Cell phones may be completely banned

You’ve obeyed all the laws - you’ve got your Bluetooth headset and are conversing hands-free. Your eyes are on the road, your hands on the wheel. You’re traveling within the legal limit. So why is the peace officer pulling you over? Because you’re in the darned future and the hacks in Washington still don’t think you’re doing enough to save your own keister. Yep, yapping on the telephone is illegal no matter how you do it. So what’s the darned point of a mobile phone? 

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is making recommendations aimed at preventing distracted-driving crashes.

Oh, sure, I’ll buy into the no texting side of this. Honestly, no matter how good you are at texting and driving, it’s a distraction from what you’re supposed to be doing - paying attention to me. But blabbering on the telephone with some sort of hands-free device, particularly the ones in newer vehicles, isn’t any more distracting than carrying on a conversation with that same person if they’re in the seat next to yours. 

“Too many people are texting, talking and driving at the same time,” NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman said at a hearing in Washington today. “It’s time to put a stop to distraction. No call, no text, no update is worth a human life.”

Systems built into cars, like Ford’s MyFordTouch, and global positioning systems wouldn’t be affected by the ban, said Kelly Nantel, an NTSB spokeswoman.

The NTSB recommends safety improvements for U.S. agencies to act upon. It can’t implement them itself. Donald Karol, the NTSB’s director of highway safety, said the agency had been recommending collision warning systems since the mid 1990s.

The board strengthened its anti-phone stance after completing its investigation into one August 2010 crash in Gray Summit, Mo., in which a 19-year-old GMC Sierra pickup driver sent or received 11 text messages in 13 minutes before plowing into the back of a tractor-trailer.Okay, so this guy’s a dimwit and deserved his fate, but that’s not a reason to “protect” the whole country against holding a mobile phone conversation. 

Have I ever mentioned how much I think the dweebs in Washington are a bunch of reactionist morons who can barely operate a toilet, let alone make sane and reasonable legislation? 

Two school buses collided with the stopped trucks. The pickup driver and one bus passenger perished in the crash. The truck driver and 37 other people were injured.

Last year, 3,092 deaths, or 9.4 percent of 2010 U.S. road fatalities were related to driver distraction, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said last week. Now I think a bigger distraction is hotties on the side of the road, so do they pass a law to make all pedestrians ugly? Oh, wait, I don’t even want to put the potential for this idea in their heads. 

Comparable figures to previous years were not available because the agency changed how it keeps the statistic. Overall traffic fatalities dropped 2.9 percent last year to 32,885, the lowest since 1949, NHTSA said.

Each state

Safety regulators have been debating how much to regulate drivers’ cell-phone use for the past decade. U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says he believes motorists are distracted by any use of mobile phones while driving, including hands-free calls. This guy is a dimwitted hack, but that’s just my opinion. 

LaHood, whose campaign against texting and talking on the phone while driving has led to restrictions in 30 states, says his concerns extend to vehicle information and entertainment systems such as OnStar or Ford Motor Co.’s Sync.

The NTSB’s recommendation would have to be adopted separately by each U.S. state, since states have authority to regulate driver behavior. States should adopt electronic-device bans, then back up the laws with aggressive enforcement in the same way they have with drunk driving and seat-belt use, Hersman said.

Missouri law prohibits texting while driving by people under the age of 21. This shows how stupid these legislators are - texting while driving is a distraction, make it illegal for everybody. Get caught once, it’s $1,000 fine. Get caught twice, you’re no longer driving. That would solve it instantly. 

Truck, bus drivers

Fatal accidents caused by distracted operators have increased in all modes of transportation, Hersman said. That includes planes, trains, boats, trucks, buses and private cars and trucks, she said.

The use of phones and e-mail by operators is so prevalent that securing call records and the devices themselves is one of the first steps investigators now take after accidents, she said.

The NTSB called for a total ban on mobile phones for truck and bus drivers in September, when Hersman said distracted driving was “increasingly prevalent, exacerbating the danger we encounter daily on our roadways.”

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which regulates trucking and bus companies, banned hand-held cell phones for drivers operating commercial vehicles last month. It banned texting for commercial drivers in January 2010.

Comments

[Jackie]

I sort of have to disagree; Bluetooth is distracting because the driver is not concentrated on driving but on having a conversation. I am not someone who can multi-task, I swiped a pole in a parking lot because I was talking to a passenger. Most people overestimate their ability to multi-task.

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