Warning.!! These people are very dangerous!. Distracted Drivers on cell phones!

[Stuart G]

..Perhaps you think I am warning people for something that is not real. This is real, and people on cell phones who are not paying attention to their driving, kill other drivers and passengers. How can this happen? Talking on a cell phone is easy and available. People are very confident that they can do both: drive and talk on the phone. Often, this is a distraction that is very dangerous. I drive in a large city and surrounding suburbs: Chicago, Evanston, Skokie, Morton Grove Illinois. (and others too)...
...I have noticed so many people on cell phones. Holding on to one and talking and driving. So, if the conversation is very important, then the driver could be concentrating on the conversation and not concentrating on driving the vehicle.
..This is important, and this is not one or two drivers. Hundreds and thousands of people do this. Why? Because they can. It doesn't matter if it is illegal in this state or that state. The person doing it, is sure they can do it.
.. This is a relatively new danger, because now, so many people have these cell phones .. 25 years ago, this problem was small, because so few (relatively few) existed. Now, most people have them.
..I was exercising in a local exercise center 13 years ago, walking around in an indoor track (11 laps to a mile) when I saw my first person walking around the track talking on a cell phone while they were walking around. I thought; what the hell, can't that person wait till their laps are completed?. Now, most people walking at the track have these phones. Some are just listening to something, and some are carrying on conversations. All while walking around the track. So it isn't just driving. But with driving, this behavior is dangerous. Walking around an indoor track is not the same as driving a car or truck.
...I may listen to the radio or a disk while I drive, but I try to pay close attention all the time to the other drivers. Now, more than ever because so many people have cell phones and talk on them while driving and holding the phone.
(Yes, I have a cell phone, but, if I need to talk on it, I always pull my car over and talk. Most of the time, it stays in my pocket. I use it for emergencies only)

[CurtEastPoint]

1. worst I see is peds crossing the st. w/eyes on phone and GD earbuds in, not looking

[Stuart G]

2. Yes, thank you for pointing that out..People crossing the street without looking.

I have read that those kind of accidents (people crossing streets) have increased for the reason that you mentioned. And increased dramatically. Very sad. But the drivers with them is sad too. Why do people have to be in constant communication? Remember when there was something called..pay phones? If you needed to call, you could use one of those. I saw a few at airports, but almost all are gone.

[Grammy23]

3. Some time when you're stopped at a red light --

Watch the cars turning onto the street you’re on and observe how many have a phone up to their ear. It is startling to realize how many people are juggling a phone, a conversation and driving all at the same time. The technology exists to just talk without holding onto the phone (blue tooth) but many people don’t even bother with that. Just look for yourself how many people ....young, old and in between, are yakking on a cell phone while driving. Fines need to levied and make them count. It isn’t hard to catch people in the act.

[Stuart G]

4. Yes, it is startling. People are so confidant that they can do it. Yes, blue tooth exists, but,

you are correct, most don't bother with it. they are sure they don't need it.

[Journeyman]

6. I find that even with bluetooth a phone conversation is too distracting while driving. . .

There's something about the other person not being in the car with me that causes a change in the attention I need to give to the conversation. It's too distracting for safety's sake.

The way I figure it, there's nothing so important when I'm behind the wheel than that I get to my destination safely, without causing harm to anyone.

But then, these mobile time-sucks weren't a part of my life until late in life so I can easily set the phone aside. Not so easy, I can easily see, for those weaned on a digital connection.

[Pobeka]

13. Hands free makes very little difference. It is distraction that matters.

A driver having conversation with a person in the vehicle is not the same as a having a conversation on a cellphone.

A person in the vehicle is also aware of driving conditions and can pause the conversation or alert the driver.

A person on the other end of a cell phone does not do this, and only provides distraction from the real job -- driving safely.
---

The red light observation is telling -- I'd say about 1 in 4 drivers are talking on cell phones. And the ones that just sit there when the light turns green -- yup, they're usually on the cell phone, holding up traffic unnecessarily.

[Grammy23]

17. Not arguing for the use of blue tooth to solve the problem --

Just observing that ONE distraction — holding the phone and trying to not drop it — could be dealt with by blue tooth. And they won’t even use that. Just willfully disobeying the law.

There need to be severe penalties for using a cell phone while driving. And there need to be aggressive educational PSAs to drum the message out much like they did for DUI.

[Pobeka]

19. I agree. And auto makers need to stop putting distracting screens on the dash too!

[Bradshaw3]

5. Science shows the dangers of distracted driving

Dr. David Strayer is a pioneer in studies of distracted driving, first at Illinois and now at Utah. Not only is cell phone use dangerous, but so is hands-free, because of the nature of what happens whe we talk on a phone. Pedestrian distraction is also being studied at Illinois, and it is dangerous as well. People believe they can multi-task; they can't. Our brains didn't evolve to do that.

A WaPo video of Strayer discussing his research:
https://www.enddd.org/distracted-driving-research/hands-free-does-not-equal-risk-free/

[GoCubsGo]

7. Yeah, tell me about it.

I come close to being creamed by one of these idiots EVERY DAMN DAY, and I only drive a few miles per day. I'll get behind one who speeds up and slows down, and swerves into the oncoming lane. It's like they're driving drunk. No way in hell I'm going to try to pass them, because I don't want to get rear-ended. I see them flying through my neighborhood on an hourly basis, going 55 mph down a residential street, with a goddamn phone plastered to his ear. One of these days, one of them is going to run over a child.

[raccoon]

15. Maybe your city officials could do something about it. They call it

“Traffic calming” And maybe could put in speed bumps or traffic circles.

[GoCubsGo]

18. They could, but they won't.

I'd love for them to put in some speed bumps, but they're not about to spend money on something like that. The people who run my city are useless. Unless you are wealthy, a business, or part of the horse industry here, they don't care about you.

[essme]

8. Got hit by one

Sunday a week ago.

T-boned at a 4 way stop in a residential neighborhood.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

9. I don't get why people insist on using their smartphone while driving.

Mine goes into a dash mount that sits below my sight lines, plugs in, and when my car starts up, switches to Android Auto.
Intercepts text messages so I don't see them, has large buttons for some simple things like playing music on my phone...

Car also has Bluetooth built in, so calls come through the car's speakers. (Not that anyone actually calls or texts me.)

Hands-free operation of cell phones should be standard in every vehicle. Starting with the manufacturer. (My next car is going to have Android Auto built into it, I think.)

The reason we have to pass these damn texting and driving laws is because too many people are being stupid.

[Stuart G]

10. Yes,,that one word describes it all...."stupid." !!!! (not in any way smart) just plain stupid..

[Flo Mingo]

11. Left lane Clusterfuckers

I'm a pacifist by nature. But people who drive slow in the passing lane consistently test my pacifist nature.

More and more I'm noticing that when managing to maneuver around a left lane clusterfucker, damn if they aren't on the phone. And not just talking on the phone but engaging with the phone while looking down.

Maybe it's their way of not rear ending another driver while looking at their phone but Damn! Those people.

Rant over. Time for some herbal tea.

[Blue_true]

12. Last paragraph is what I do too. I see the same thing you do, every day.

Does not matter, real nice vehicles, beat up ones, too many people talking on a cell while driving.

[Stuart G]

14. The cell phone talking could be just as distracting as other driving prohibitions.

You list them, any distraction is dangerous. Some driving activities require quick responses to prevent accidents. Focusing on a cell phone conversation limits the ability to make those moves. Further, a cell phone conversation allows the driver to look ahead, but at the same time carry a conversation on a phone. The driver often thinks that he/she is focused on driving while their mind is on something important in the conversation. ..
...I suspect many accidents have happened because of this. And I am guessing some deaths too, although I do not have any facts in that regard. I am sure someone else does.

[Pobeka]

16. Thanks for this.

It's the same issue we had when drunk driving became a problem, the feeling that "I can drink and drive, it's the other drunk drivers that are the problem".

But the actual problem is that we are often talking about fractions of seconds between actions that prevent accidents (or don't), and those events are not frequent, so you can get away with drunk driving for a while and think you're better than the other drunks -- until that infrequent event actually happens to you...

Same exact problem with distracted driving --- it is the infrequent event that catches you, and if you are on the cell phone, hands free or not, your reaction time is severely inhibited.

---

I experienced a great demonstration of this in a defensive driving class:

I was giving a deck of cards, asked to shuffle them, and then simply sort them into 4 piles of the same suit. Took about 80 seconds.

Then we did it again, I shuffled the cards. But as I began to sort the cards the instructor asked me very simple questions like, "what month is your birthday in?", "are you married?", "what year was your spouse born?", "who's the president", "how are you liking this class?"...

Time to sort the cards doubled -- my reaction time for the primary task of sorting cards was cut in half because of the distraction of a conversation.