Texting and driving documentary: "From One Second to the Next"

Have you ever tried the online simulator that AT&T has? I need to try it. I spoke with a high school student and a local politician who both tried it at the presentation I mentioned above. Even though both were already aware of the danger involved, they were surprised at how quickly they ended up in a simulated collision.

Education is a key component of this as well.

 

I'd put those measures in the same category as ignition locks, which the alcohol industry fights with every fiber of its being. I imagine the phone lobby would be equally zealous here.

 

I have used it. It's amazing how much you swerve without noticing and how quickly you can get in an accident. And it doesn't "cheat" either. The situations are all realistic representations of real-world circumstances that happen all the time.

 

Don't want to clog up the thread, but can you pm me some links of this? I am surprised to hear such a thing, because this would seem to be against the alcohol lobby's interests.

 

If I recall correctly, the carriers are actually behind most of the anti-texting-and-driving campaigns.

More can be done in these campaigns, I think, to attach a social stigma to texting while driving, along the lines of "Friends don't let friends."

 

I think the stigma is tougher to create in this instance than with drinking and driving, because drinking has a stigma attached to it even without driving. I mean, our country had Prohibition. There are plenty of people who view drinking as a moral failing - even self-loathing drinkers themselves. Or, at the least, drinkers know that people tsk-tsk what they do, driving or no driving.

No such stand-alone stigma attached to texting. Not without the driving part attached to it.

 

It can be done. We as a society successfully attached stigma to bad breath and ring-around-the-collar. We can attach a stigma to something that is a proven killer, which texting and driving is.

 

Darn. My computer won't load it, but your experience sounds very much like the others I've spoken with about this.

 

I'm sure the people who flew this flag are loving this thread....



An app on your phone?

Are you fucking serious?

Jesus Christ the liberty hating faction of this nation sickens me.

If you want the government to stick an app in your phone be my guest, sign up for that tomorrow. Just don't be a fraud and whine about George W. and Barry Obama's policies on spying and internet privacy in the next breath.

A fucking app for your phone...

BIG BROTHER

 

Oh good. The voice of reason is here. I was wondering when.

 

If anti-texting and driving laws really take off, we could be losing our next Rousseau, our next Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Inspiration is fleeting and by the time it takes to pull over by the side of the road, that thought you had about where you went shopping on the weekend (and, of course, how it relates to Engels' theory of consumption) will be gone forever.

 

I'm not going to quote angry boy's foolishness, but the app on the phone would likely be something the service providers put in, not the government. Service providers are already taking a proactive approach to deal with this issue. Some of that is genuine concern for the well-being of their customers, though I'm guessing public perception is a far larger concern. Also, if they do it themselves, they avoid more government restriction.

This should be a case where business and government can work together to deal with a problem. The key is to get people to realize that distracted driving may not be quite as bad as drunk driving, but it is still something that is dangerous enough to others on the road that there not only need to be laws against it, those laws need to have teeth.