gets me are people who are too self-centered to even hang up when doing certain transactions. You see them at the bank, store, what have you, talking on the phone while “interacting” with people doing business. How rude can you get??
However, it appears we've come to the point where an autopilot might actually be a good thing. Lots of people act like they are being chauferred anyway..
Yeah, maybe. The Google self-driving cars are interesting, but I’ll reserve final judgment. I’m just not sure how comfortable I feel trusting a computer to do all the work for me. After all, there’s a reason that even though passenger jets can fly themselves from takeoff to landing, they still have 2 pilots sitting up front. It would be a huge cost savings if we got rid of pilots and let the planes fly themselves, but we don’t because the autopilots are not to be trusted when lives are on the line.
I’d just hate to have some random bug in the code (or a malicious hack of the traffic grid) cause self driving cars to start a multi-car pileup.
Right there with you on PTT though. That was almost as obnoxious as the guy wandering down the street seemingly shouting to himself until you see the bluetooth earpiece 
Yeah, I don’t believe we’re even close at this point to anything beyond alpha testing wrt to self-driving cars. But even now, they are better than quite a few people I see on a regular basis being allowed to careen down the expressway acting like driving is a part time job.
Imagine the excitement you’re missing as an early adopter; “Microsnoft Car V8.0b has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down, want details??”
Even if it worked and was cheap…I’d bet more then 75% of the Boston commuters wouldn’t get it. It would restrict their 90mph weaving in and out of traffic commute.
If it is illegal where you are and you see the driver swerving dangerously, get the license plate info, slow down, call the police. The person may not only be multi-tasking but may also be impaired.
@bscar2, I think you missed the part of the story where there were to people in the OP’s car. The passenger could take the picture.
The other day, while I was on my motorcycle, I saw something similar. A young woman in the car in front of me was driving slower than the flow of traffic because she was reading a text. I honked my horn at her and she got the message, putting her cell phone down.
While shopping for a home last summer, my real estate agent was texting and talking on his phone while he drove with my girlfriend and me in the car. I told him it made me uncomfortable. He stopped, and then he told us how he used to read his newspaper while driving on the Florida turnpike. I ended up firing the guy.
This kind of thing was going on long before the age of cell phones and tablets.
My state (New York) has recently upped the penalties for texting while driving (5 points, 3 such tickets and you lose your license). They have also added “Text Stop” to the signs for rest areas. Still see these chuckleheads anyway, but maybe these efforts will help.
hardest part, though, is being able to actually enforce the law. Cops can’t be everywhere.
It might deter people from doing it if there’s plenty of news stories of people losing their licenses because of it. Of course it won’t be the their fault they were text-driving
TEACHING my learning driver about the effects of distracted driving has been met with a half-hearted smirk and the ‘‘yah , ok, whatever’’ eye roll untill Saturday night.
We had her three friends in the car after skating and were rolling down the un-curbed street.
She was tuning the radio…again in 300 yards…and, as is human nature , when she reached to the right, she eased the car to the right and began driving in the rough.
I was already reaching for the wheel ( waitng cautiously to see just how far she’d go. I instantly knew that THIS is the single best place for to get a ‘‘face-plant’’ first hand experience with what I’ve been telling her. Slow speed and plenty of run-off. We were not going to wreck the car . ) when she blasted to attention from the noisy rough ride and all her friends jokingly screaming at her about killing them all.
Wide-eyed after that we, all five, talked about the MANY distractions that can cause one’s driving to alter.
And what IF the car eased to the left instead ?
NOW she gets it.
Her friends are at learning-to-drive age too and this a valuable teching tool for all. Not just texting, but eating, radio, makeup, geting something off the floor, reaching around to slap the kids ( she laghed at that one ) etc.