Distracted driver caused deaths and the new TN. Cell phone law
 

https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/...an/1440405001/

It makes it an offense to have a phone in your hand while driving. Every day that I commute I see people on their phones talking or checking things. Some find the law too extreme, but when operating a motor vehicle one should always be focused entirely on doing so in an aware and safe manner. At least IMHO.

ETA... Tennessee leads the country in distract5ed driver related crashes with 37,000 in 2018.

The problem with these laws...they're practically unenforced. Only way you get a citation is if you are in a crash and a witness saw one in your hand.

Here in Nebraska we've had one of those laws for a while. Distracted driving phone use keeps going up. Even after several teenagers crashed and died as a result. One HS girl actually smartphoned herself into a near-fatal crash....survived, her friend in the passenger seat didn't...only to kill herself in another smartphone-while-driving crash less than a year later.

My sister receives her cell phone tickets in the mail with a picture of her committing the offense. Tickets are evidently not a cure for cellphoneitis. I am all for jail time for people who are involved in collisions when they were on the cell phone. I was struck by a mirror and the distracted driver had been on the cell phone.

Same here. Except for active school zones. There seems to always be a police presence in active school zones here and those police will ticket you.

Seems like a slap on the wrist. Involved in accident when using your phone...$100? C'mon. Just start revoking people's licenses. It's that simple.

Our states need to mimic what happens in the UK. I've seen cyclists send police videos of them catching drivers using their phones at the wheel, and that is enough to convict them and award a 600 pound fine.

Apparently it is now a "primary offense" in Florida to hold a cell phone while driving. That means you can be stopped and ticketed for the cell phone offense alone... first offense... $30.

Driving is a FULL TIME JOB. But the genie's out of the bottle. Good luck trying to put it back in.

Texting while driving is now a primary offense. You can still hold and talk on a phone, except in school zones and construction zones.

I don't think this genie could ever have been kept in the bottle, so long as humans are the operators of motor vehicles.

Come to think of it...the few times it has come up on enthusiast Android forums I've seen....people get practically militant when you point out they shouldn't drive and smartphone. They'll insist that they are unique snowflakes and fantastic drivers and that they can handle it unlike the unwashed plebian masses.

Oh, so all ya gotta do is swing the phone to your ear and all is fine... Figures... Florida... :rolleyes:

OK, no insult intended and maybe I'm reading or interpreting incorrectly. Tennessee's population is about 7 million. New York State's is about 20 million and California's is almost 40 million. That said, how can Tenessee lead the nation in distracted driver's crashes?

None taken. I am not sure if that is sheer numbers or per capita.
I do know that enforcing that law here would be like shooting ducks in a barrel.

Anytime that is anytime a driver is involved in an accident, his/her phone should be taken and records checked if they were on the phone at the time. I so the fine or judgement should be doubled!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There was a very credible and widely publicised university study (Ivy League, IIRC) a few years back that got a lot of media play, and as I recall, it stated that the relationship between cell phone usage and vehicle accidents, is higher than the relationship between alcohol usage and accidents. Everybody, almost universally, condemns the use of them while driving, yet nothing substantive gets done. I believe a major reason is that the telecom lobby in Washington is obviously against it, though this never gets mentioned.
Until they make the financial penalty rival multi-hundred-dollar speeding tickets, and even DUI's, there's just not the incentive for police agencies to devote the time and manpower to it.
Why chase down cars, and write a $50 ticket, when you can park in the shade under a bridge, zapping distant cars with a laser, and write $3-500 tickets ?
My town has recently gotten serious about it, but they're going after ALL distracted driving, to the point of idiocy. They recently had cops disguised as a road crew, near a popular Chick-Filet, and they were flagging cars to be pulled over if they saw the driver leave the parking lot eating a french fry !!! (as reported in local news).
Screw that !!! Bust the idiots palying with their stupid cell phones !! I've never been nearly run off the road, on my bike and car, by people eating french fries. :bang:

I can't go out a single day without have some cell phone zombie ram into me. The scary thing is, some people drive around in the same fixed gaze state they walk in. In several of my impromptu tests half of all motorist are looking down a their cell phones while driving. Its terrifying.

You can do a lot of damage in those few seconds. No wonder "I didn't see him" is such a common excuse after an accident. If I were the judge my first question would be, where were you looking?

It seems like a lot of us are in agreement for more enforcement and heavier fines.

But from the drivers' persective, heavier fines are nothing more than a cash-grab and stricter enforcement makes it more complicated to conceal your texting- which from their point of view distracts even further.

This is the kind of logic we have to deal with. These are the kind of people politicians connect with to get themselves elected.

Did a bike run down the MUP this month. Lost count (while waiting at a traffic light) the number of cell phone users while driving.... We have the same law here in Georgia.... These laws are just a police/political placebo.

Guess I wouldn't score any points for pointing this out to the authorities. Still, makes one want to do an episode of Big Fat Fail, or yell out (what was that card game :foo:)... ah, yes, "BULL S(P)IT!"

On the contrary, I'm agreeing that there is a problem and that we need to create more awareness. However, I'm the last person on earth to call for more laws. We have enough laws already in place to cover all of that.

Actually, there is no shortage of "awareness", at all. It's widely known that it's dangerous, irresponsible, unnecessary, stupid, and illegal. The problem is that huge segments of society have an abundance of a near-sociopathic lack of concern for anyone else, and complete disregard for authority and laws.
The only thing that seems to even remotely get the attention of the phone junkies, is when their local law enforcement starts cracking down in a big way. But even then, people just try and be more carfely about getting caught, but I'd don;t believe anything is going to curb what is clearly a full-blown addiction.

I agree that the current laws have very little effect on cell phone usage. The cost of enforcing our current laws keeps enforcement down. Nobody is serious about enforcing the law so these crimes not accidents will continue.

If they really want people to take the laws seriously, license suspensions are by far the biggest deterrent short of actual jail time. Fines are just add-ons to the costs of driving, the consequences of license suspensions are much worse, and people take them very seriously as a threat. For a lot of people, it's the difference between having a job or not, even if the suspensions are relatively short.

where is this happening?

The cops were out by the grade school I used to ride by after that law came out here in Illinois. I was hoping they start ticketing the dangerous drivers I saw there on a regular basis, but they didn't and the dangerous drivers didn't seem to be bothered by the cop siting there.

Same here in Maryland. Law enforcement makes all these excuses, not to enforce the law.

But it is more than illegal use of a cell-phone.

Today, I was the passenger in my elderly mother's car, as she was driving(I don't have a license). She kept commenting on what she saw. From the odd shape n' color of another house. To the color of another car. It is fine to be 'happy about life'. But when a driver is more focused on 'entertaining themselves'. Instead of focusing on the road. They become a danger to themselves', and other road users.