Driving and texting

Michigan's ban on texting while driving went into affect at 12:01 this morning. It's a primary offense, meaning they don't need any other reason to pull you over and ticket you, $100 first offense, $200 for second. I could not be happier!!! Unfortunately, I think it will be a long time before they ban phone calls. Can't come soon enough!

 

oh yeah!!! I saw this when it first came out months ago. It persuaded me to stop texting while driving! its so disturbing

 

Hate texting and driving! If you do this, stop, it is stupid, and looks stupid too! Good darn post...best of the day!

edited word.

 

While I strongly agree that texting while driving is about as stupid as you can get, I see nothing wrong with driving and talking on the phone if you are on a hands free device.

What do you want to do next? Make it illegal to have a conversation with a person sitting with you in the car? I think that's more dangerous then talking on the phone. How often do you turn your head to talk to someone? Don't play the radio?

Somethings people just take too far.

 

LOL at Michigan...they just passed this law and Cali has had it for how long now?

 

Unfortunately, Hook, there is a mountain of research that indicates a hands free phone is no safer than carrying on a conversation with a phone in the hand. And each is far more dangerous than talking to someone else in your car.

The reason for this counter-intuitive result appears to be that when you are talking to someone else in your car that person is experiencing the same environment you are. The conversation pauses naturally as each participant observes the traffic conditions and adjusts almost subconsciously to those stimuli.

When you are speaking to someone over a phone, whether held or hands-free, the other person does not adjust to those conditions and encourages you to ignore them as well while you try to put your mind into the conversation.

There are, of course, other ways to distract yourself while driving. Turning to speak to someone in your car is obviously dangerous; dancing to the music on the radio is not advised; and texting is ridiculously risky. But no one should fool themselves into believing that a hands free phone is less dangerous than holding a phone and driving. It isn't.

 

100% and yes, that was a uninformed choice of words, but I think the gravity of the situation calls for it. Thanks for the edit

 

Ijsh1120, your research and explanation is dead on (no pun intended) there are also mountains of studies that show both fatal and non-fatal accidents have increased exponentially right in line with cell phone popularity over the last 15 years. The increased numbers of drivers and cars has been factored into these equations, so that fact is a not an issue when analyzing the data. I know of no study that has shown talking on a phone, hands free or not, has little or no impact on the frequency of automobile accidents. With the massive amount of data that is available on this subject, a person would have to be in complete denial to think that talking on cellphones does not dramatically increase the chances of you getting into an accident... or just plain stupid! There was not one single cellphone related accident nationwide for the first 15 years I drove, that oughta tell you something!

 

I can't agree with you guys more, I get absolutely infuriated when i see
Someone texting while driving. I just don't understand why people do it. So sad to hear stories about deaths from something so stupid as texting and driving.

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