Texting while driving (US Data).

Originally posted by inimalist
and you pay for this feature?

No, actually Android (which has the feature he is referring to) is completely free, so he's not paying for it.

werd, my berd

so i was driving today, and eating Wendy's and I almost died.

as I previously mentioned, driving and texting i do all the time, completely safely.

So driving and texting is safer than eating and driving.

Originally posted by truejedi
so i was driving today, and eating Wendy's and I almost died.

as I previously mentioned, driving and texting i do all the time, completely safely.

So driving and texting is safer than eating and driving.

Q.E.D.

There is curretly a law pending in Nevada, where I live, that would make it illegal to both text and talk on a cell phone while driving. It is expected to pass, I hope it does.

Indeed. Texting during driving should be made illegal. It diverts your attention while driving. I've seen a lot of comments that make claims like,

"well, here's this other activity that is just as detracting that's legal."

But that doesn't mean texting should be legal just because another activity is also dangerous. At best it means those other activities might need to be made illegal.

way to always want MORE laws... I personally prefer to sign over fewer of my personal liberties rather than more, but that's just me.

Originally posted by truejedi
way to always want MORE laws... I personally prefer to sign over fewer of my personal liberties rather than more, but that's just me.

Yes, the right to endanger other people's live is central to all modern rights based concepts of liberty!

Seriously.

Never really understood that.

Originally posted by inimalist
not really

studies consistently find it has nothing to do with your hands, but the allocation of attention over multiple zones/sensory modalities that is problematic while driving. hands free phones are just as dangerous as cell phones when you drive.

sure, you might argue that someone can just "stop dictating when they need to drive", but you could say the same about texting proper (whereas, phone use has another person sort of demanding your attention). The real risk is that your attention will be so divided that you wont realize you now need to focus on driving, and that is not addressed at all by speaking to text.

I quite clearly indicated what the difference was, already.

We are literally talking about 8 times more likely to get into a wreck versus 4 times more likely. Dropping it back to the "distracted by talking" rather than taking your eyes of the road. We could bring it back to something more safe. That was my point.

If you want to talk about attention, I could make a really good case for bad behaving children being far worse than texting or talking.

Originally posted by inimalist
standard deviation from what?

you are reporting means... which mean is this one standardly different from? the average number of accidents caused by things? that seems like a meaningless stat...

Wah? No. facepalm

Go back and read the OP.

The SD would be the SD for the number of wrecks, period. In order to blame 28% of accidents on texting, we would have to see a rise in wrecks that mirrors the amount of texting while driving. In order for 28% to actually be "real", we'd have to see that in the total number of wrecks. 28%, alone, is such a giant increase over the year to year fluctations that it would be easily seen. It's just not in the numbers. Something is "missing" in order for the 28% number to actually work.

Originally posted by inimalist
ok, I get where you are coming from, didn't really think of that...

I'd still go with CI's of mode, but thats like a taste thing... or, well, I guess it actually depends on how the data would be distributed anyways, if it were ~normal, mean would be fine, but I can't imagine that would be the case...

Mode would also work quite nicely if you segmented the speeds into tiers. The mode of the top 25%, mode of the two middles, mode of the lowest. Median would also work, fine, for those groups, too.

I like "average" because it balances out the outliers.

An even better number would be the amount of people that speed 5 mph over or more. That number would approach 100%, I think.

Originally posted by The Dark Cloud
There is curretly a law pending in Nevada, where I live, that would make it illegal to both text and talk on a cell phone while driving. It is expected to pass, I hope it does.

Despite what I've said in this thread, I think a law like that would be just fine. I want to see more laws passed to prevent people from harming others. That includes alcohol and drug use. Texting while at home or walking? Mostly okay. Texting while driving? Not okay.

I am dead serious when I say that molesting your companion while driving is much more dangerous than anything I've covered. Even I am not an expert at doing that without swerving, yet.

Shut up and drive, people.

No, but really, here in California there is a law prohibitting talking on the cellphone while driving, except when using a hands free system. So I don't see many people texting while driving. I see plenty eating/putting on makeup/shaving/cutting their hair/putting on their clothes/taking a shower while driving, though.

Originally posted by BackFire
Shut up and drive, people.

I have received um.... molestation... from a willing female while driving, and to be honest, that was safer than the eating and driving thing.

Originally posted by dadudemon
I quite clearly indicated what the difference was, already.

We are literally talking about 8 times more likely to get into a wreck versus 4 times more likely. Dropping it back to the "distracted by talking" rather than taking your eyes of the road. We could bring it back to something more safe. That was my point.

I sort of addressed that here:

so ya, I'm not surprised that the voice activated one is less dangerous, and in fact, because there is no person on the other end demanding attention, is probably safer than cell phones.

The point that it is attention, rather than the voice activated stuff or hands free, that is responsible for the crashes is not refuted by this. In fact, we see, as the technology allows for a more fluid distribution of top down attention over the environment, the risk of a crash reduces, whereas in the case of cell phones, moving from a normal model to hands free does nothing.

But yes, it could be safer. I don't think "communicating while operating a multi ton vehicle at speeds the human brain is barely able to percieve properly" is a right in the first place, so I have no objection to people being asked to not do it while they drive, even if it only saved one person, or even simply offered the opportunity for a person not to be killed.

Originally posted by dadudemon
If you want to talk about attention, I could make a really good case for bad behaving children being far worse than texting or talking.

this is a non-sequitor unless you are proposing that children or any form of distraction be banned from the car. Telling people to pull over when they text is hardly as much a violation of personal freedom as telling them they can't travel with their children would be.

also a strawman because I don't think anyone has said texting is the most distracting thing for a driver. The reason you can't get rid of other things, like for instance, the sun shining directly in your eyes, is the pragmatics or, as mentioned above, ethics of it, not that obnoxious children are exempt from any principle here.

further, yes, and that would support the "attentional" versus "voice" theory here, because you are attending to something else. However, studies tend to find that passangers in the car are aware enough of what is going on to at least not be tarribly botherson when the driver needs to be attentive. Obviously, children much less so, but kids aren't all stupid.

Originally posted by dadudemon
Wah? No. facepalm

Go back and read the OP.

The SD would be the SD for the number of wrecks, period.

😖 which two means are you contrasting? or is it ANOVA?

Originally posted by dadudemon
In order to blame 28% of accidents on texting, we would have to see a rise in wrecks that mirrors the amount of texting while driving. In order for 28% to actually be "real", we'd have to see that in the total number of wrecks. 28%, alone, is such a giant increase over the year to year fluctations that it would be easily seen. It's just not in the numbers. Something is "missing" in order for the 28% number to actually work.

I can't imagine there is any disparity at all...

there are a host of reasons we can get into, but the central premise, that gross total crashes must go up for any cause for those crashes to account for a larger proportion of crashes, is false. If texting caused the same amount of deaths each year, and the total number of crashes went down, by definition, texting would account for a greater proportion of the crashes...

I read over what you said a couple of times, so I appologize if I got that wrong...

though, just to throw it out there, a much easier explanation is that any time a cell phone is involved in a crash, it is now ruled a "texting" crash, the same way anyone who smokes that gets cancer is ruled to have died because of smoking (ie, greater correlation than actual causation), mixed with the increase in a generation of tech savy drivers, and the simple fact that the cops probably pay more attention to the issue than they did 3-4 years ago, to me, seems to explain the problem nicely...

Originally posted by truejedi
I have received um.... molestation... from a willing female while driving, and to be honest, that was safer than the eating and driving thing.

she wasn't well practiced ❌

Originally posted by inimalist
I sort of addressed that here:

[QUOTE=13336979]Originally posted by inimalist
sure, you might argue that someone can just "stop dictating when they need to drive", but you could say the same about texting proper (whereas, phone use has another person sort of demanding your attention).

[/QUOTE]

fixed

Just get a voice activated bluetooth and be done with it.

Originally posted by Bardock42
No, actually Android (which has the feature he is referring to) is completely free, so he's not paying for it.

.....i'm a she 😕

0.o

Originally posted by Utsukushii
.....i'm a she 😕

My bad.