Except if you found out what was the cause of every road traffic fatality or injury and carefully crafted a law to make sure that never happened again you would probably find that it's impossible to drive without bteaking a law. With the result that either:
a) Nobody drives any more. Very safe but unlikely.
b) Everybody ignores the laws and drives anyway. Even more dangerous than the current situation.
By all metrics the USA has a serious problem with it's road safety. It is very high up on the world wide road fatality stats. And I can't believe that's down to texting.
Also the fatality stats since the early 1990s show a const decline despite the huge rise in mo ile phone usage in that time.
All of the various causes of accidents can not be enumerated but there is a dramatic increase in accidents due to mobile devices.
The decrease in fatalities is probably due to safer vehicles and increased use of seat belts (since seat belt law enforcement has increased).
Or maybe you believe that since texting is on the rise and fatalities are down, texting must be responsible for fewer deaths...
WASHINGTON (AP) A 19-year-old pickup truck driver involved in a deadly highway pileup in Missouri last year sent or received 11 texts in the 11 minutes immediately before the accident, federal investigators said Tuesday.
The driver sent six texts and received five texts, with the last text just before his pickup traveling at 55 mph crashed into the back of a tractor truck, beginning a chain collision. The pickup was rear-ended by a school bus, which in turn was rammed by a second school bus.
The pickup driver and a 15-year-old student on one of the school buses were killed. Thirty-eight other people were injured in the Aug. 5, 2010, accident near Gray Summit, Mo.
Nearly 50 students, mostly members of a high school band from St. James, Mo., were on the buses heading to the Six Flags St. Louis amusement park.
The accident is a "big red flag for all drivers," NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman said at a meeting to determine the cause of the accident and make safety recommendations.
It's not possible to know from cell phone records if the driver was typing, reaching for the phone or reading a text at the time of the crash, but it's clear he was manually, cognitively and visually distracted, she said.
"Driving was not his only priority," Hersman said. "No call, no text, no update is worth a human life."
The board is expected to recommend new restrictions on driver use of electronic devices behind the wheel. While the NTSB doesn't have the power to impose restrictions, it's recommendations carry significant weight with federal regulators and congressional and state lawmakers.
Missouri had a law banning drivers under 21 years old from texting while driving at the time of the crash, but wasn't aggressively enforcing the ban, board member Robert Sumwalt said.
"Without the enforcement, the laws don't mean a whole lot," he said.
Investigators are seeing texting, cell phone calls and other distracting behavior by operators in accidents across all modes of transportation with increasing frequency. It has become routine for investigators to immediately request the preservation of cell phone and texting records when they launch an investigation. In the last few years the board has investigated a commuter rail accident that killed 25 people in California in which the train engineer was texting; a fatal marine accident in Philadelphia in which a tugboat pilot was talking on his cellphone and using a laptop; and a Northwest Airlines flight that flew more than 100 miles past its destination because both pilots were working on their laptops.
The board has previously recommended bans on texting and cell phone use by commercial truck and bus drivers and beginning drivers, but it has stopped short of calling for a ban on the use of the devices by adults behind the wheel of passenger cars.
The problem of texting while driving is getting worse despite a rush by states to ban the practice, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said last week. In November, Pennsylvania became the 35th state to forbid texting while driving.
About two out of 10 American drivers overall and half of drivers between 21 and 24 say they've thumbed messages or emailed from the driver's seat, according to a survey of more than 6,000 drivers by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
And what's more, many drivers don't think it's dangerous when they do it only when others do, the survey found.
At any given moment last year on America's streets and highways, nearly 1 in every 100 car drivers was texting, emailing, surfing the Web or otherwise using a handheld electronic device, the safety administration said. And those activities spiked 50 percent over the previous year. The agency takes an annual snapshot of drivers' behavior behind the wheel by staking out intersections to count people using cellphones and other devices, as well as other distracting behavior.
Driver distraction wasn't the only significant safety problem uncovered by NTSB's investigation of the Missouri accident. Investigators said they believe the pickup driver was suffering from fatigue that may have eroded his judgment at the time of the accident. He had an average of about five and a half hours of sleep a night in the days leading up to the accident and had had fewer than five hours of sleep the night before the accident, they said.
The pickup driver had no history of accidents or traffic violations, investigators said.
Investigators also found significant problems with the brakes of both school buses involved in the accident. A third school bus sent to a hospital after the accident to pick up students crashed in the hospital parking lot when that bus' brakes failed.
However, the brake problems didn't cause or contribute to the severity of the accident, investigators said.
Another issue involved the difficulty passengers had exiting the first school bus after the accident. The bus' front and rear bus doors were unusable after the accident the front door because the front bus was on top of the tractor truck cab and too high off the ground, and the rear door because the front of the bus had intruded five feet into the rear of the first bus.
Passengers had to exit through an emergency window, but the raised latch on the window kept catching on clothing as students tried to escape, investigators said. Exiting was further slowed because the window design required one person to hold the window up in order for a second person to crawl through, they said.
It was critical for passengers to exit as quickly as possible because a large amount of fuel puddled underneath the bus was a serious fire hazard, investigators said.
I don't see much progress or creative thinking here. People are problem solvers. They made a range sensor for front bumpers though not in every vehicle yet.What can you think of.Realistically that would work, other than fines for cell phone use by the driver of a vehicle?
I don't see much progress or creative thinking here. People are problem solvers. They made a range sensor for front bumpers though not in every vehicle yet.What can you think of.Realistically that would work, other than fines for cell phone use by the driver of a vehicle?
If car makers and cell phone makers worked together, the could develop technology that would prevent cell phones from working if a car was moving.
Of course, it would be difficult to isolate the driver's phone while allowing passengers to use their device.
Car makers are more interested in adding more distractions - dashboard LCD displays, MP3 player ports, etc, etc.
I nice markup/profit for trying to turn a vehicle into an entertainment center.
Okay, this is the last time I will try to draw attention to this.
The pickup was rear-ended by a school bus, which in turn was rammed by a second school bus.
Am I the only one who sees the real cause of the deaths and injuries was inattention by the school bus drivers? The texting teen certainly screwed up but it was the busses that did the real damage. You can't blame texting for the bus driver rear ending the pickup.
Also, why was the bus driver not paying attention to the truck tractor in front of the pickup. There's only a 20 ft difference between ramming the pickup and ramming the truck that the pickup hit.
There are probably details that we are missing but based upon the information we have it is clear that the bus drivers really screwed the pooch on this one.
edit: I just noticed additional details at the bottom of the report. They say the busses had bad brakes but that didn't contribute to the accident??? Still does not relieve the drivers of responsibility. The first bus was on top of the truck tractor? What if the pickup wasn't even there? The truck tractor was there and the bus ended up on top of it.
It is conceivable that the pickup did come to a stop before hitting the tractor and was then rear-ended by the two busses with bad brakes that were following too closely.
Making left turns is necessary (to facillitate traffic flow) - texting while driving is not necessary.
Making a left turn is not "necessary". You can make three right turns instead.
It is just more convenient to make a left turn. Just like it is more convenient to text while driving. Both are dangerous, only one is against the law.
Also police cars have laptops mounted to be used while driving. Hmmm, I would have thought that would be very distracting.
You're joking, presumably.. but, just in case you aren't: Of all the fatal car accidents more people are wearing their clothes on than not. Proof that wearing clothes while driving should be outlawed?
Exactly my point, how to you know the cloths DIDN'T cause the accident ? Just like how can you be sure the texting DID cause the accident ? Just because they happened to be texting when the accident occured does not mean that it was the cause.
Making a left turn is not "necessary". You can make three right turns instead.
It is just more convenient to make a left turn. Just like it is more convenient to text while driving. Both are dangerous, only one is against the law.
Also police cars have laptops mounted to be used while driving. Hmmm, I would have thought that would be very distracting.
Bean
Not all roads are laid out in nice square blocks with two way streets. Some poorly designed expressway on ramps require a left turn unless you want to go miles out your way.
Yes, I'm sure laptops are distracting to police. We have had many accidents (and even deaths) caused by police officers in my city. They speed, don't use lights and sirens according to policy, etc. Doesn't justify anything.
Several months ago I had a driver run a red light across a four lane road right in front of me. If I hadn't slammed on the brakes, she would have t-boned my car.
She had her cell phone up to her head (not texting) and was jabbering away.
She had a terrified look on her face when she realized the situation but I expect she continues to drive distracted.
I have witnessed several similar incidents - the majority of drivers were holding their phone.
Maybe if you experince it first-hand, you'll have a different perspective.
The accident was under investigation by the NTSB and the Missouri Highway Patrol for several months. However, an initial report indicated that inattentiveness on the part of the driver of the first bus caused it to collide initially, while a short following distance between the first and second bus caused the final rear-end collision. The NTSB also was reportedly looking into whether seat belts should have been used in the school buses.
In November 2010, Dwight Foster, the deputy director of NTSBs Office of Highway Safety reviewed the multi-vehicle highway accident for members of the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services during the group's annual meeting in Portland, Ore. At that time he said it was "inexplicable" why the driver of the first school bus failed to react to the slowing traffic on Missouris Instate 44.
Which should raise the question of why are they focusing on the texting of the teen driver when the evidence of texting causing the accident is circumstantial? Yet the fault of the bus drivers can be proven. It appears that someone has an agenda.
BOTH school bus drivers were at fault also. Granted they didn't cause the initial accident, but as one rearended the initial accident vehicles and then the trailing bus rearended the front bus, they were following WAY too close to each other and the vehicles in front. They did NOT leave enough stopping or maneuver room. Had they not been tailgating, it's entirely possible that neither teen would have died, at the minimum, one would NOT have died.[4] Following that, a school bus struck the back of the pickup truck, and finally the school bus was struck in the rear by another school bus that had been following.[3] The AP reports the first bus hit the pickup truck and pushed it over the rear of the bobtail tractor. The second bus, also loaded with the band students, hit the rear of the first bus and pushed it on top of the pickup and bobtail tractor.[3] The chain of rear end collisions began when the pickup truck rammed the back of the tractor truck, the board said.[2]
Several months ago I had a driver run a red light across a four lane road right in front of me. If I hadn't slammed on the brakes, she would have t-boned my car.
She had her cell phone up to her head (not texting) and was jabbering away.
She had a terrified look on her face when she realized the situation but I expect she continues to drive distracted.
I have witnessed several similar incidents - the majority of drivers were holding their phone.
Maybe if you experince it first-hand, you'll have a different perspective.
Was she wearing clothes ?
I'm not trying to be funny here. If she wouldn't have been on the cell phone, then what would you have said caused her distraction ?
You are drawing conclusions where none exist. We as humans are always looking for an easy answer.
Whenever you see someone doing something dangerous and they are using a phone, you immediately conclude that the phone is the reason. Because it is so obvious and you don't need to dig any deeper. Maybe she was DUI, maybe she was tired, maybe she was looking at her speedometer. There are many many reasons she may have run the light.
There have been times I was on the phone and someone else (not using a cell phone) ran a red light and I stopped in time to avoid an accident. If I wouldn't have stopped in time, would the accident have been my fault ? Or "more" my fault ? The cops would say "If you hadn't been on your cell phone you might have been able to stop in time.".
I think all this got started because young kids are bad drivers because of a lack of experience. And young kids also use cell phones a lot. People believe that it is the cell phones causing the bad driving. But it is not. They are bad drivers on the phone or not.
I've beat this topic to death I fear. So I'm going to leave it alone now.
Was she wearing clothes ?
I'm not trying to be funny here. If she wouldn't have been on the cell phone, then what would you have said caused her distraction ?
You are drawing conclusions where none exist. We as humans are always looking for an easy answer.
Whenever you see someone doing something dangerous and they are using a phone, you immediately conclude that the phone is the reason. Because it is so obvious and you don't need to dig any deeper. Maybe she was DUI, maybe she was tired, maybe she was looking at her speedometer. There are many many reasons she may have run the light.
There have been times I was on the phone and someone else (not using a cell phone) ran a red light and I stopped in time to avoid an accident. If I wouldn't have stopped in time, would the accident have been my fault ? Or "more" my fault ? The cops would say "If you hadn't been on your cell phone you might have been able to stop in time.".
I think all this got started because young kids are bad drivers because of a lack of experience. And young kids also use cell phones a lot. People believe that it is the cell phones causing the bad driving. But it is not. They are bad drivers on the phone or not.
I've beat this topic to death I fear. So I'm going to leave it alone now.
Bean
Seriously? You are ignoring the scientific research done on distracted driving and reaction times, etc. There is a proven effect.
There will always be bad drivers, but there is no sense in increasing the risk.
What monetary (or other benefit) would "someone" get from banning cell phones/texting?
The postal service maybe? Everyone would back to hand written letters...
People push for what they believe in, even if it isn't entirely reasonable. Monetary reward (or other benefit) is not required. It is always a concern when someone or some group uses a tragic incident like this to gain support for their cause. It is misleading and dishonest.
People push for what they believe in, even if it isn't entirely reasonable. Monetary reward (or other benefit) is not required. It is always a concern when someone or some group uses a tragic incident like this to gain support for their cause. It is misleading and dishonest.
That is certainly true - some people can easily ignore facts and evidence if it doesn't jibe with their view...
School busses with defective brakes. Two school bus drivers driving without due care and attention.
Perhaps someone somwhere has a vested interest in pinning the blame on a texting teenager. Who may have survived if it were not for the busses rear ending him.
I cannot believe that people are arguing this point. It is utterly absurd. It only takes a split second for an accident to occur. Any distraction whatsoever can result in the loss of life or severe bodily injury. As mentioned by the italian driver, just looking at the speedometer can cause an accident. I personally think they should outlaw the use of all electronic devices while in a moving vehicle and I think it should have the same penalties as driving under the influence and causing death while intoxicated.
Like previously mentioned, it is all a joke to some of you until it affects you or your family. Just keep on laughing until one of your loved ones is killed by one of these people or you kill someone. Ignorance has really showed up in this thread, but very interesting Ron.
I hope the school gets sued.The investigators should retract their bad break issue not being a factor or lose their jobs as well.Then you'll see why pinning it on that poor kid is worth money.I only call this kid poor from all the discussions going around like this.Just my opinion.
Abridging the freedom of speech in the USA is a violation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
Trading freedom for security hastens the turning of The Land of The Free into the land of the safe. Danger abounds in life. People are born. Eventually, people die. No one knows the number of our days. No one knows the manner of the end of our days. Every day we live should be a day lived in freedom.
If you text while driving and kill me, I will have lived freely knowing I have not done the same. Good enough. Plus, I have hands-free cell equipment. Doesn't everyone? Maybe THAT should be the law. Add speech to text in the car and we are home free.
If we (in the US) are lucky, government interference in the marketplace will be limited to a technology solution instead of a constitutional abridgment.
Bruce,
I really do not want to make light of such tradgic events.
However I do think that gut reactions are not always the best solutions.
As you say in yor post, looking at your speedometer for a fraction of a second gives time for disasters to happen. Dicking with your phone likewise. Can we conclude that speedometers should also be removed from the driving experience? Or what about in car navigation boxes?
Well, actually, you might be right.
On a different note. The USA has whitnessed a serious increase in the death toll among motorcycle riders since the early 90s. I have yet to hear much debate about that and I'm sure it outweighs the mobile phone problem by an order of magnitude. Unless of course the motorcyclists are being slaughtered by texting car drivers.
Abridging the freedom of speech in the USA is a violation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
Trading freedom for security hastens the turning of The Land of The Free into the land of the safe. Danger abounds in life. People are born. Eventually, people die. No one knows the number of our days. No one knows the manner of the end of our days. Every day we live should be a day lived in freedom.
If you text while driving and kill me, I will have lived freely knowing I have not done the same. Good enough. Plus, I have hands-free cell equipment. Doesn't everyone? Maybe THAT should be the law. Add speech to text in the car and we are home free.
If we (in the US) are lucky, government interference in the marketplace will be limited to a technology solution instead of a constitutional abridgment.
--Bill
"Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive." - Theodore Roosevelt
"Freedom is not constituted primarily of privileges but of responsibilities." - Albert Camus
"Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint." - Daniel Webster
"Liberty is the right to do what the law permits." - Charles De Montesquieu
"The essence of American liberty is to assure men the secured right to every activity which does not trespass the rights of others." - Herbert Hoover
"One's liberty should end when it becomes the curse of his neighbor." - Frederick Farrar
"Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed." - Edmund Burke
Comments
All of the various causes of accidents can not be enumerated but there is a dramatic increase in accidents due to mobile devices.
The decrease in fatalities is probably due to safer vehicles and increased use of seat belts (since seat belt law enforcement has increased).
Or maybe you believe that since texting is on the rise and fatalities are down, texting must be responsible for fewer deaths...
WASHINGTON (AP) A 19-year-old pickup truck driver involved in a deadly highway pileup in Missouri last year sent or received 11 texts in the 11 minutes immediately before the accident, federal investigators said Tuesday.
The driver sent six texts and received five texts, with the last text just before his pickup traveling at 55 mph crashed into the back of a tractor truck, beginning a chain collision. The pickup was rear-ended by a school bus, which in turn was rammed by a second school bus.
The pickup driver and a 15-year-old student on one of the school buses were killed. Thirty-eight other people were injured in the Aug. 5, 2010, accident near Gray Summit, Mo.
Nearly 50 students, mostly members of a high school band from St. James, Mo., were on the buses heading to the Six Flags St. Louis amusement park.
The accident is a "big red flag for all drivers," NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman said at a meeting to determine the cause of the accident and make safety recommendations.
It's not possible to know from cell phone records if the driver was typing, reaching for the phone or reading a text at the time of the crash, but it's clear he was manually, cognitively and visually distracted, she said.
"Driving was not his only priority," Hersman said. "No call, no text, no update is worth a human life."
The board is expected to recommend new restrictions on driver use of electronic devices behind the wheel. While the NTSB doesn't have the power to impose restrictions, it's recommendations carry significant weight with federal regulators and congressional and state lawmakers.
Missouri had a law banning drivers under 21 years old from texting while driving at the time of the crash, but wasn't aggressively enforcing the ban, board member Robert Sumwalt said.
"Without the enforcement, the laws don't mean a whole lot," he said.
Investigators are seeing texting, cell phone calls and other distracting behavior by operators in accidents across all modes of transportation with increasing frequency. It has become routine for investigators to immediately request the preservation of cell phone and texting records when they launch an investigation.
In the last few years the board has investigated a commuter rail accident that killed 25 people in California in which the train engineer was texting; a fatal marine accident in Philadelphia in which a tugboat pilot was talking on his cellphone and using a laptop; and a Northwest Airlines flight that flew more than 100 miles past its destination because both pilots were working on their laptops.
The board has previously recommended bans on texting and cell phone use by commercial truck and bus drivers and beginning drivers, but it has stopped short of calling for a ban on the use of the devices by adults behind the wheel of passenger cars.
The problem of texting while driving is getting worse despite a rush by states to ban the practice, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said last week. In November, Pennsylvania became the 35th state to forbid texting while driving.
About two out of 10 American drivers overall and half of drivers between 21 and 24 say they've thumbed messages or emailed from the driver's seat, according to a survey of more than 6,000 drivers by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
And what's more, many drivers don't think it's dangerous when they do it only when others do, the survey found.
At any given moment last year on America's streets and highways, nearly 1 in every 100 car drivers was texting, emailing, surfing the Web or otherwise using a handheld electronic device, the safety administration said. And those activities spiked 50 percent over the previous year.
The agency takes an annual snapshot of drivers' behavior behind the wheel by staking out intersections to count people using cellphones and other devices, as well as other distracting behavior.
Driver distraction wasn't the only significant safety problem uncovered by NTSB's investigation of the Missouri accident. Investigators said they believe the pickup driver was suffering from fatigue that may have eroded his judgment at the time of the accident. He had an average of about five and a half hours of sleep a night in the days leading up to the accident and had had fewer than five hours of sleep the night before the accident, they said.
The pickup driver had no history of accidents or traffic violations, investigators said.
Investigators also found significant problems with the brakes of both school buses involved in the accident. A third school bus sent to a hospital after the accident to pick up students crashed in the hospital parking lot when that bus' brakes failed.
However, the brake problems didn't cause or contribute to the severity of the accident, investigators said.
Another issue involved the difficulty passengers had exiting the first school bus after the accident. The bus' front and rear bus doors were unusable after the accident the front door because the front bus was on top of the tractor truck cab and too high off the ground, and the rear door because the front of the bus had intruded five feet into the rear of the first bus.
Passengers had to exit through an emergency window, but the raised latch on the window kept catching on clothing as students tried to escape, investigators said. Exiting was further slowed because the window design required one person to hold the window up in order for a second person to crawl through, they said.
It was critical for passengers to exit as quickly as possible because a large amount of fuel puddled underneath the bus was a serious fire hazard, investigators said.
But is there a dramatic increase in accidents due to using mobile devices? I can't find any stats to indicate it. Do you have a reference?
Please note that I'm very sure that operating a dangerous machine whilst paying attention to some thing else is a really bad idea none the less.
If car makers and cell phone makers worked together, the could develop technology that would prevent cell phones from working if a car was moving.
Of course, it would be difficult to isolate the driver's phone while allowing passengers to use their device.
Car makers are more interested in adding more distractions - dashboard LCD displays, MP3 player ports, etc, etc.
I nice markup/profit for trying to turn a vehicle into an entertainment center.
There are several links in post #18 above - e.g. the Monash University & VTTI links
Am I the only one who sees the real cause of the deaths and injuries was inattention by the school bus drivers? The texting teen certainly screwed up but it was the busses that did the real damage. You can't blame texting for the bus driver rear ending the pickup.
Also, why was the bus driver not paying attention to the truck tractor in front of the pickup. There's only a 20 ft difference between ramming the pickup and ramming the truck that the pickup hit.
There are probably details that we are missing but based upon the information we have it is clear that the bus drivers really screwed the pooch on this one.
edit: I just noticed additional details at the bottom of the report. They say the busses had bad brakes but that didn't contribute to the accident??? Still does not relieve the drivers of responsibility. The first bus was on top of the truck tractor? What if the pickup wasn't even there? The truck tractor was there and the bus ended up on top of it.
It is conceivable that the pickup did come to a stop before hitting the tractor and was then rear-ended by the two busses with bad brakes that were following too closely.
This is a very strange story.
Making a left turn is not "necessary". You can make three right turns instead.
It is just more convenient to make a left turn. Just like it is more convenient to text while driving. Both are dangerous, only one is against the law.
Also police cars have laptops mounted to be used while driving. Hmmm, I would have thought that would be very distracting.
Bean
Exactly my point, how to you know the cloths DIDN'T cause the accident ? Just like how can you be sure the texting DID cause the accident ? Just because they happened to be texting when the accident occured does not mean that it was the cause.
Bean
Not all roads are laid out in nice square blocks with two way streets. Some poorly designed expressway on ramps require a left turn unless you want to go miles out your way.
Yes, I'm sure laptops are distracting to police. We have had many accidents (and even deaths) caused by police officers in my city. They speed, don't use lights and sirens according to policy, etc. Doesn't justify anything.
Several months ago I had a driver run a red light across a four lane road right in front of me. If I hadn't slammed on the brakes, she would have t-boned my car.
She had her cell phone up to her head (not texting) and was jabbering away.
She had a terrified look on her face when she realized the situation but I expect she continues to drive distracted.
I have witnessed several similar incidents - the majority of drivers were holding their phone.
Maybe if you experince it first-hand, you'll have a different perspective.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/13/us/ntsb-cell-phone-ban/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Makes sense to me, but people will do it anyway. If insurance companies cancelled policies or raised rates for those people ticketed for violations.
Also if it can be proven that illegal use of a mobile device led to injury or death meant mandatory jail time, it might have more of an impact.
Of course, if you are Lindsay Lohan, you get a "get outa jail free pass"
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." - George Bernard Shaw
From http://www.stnonline.com/home/top-stories/3921-ntsb-truck-driver-was-texting-prior-to-2010-fatal-missouri-school-bus-crash
But yet the CNN report mentioned above is titled "NTSB recommends full ban on use of cell phones while driving"
Guess the NTSB considers it a serious problem regardless of the questions in this specific incident...
From http://newsfeedresearcher.com/data/articles_n51/driver-safety-texting.html
BOTH school bus drivers were at fault also. Granted they didn't cause the initial accident, but as one rearended the initial accident vehicles and then the trailing bus rearended the front bus, they were following WAY too close to each other and the vehicles in front. They did NOT leave enough stopping or maneuver room. Had they not been tailgating, it's entirely possible that neither teen would have died, at the minimum, one would NOT have died. [4] Following that, a school bus struck the back of the pickup truck, and finally the school bus was struck in the rear by another school bus that had been following. [3] The AP reports the first bus hit the pickup truck and pushed it over the rear of the bobtail tractor. The second bus, also loaded with the band students, hit the rear of the first bus and pushed it on top of the pickup and bobtail tractor. [3] The chain of rear end collisions began when the pickup truck rammed the back of the tractor truck, the board said. [2]
Was she wearing clothes ?
I'm not trying to be funny here. If she wouldn't have been on the cell phone, then what would you have said caused her distraction ?
You are drawing conclusions where none exist. We as humans are always looking for an easy answer.
Whenever you see someone doing something dangerous and they are using a phone, you immediately conclude that the phone is the reason. Because it is so obvious and you don't need to dig any deeper. Maybe she was DUI, maybe she was tired, maybe she was looking at her speedometer. There are many many reasons she may have run the light.
There have been times I was on the phone and someone else (not using a cell phone) ran a red light and I stopped in time to avoid an accident. If I wouldn't have stopped in time, would the accident have been my fault ? Or "more" my fault ? The cops would say "If you hadn't been on your cell phone you might have been able to stop in time.".
I think all this got started because young kids are bad drivers because of a lack of experience. And young kids also use cell phones a lot. People believe that it is the cell phones causing the bad driving. But it is not. They are bad drivers on the phone or not.
I've beat this topic to death I fear. So I'm going to leave it alone now.
Bean
So true!
What monetary (or other benefit) would "someone" get from banning cell phones/texting?
The postal service maybe? Everyone would go back to hand written letters...
Seriously? You are ignoring the scientific research done on distracted driving and reaction times, etc. There is a proven effect.
There will always be bad drivers, but there is no sense in increasing the risk.
People push for what they believe in, even if it isn't entirely reasonable. Monetary reward (or other benefit) is not required. It is always a concern when someone or some group uses a tragic incident like this to gain support for their cause. It is misleading and dishonest.
That is certainly true - some people can easily ignore facts and evidence if it doesn't jibe with their view...
School busses with defective brakes. Two school bus drivers driving without due care and attention.
Perhaps someone somwhere has a vested interest in pinning the blame on a texting teenager. Who may have survived if it were not for the busses rear ending him.
This story is very odd.
Video links
Testing Drivers While Text Messaging
Learn about Dangers of Distracted Driving
Like previously mentioned, it is all a joke to some of you until it affects you or your family. Just keep on laughing until one of your loved ones is killed by one of these people or you kill someone. Ignorance has really showed up in this thread, but very interesting Ron.
Bruce
Abridging the freedom of speech in the USA is a violation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
Trading freedom for security hastens the turning of The Land of The Free into the land of the safe. Danger abounds in life. People are born. Eventually, people die. No one knows the number of our days. No one knows the manner of the end of our days. Every day we live should be a day lived in freedom.
If you text while driving and kill me, I will have lived freely knowing I have not done the same. Good enough. Plus, I have hands-free cell equipment. Doesn't everyone? Maybe THAT should be the law. Add speech to text in the car and we are home free.
If we (in the US) are lucky, government interference in the marketplace will be limited to a technology solution instead of a constitutional abridgment.
--Bill
I really do not want to make light of such tradgic events.
However I do think that gut reactions are not always the best solutions.
As you say in yor post, looking at your speedometer for a fraction of a second gives time for disasters to happen. Dicking with your phone likewise. Can we conclude that speedometers should also be removed from the driving experience? Or what about in car navigation boxes?
Well, actually, you might be right.
On a different note. The USA has whitnessed a serious increase in the death toll among motorcycle riders since the early 90s. I have yet to hear much debate about that and I'm sure it outweighs the mobile phone problem by an order of magnitude. Unless of course the motorcyclists are being slaughtered by texting car drivers.
"Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive." - Theodore Roosevelt
"Freedom is not constituted primarily of privileges but of responsibilities." - Albert Camus
"Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint." - Daniel Webster
"Liberty is the right to do what the law permits." - Charles De Montesquieu
"The essence of American liberty is to assure men the secured right to every activity which does not trespass the rights of others." - Herbert Hoover
"One's liberty should end when it becomes the curse of his neighbor." - Frederick Farrar
"Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed." - Edmund Burke