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

Fair, but I don't think anyone purports the online simulator to show "exactly" how texting and driving affects the driver. It's one of those things that gives you an idea of how hard it is to drive safely while texting, just like an airplane simulator does. It's not perfect, but it builds awareness of the dangers.

No, not everyone needs something like that. It won't stop everyone who uses it from texting while driving. But it is a small part of an educational awareness campaign that shows that an innocuous activity such as sending a quick text can have deadly consequences.

 

Well, the one night I had to drive home with no headlights I had no issue at all . . . so that proves we don't need them.

As for Zag's other hypotheses (or convenient examples of reality) . . . I have no problem if a police officer pulls someone over because they were driving with one pinky on the wheel while trying to navigate chicken nuggets and sauce. And I have no problem if a police officer cites someone for applying makeup while driving.

If they can pull someone over for driving without a seatbelt, surely they can do so for drivers whose actions are potentially more dangerous to others.

 

Yeah, but the bar owner never actually showed up that night.

 

As a libertarian, doesn't your right to do whatever the heck you want stop at the point where it hurts others? Given the data regarding accidents caused by texting and driving, I believe causing a car accident qualifies as hurting others. So fighting a ban would call into question whether or not you are truly a libertarian or just some guy who wants to do whatever he feels like regardless of the impact on others. Or it calls into question whether or not you have a clue.

 

So what message is so important that you need to text it while driving?

 

Nobody wins if your wife stops at Burger King when you want Subway.

 

I believe the libertarian argument, which I do not agree with, is that there should only be legal consequences if you actually do cause an accident while texting, driving drunk, etc. Just engaging in behavior that puts others at risk should not be illegal if nobody actually gets hurt or no property is damaged.

 

What stereotype are you fucking talking about?

A bunch of assholes from New York who were working at Bank of New York Mellon here in Pittsburgh for the week came rolling in to the bar in their fucking suits and ties and dresses cause it was right after work and wanted to tell us all how unsophisticated we are for being in a bar with smoke.

And our response was to smoke a helluva lot more to get rid of them.

Take you stupid shit somewhere else

 

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding -- give this man a cigar and tell him to blow the smoke in JR's face......

 

Until I cause a car accident, until I cause someone to get cancer with second hand smoke, until my gun kills someone - leave me the fuck alone.

That's pretty much the philosophy

 

You did notice I said I did not agree with that, right?

 

That's absolutely not the philosophy. That's self-indulgent, juvenile claptrap. Nowhere in libertarian thought is it posited that one has the right to impose on another, without that other's consent, some particular risk. Per that line of thinking, I could take someone's savings account without his/her permission, put it into the stock market, reap whatever gains the investment earns, and then, so long as I returned that someone's principal, all would be fine and dandy.

Texting while driving is not being "left the fuck alone," it's "I wanna do what I wanna do, and if others might be hurt because of it, too fucking bad." That ain't libertarianism, that's barbarism.

Re: texting & driving. The libertarian argument would start with the question as to why there is (largely) a government monopoly on roads. If roads are private property, then drivers and road owners would be free to engage in a contractual agreement regarding appropriate driver behavior (and owner responsibilities to drivers), and a given driver could choose (or not choose) whether to take a given road based on how that road is "governed" by its owner. The externality problem is solved by the ability of all parties to enter into a contractual arrangement freely, with government's only role the stepping in to ensure that the contract is maintained.

It's an interesting thought experiment, but it's one that anyone with a whit of sense could see would almost certainly wind up in exactly the same place: Texting while driving would be prohibited.