cell phone ban...

i am all for safety, but they evaluate success based on how many tickets are written. they wrote 1100 tickets in 18 locations.

they are only putting signs at the 18 locations right now, because the signs are expensive. they cost $130 each... that is gov't logic right there. let's not spend $260 for something that will pay for itself the first day it is in place...

btw - i am for this.

also this year is mandatory car seats for all kids under 8 years and under 4ft 9in. my wife teaches on the South east side. the police will be pulling 90% of the cars over if they actually enforce this law.

I think they should be a little more strict about cell phone use in cars.... I think the whole 4'9" thing is kinda funny. Strap those midgets in!!!!!!!! People are crazy drivers and safety is most important. All you soccer moms can wait to talk to your girlfriend about your haircut next week. Even people with bluetooth dont understand that they still cant text while driving. One of my customers the other day was telling me how proud he was to talk on his bluetooth, text and drive all at the same time. F"ing morons!!!!!!

under 8 AND under 4'9"... if you are a midget and over 8 years old, no car seat

At least, no car seat legally required

Personally I want to see the numbers of how many children were being scraped off the grills of Hummers in school zones at all, much less those blamed on the driver being on the phone. I have a hard time patting myself on the back for solving a problem with yet another in a gigantic tome of road laws without even establishing that there's a problem to be solved, much less that I've found the best way to solve it.

JK-fredd0 wrote:

i am all for safety, but they evaluate success based on how many tickets are written. they wrote 1100 tickets in 18 locations.

they are only putting signs at the 18 locations right now, because the signs are expensive. they cost $130 each... that is gov't logic right there. let's not spend $260 for something that will pay for itself the first day it is in place...

btw - i am for this.

also this year is mandatory car seats for all kids under 8 years and under 4ft 9in. my wife teaches on the South east side. the police will be pulling 90% of the cars over if they actually enforce this law.

Actually if you read the law about the cell phones in school zones- it says that they can only ticket you if there are signs posted. So those school zones without signs, are still free game.

There is 2 school zones on my way to work, and the signs went up last week in both of them.

Personally, I think it is a good thing! I would be all for a complete cell phone ban while driving. I mean Jesus people, we drove for decades without having to talk on the phone! There is nothing so important that you have to talk (or text) while driving! Hang up the phone! It can wait til you get home!!!!

I see it every day- people that can't drive and talk at the same time. They are driving 10mph below the speed limit, hitting curbs, running stop signs/lights, and generally being bad drivers. When I would ride my motorcycle, the #1 thing I watched for was people on cell phones because those are the people that you MUST watch out for. They are the ones that will change lanes without checking, will roll thru stop signs without seeing them, and the ones that will run over a motorcyclist because they didn't see the bike.

I aggree with the cell phone ban in school zones. I also wouldn't mind it perma banned while driving. People who text while driving should have it shoved up their ass. Then it would be hands free.

The seatbelt issue... well all I know is I used to lay down on the back of the bench seat of our F-150 with no airbags and I never flew out the front window. The 8 year old thing is to prevent kids from getting choked by the seatbelt. Now as far as midgets, the law says carseats are mandatory if you are under 8 AND 4'9". So if you are only 1 of those you don't have to sit in one.

anyone know if Booster + car seat?

N2rock, I really really really really dislike being held back or dragged down by the lowest common denominator. Some people don't drive well while on the phone? Well, that sucks, and if they do something stupid and hurt themselves or someone else, that's on them, and they should be held responsible, but that doesn't mean that nobody can do it. For every person you notice driving badly on the road, there are a dozen others around them doing just fine on the phone. Some people drive worse off the phone than others around them do while on the phone, but we don't do anything about them. And yes, we survived for hundreds of thousands of years without a phone in the car, but most of those were without a car at all. I'm not sure the "we survived without modern technology" argument is a very good one. Hell, sometimes people die due to anesthesia, so maybe to be "safe" we should outlaw its use. After all, we survived for millennia without it, right?

As far as talking on the phone being the cause of crashes, it's surprisingly not as common as you'd think, and that's with people who are still quick to blame their mistakes on someone or something else. And when was the last time you heard about a kid being run over in a school zone? ANYWHERE? Much less one being run over by someone talking on the phone because they were talking on the phone?

There are a few things that have been beaten into us by popular culture and a steady stream of governmental nannies. Speed kills, for instance, which is a frustratingly inaccurate oversimplification. But regardless they have yet to lower to speed limit to 25 on the highway and side roads, which is what the European Transportation Safety Council has determined would be the speed at which most (not all) traffic fatalities (not collisions, just fatalities) would be avoided. Talking on the phone, of course, is another major safety issue, right? The astounding amount of persistent ignorance on that one is so pervasive that we have laws in some places (and now school zones in TX) requiring hands-free systems to be used. In case you're unfamiliar with why that's yet another example of governmental regulatory ignorance supported by The People, it's because the fact that you're holding the phone in your hand is immaterial, insignificant. The potential problem comes from being too deep in thought and conversation, paying more attention to talking than to driving. They've yet to find a study that shows significant improvement in reaction times with a hands-free system--not even those funded by makers of hands-free devices. Asians, too, right? We should ban them from the road. After all, we all know they're painfully slow drivers who sit in the left lane with their blinker on. And women drivers. Hoo boy, don't get me started. Revoke their licenses! They're just not safe.

If everything that everyone "knows" were actually the case, the world would actually be much different. Yet we continue piling on more and more laws based on these widely held misconceptions backed by little to no actual knowledge and research. And at some point our culture sped past seeking what is reasonable and right and skipped straight to the point where the only goal is some nebulous idea of "safety." And one need not actually justify and quantify what's actually "safer" about it, whether the existing system is unacceptably unsafe, and you dare not suggest that perhaps there's such a thing as excessive safety attitudes and laws. I'm surprised we ever survived without gloves, elbow pads, knee pads, helmets, and mouth guards when riding bikes as kids. Don't you know it's not safe to go without?

That's not very rock-n-roll.


I'm not aiming to offend anyone or piss anyone off, but this kind of thing (the government piling on yet another tome of laws for the purpose of saving you from yourself in the name of safety, with the added sideshow associated with the cringe-worthy appeal to emotion of "it's for the children! won't somebody think of the children??") that really does get to me. It's the same kind of mentality that suggests not educating your children and instilling some sense of discipline and respect for authority, but rather to "keep them safe" we must enact laws requiring that any firearms in homes be kept under lock and key and stored separately from the ammunition for it, etc. This may not mean much to some of you who don't actively exercise your Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms (in this case for the defense of your home and family), but it effectively renders you helpless in the face of attackers entering your home uninvited. But that doesn't matter, because your Constitutional right to keep and bear arms doesn't trump control-freak bureaucrats' assumed right to impose their idea of the vague term "safety" on you.

And look, if someone can show me how we've got an epidemic of dead kids in school zones due to people talking on their phones, fine, I could get behind something to correct that. But nobody has. If someone can then show me a study indicating a significant decrease in reaction times embroiled in conversation with a hands-free system, then I could get behind that, too. As it is we've got yet another law, another opportunity for state and local entities to line their coffers with ticket revenue under the guise of safety, that's based on no actual fact, and that frustrates me.

Well, Sergio Kindle ran through an apartment with his car and said it was because he was texting...not drinking....riiiiggghhhhtttt.

Is having a cell phone pressed to your ear while behind the wheel the equivalent of driving while intoxicated? According to a study by University of Utah psychologists, the answer is, unfortunately, yes.

"Just like you put yourself and other people at risk when you drive drunk, you put yourself and others at risk when you use a cell phone and drive," writes David Strayer, a psychology professor and the study's lead author. "The level of impairment is very similar."

The study, published in the June 29 issue of Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, found that drivers talking on cell phones, either handheld or hands-free, are more likely to crash because they are distracted by conversation.

Using a driving simulator under four different conditions: with no distractions, using a handheld cell phone, talking on a hands-free cell phone, and while intoxicated to the 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level, 40 participants followed a simulated pace car that braked intermittently.

Researchers found that the drivers on cell phones drove more slowly, braked more slowly and were more likely to crash. In fact, the three participants who collided into the pace car were chatting away. None of the drunken drivers crashed.

Deacon wrote:

And yes, we survived for hundreds of thousands of years without a phone in the car, but most of those were without a car at all.

WTF dude! Tell me ONE instance where you HAD to be on the phone while driving? WTF is so goddamn important that you can't wait until you're at home/office? Look around you while sitting at a stop light- 75% of the cars around you will be people talking on cell phones. Oh yeah, every one of those people are so friggin important that what they are discussing needs to be discussed at that very second!

Deacon- you're obviously passionate about being Pro cell phone. I OTOH am passionate the other way. I had a buddy killed while riding a motorcycle- stopped at a stop light and smashed into by a woman ON HER CELL PHONE. Another buddy on a motorcycle lost his leg- a girl was dialing her cell phone and crossed the center line taking his leg off.

You want proof- the proof is out there! The studies are out there! Everything is out there, and the only reason cell phones are still allowed is because the cell phone companies have lobbiests in Washington that are making sure the politicians vote the way they want them.

BTW- I have personally seen way too many people speeding in school zones. And guess what- 99% of the time, they are on the cell phone at the time!

Cell phones, lighting a cig, smacking the kids in the back seat, searching for a song on the iPod, digging through the console for something... anything that takes your attention away from driving is dangerous - granted some more dangerous than others. I have no problem putting the phone down while driving or pulling over to make a call if it is that important. I have no problem with the school zone laws, I have seen too many kids struck by cars only a few drivers were found to be on cell phones and we only found out because of witnesses - none ever said "I was on the phone"... I bet the number was higher. It is a terrible thing when something bad happens to a kid... when in a school zone the kids are not thinking about cars because they are kids.. some just don't understand the danger and might dart out in the road... we have to be completely aware when in a school zone and have to be driving slow enough to react. Now the car seat thing I have to say I had a little problem with but I understand and will comply because it may save my kids life.

I worked countless wrecks and there were almost always "distractions" in the vehicle - besides alcohol - most of the time it was cell phones, next to that it was putting on make-up - reminds me of one lady who hit a parked car - she was alright, thankfully - when I asked her what happened she said that someone ran her off the road.... she had a line of lipstick from her upper lip all the way to her ear and I found the open lipstick tube on the floorboard.... I asked her to look in the mirror and think carefully about how she answered the question again.

I don't have the answers.... I have seen first hand the results though. I don't necessarily agree with the shotgun approach to all laws either... but I will be happy to put the phone down... now if I could just get the wife to do the same... and she is in sales so she thinks she "has" to take every call - that is going to get her in a world of hurt one day and I hope it doesn't hurt her or someone else too bad....

Ok, so, I'll go ahead and state up-front: I'm generally against regulating common sense. Of course, that position is modulated by the fact that people and organizations of people generally do a very poor job of applying said common sense. (I can hearken back to Gramm's idiotic statement that companies who package and sell securities can be smart enough to manage their business in such a way that they can also insure those same securities. Ooops! And AIG gets a trillion-dollar bailout about a decade later.)

So, in light of the complete and utter disregard of not only well-meaning individuals, but also large, well-educated groups of people to apply common-sense in their execution of life - one must react to common failures and make them punishable should they represent a risk to the well-being of others.

We accept that it be so in so many other things - how many people will vocalize vehemently against cell-phone usage while driving regulations, but stand firmly for drinking and driving laws? Their ultimate purpose is largely the same - to protect others' from an individuals inability to excersize good judgement.

My gripe with this law, is that it WILL NOT increase safety in any way, shape, or form. Banning cellphone usage while driving in school-zones? You mean, in the exact place where you're already driving slow and (supposedly) paying rapt attention to your surroundings? An effective legislation would be banning cellphone usage while driving at any time - not allowing hands-free backdoors, and making the penalties real -- like those for drunken driving.

My gripe is understanding exactly what this law will achieve: a back-door method to increasing police funding.

The fact that "speed-traps" have become a common-phrasing, the fact that I can see more cops sitting on the side of I-10 writing tickets than patrolling the third ward on any given day -- it all goes to show that out funding of police forces are out-of-whack. In fact, I think our entire priorities on how we found things to reach a given end-result is out of whack, but I'd better keep my mouth shut on that one before I start a real big (and diversionary) argument.

But, to put it plainly - I don't see this as doing anything to protect the motorcyclists or other drivers from cellphone talkers, and instead see it as a poorly-guised revenue grab EASILY SOLD by putting the word "school" in there, and baiting on the old emotions of WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!

!c

jkdrone wrote:

But, to put it plainly - I don't see this as doing anything to protect the motorcyclists or other drivers from cellphone talkers, and instead see it as a poorly-guised revenue grab EASILY SOLD by putting the word "school" in there, and baiting on the old emotions of WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!

!c

This, I can agree with.

Church said it better than I did, I think. He nailed it on the head when he pointed out that, "My gripe is understanding exactly what this law will achieve: a back-door method to increasing police funding." Except of course it's not just police funding but yet another revenue source for local politicians to find a use for somewhere. And he summed it up well when he concluded that he sees it as "a poorly-guised revenue grab EASILY SOLD by putting the word 'school' in there, and baiting on the old emotions of WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!"

N2rock, I also have owned and ridden motorcycles, and I rode one as an actual daily driver for about a year. Other people suck. They drive poorly, cell phone or no. My uncle was laid up for quite a while in a sick bed with a badly broken leg braced with all manner of screws and pins, caused by a woman who ran a stop sign (he didn't have one, and as a result he t-boned her and of course went flying). She wasn't on the phone. It's too easy to put the blame on the phone. We motorcyclists were dying on the road many decades before the first car phone technology emerged. Shit happens, and you know that before you swing your leg over, set your choke, and start it up. I believe, however, that people who cause these collisions should be charged with a criminal offense, such as criminal negligence, manslaughter, etc. In fact, I believe this kind of thing isn't done nearly enough, cell phones or otherwise. People mislabel it an "accident" as though nobody fucked up, when in reality it's almost always driver error.

One of the things I found significant about that Utah study you quoted was that it highlighted out out of whack our drunk driving laws are, another sacred cow. You can't make the argument that using a cell phone is worse than driving drunk when driving drunk is such an incredibly low bar at 0.08% BAC. People don't get pulled over for driving drunk at 0.08. Nobody can tell you're drunk. Because you're not drunk. But because it's for the children, and because there are emotional stories of loss, they lower the legal limit. Without actually stopping to note that these stories of loss primarily involve people who were at least twice that low legal limit. But that's a whole other topic, I guess. Just another symptom of reflex reaction rather than studied jurisprudence.

Another significant thing was that there was no significant difference between hands-free and hand-held. Whether the phone is at your ear, as you so eloquently put it, or in your pocket, if you are incapable of driving safely while on the phone (not a universal trait), then hands-free doesn't help. Yet the law exempts you if you're using a hands-free system, when my argument is that there shouldn't be a law in the first place.

And the study itself was flawed because they weren't engaged in lighthearted conversations with a friend about hey, I'm only 10 miles out, be there in a minute. Instead they asked difficult math questions, quizzed on history, etc, which of course means they had to concentrate a hell of a lot more than they might if they're cruising down the highway. Note that it said they drove more slowly, too. Isn't that necessarily safer? (He asked knowingly)

I'm not pro cell phone, I'm against unnecessary laws that would do a poor job of solving a problem if the problem they were alleged to solve even existed in the first place, which in this case it doesn't. Car phones have been around forever. Again, when was the last time you ever heard of someone plowing over a kid in a school zone because they were on the phone? You'd hear that on the local news even if it happened in...Maryland, or wherever. Shoot, most of the time you can only creep along in school zones anyway.

I'm also against the trend I've noticed of avoiding punishing people who cause problems and instead punish everyone by stripping them of a freedom because of a perceived risk. When Church points out that these laws are put in place under the auspices of preventing actions that "represent a risk to the well-being of others," it leaves out an important couple of adjectives, rather being that it presents a "significant, unacceptable" risk. We take a serious risk every time we get in a car. I guess my problem often lies in three things:

1) what exactly constitutes a significant, unacceptable risk, where that line is drawn
2) the basis on which that conclusion is drawn, which is rarely factual, and
3) what measures are taken to reduce that risk to fall within acceptable parameters.

I'm for punishing individuals not for having poor judgment but for the exercise of poor judgment causing injury or otherwise undue problems for another. In other words, rather than outlawing cell phones while driving (especially if there's a useless exemption for hands-free) and therefore stripping everyone of that freedom, consider making it an aggravating circumstance if they cause a collision, especially if that collision results in injuries or death of the other party or parties. It works that way with drunk drivers, for instance, even to the extent that fault is automatically assigned to the allegedly "drunken driver" regardless of the circumstances. If you're legally at 0.08%, but nobody can tell, and you're just sitting there at a red light on your way home, and some dude rear ends you, well, that's your fault legally, not his. The same general kind of approach could be done with cell phones, if you're truly so against anyone having the freedom to use one while driving, even if they're causing no problem. If these people are truly having such a hard time talking to someone and driving, then they're going to be committing all manner of other traffic violations at the same time, not the least of which would be a failure to maintain a single marked lane.

Of course, then you're going to have to outlaw conversation with passengers, riding with children, outlaw car radios (remember when radios were first put in cars the admonition was that humans were utterly incapable of both driving and listening to the radio at the same time, much less operating one), outlaw eating or drinking in the car, outlaw smoking in the car, and pretty much outlaw every other thing. I notice that the Utah study only pitted them against legally drunk drivers, not against anyone doing any one of these otherwise everyday tasks.

I can sympathize with those who've demonized cell phone usage as a result of negative personal anecdotes, but just as the passionate people from MADD can move beyond reason in pursuit and exercise of their impassioned crusade, it can sometimes be difficult to approach these emotional subjects objectively.

I stopped reading after this...

Deacon wrote:

And when was the last time you heard about a kid being run over in a school zone? ANYWHERE? Much less one being run over by someone talking on the phone because they were talking on the phone?

Two times in Houston in the past 3-4 years that I heard of. One last year and another was 1 or 2 years prior.

I agree if the cell phone is banned in school zones it should be banned everywhere. They could have a higher ticket for using in a school zone the way a speeding ticket is higher. I don't want to get into the argument about it being a source of income for the city because I don't care.

Deacon- you wrote way too much, I'm not reading that much.

You're young, I can forgive you for thinking that you can't live without your cell phone for 10 minutes.

But you're wrong if you think it doesn't make people worse drivers!

Driving home for lunch today- it is a whopping 6 miles to my house- All of these occurred right in front of my, each case the driver was on the cell phone. Granted, in any one of these cases it just could have been a confused driver, but likely it was the cell phone
a) driver comes to a complete stop at a street where there was no stop sign.
b) driver comes to a complete stop at a green light (same driver as above)
c) driver blew thru a stop sign (4 way stop) in my neighborhood
d) driver comes to a complete stop attempting to make a left turn into a parking lot- problem was that there is a center turn lane (suicide lane) for her to be in to make that turn, and she instead remained in the main lane
e) driver pulled out of a gas station right in front of me- he had his hand holding his phone up to the left side of his face so he probably never even saw me there.

I don't want more laws. But it is so obvious that there are more STUPID people driving than there are smart ones. Your theory is to make them be responsible AFTER they have an accident. Mine is PREVENT THE ACCIDENT.

Again... in an earlier post you said: And yes, we survived for hundreds of thousands of years without a phone in the car, but most of those were without a car at all... Dude, rethink that one! The car has been around much LONGER than the cell phone.

I won't be back in this thread. You believe you're right, and it only pisses me off. CELL PHONE DRIVERS SUCK!

And FYI- I'm a huge hypocrite because I talk on the phone while driving. But if they outlawed it tomorrow, I would be fine with never talking while driving. Sounds to me like you believe that you could not survive that.

And one last thing... You want to believe that talking on cell phone while driving is a "right" that someone is trying to take away. Reality is that talking on a cell phone is a right (its a right as long as you pay your bill), but driving is NOT a right- it is a privileged granted to you via your driver's license. So talking on the cell phone while driving is not a right.

N2rock wrote:

You're young, I can forgive you for thinking that you can't live without your cell phone for 10 minutes.

I won't be back in this thread. You believe you're right, and it only pisses me off. CELL PHONE DRIVERS SUCK!
.

blah,blah,blah..............Steve ya fuckin' hippie..........forgiveness is for the lord to hand out..

i don't know what the fuck is wrong with everyone these days, 20 years ago no one had cell phones, and the world go along fine.......

everyone drives like shit when talking on the phone, you, me, and deacon.

fuck deacon, you must be the biggest dumb fuck around if you really believe you drive just as good , on the phone, as off the phone.........you don't .......

people who think they know everything really piss off those of us who do .

redneckhouston wrote:

N2rock wrote:

You're young, I can forgive you for thinking that you can't live without your cell phone for 10 minutes.

I won't be back in this thread. You believe you're right, and it only pisses me off. CELL PHONE DRIVERS SUCK!
.

blah,blah,blah..............Steve ya fuckin' hippie..........forgiveness is for the lord to hand out..

i don't know what the fuck is wrong with everyone these days, 20 years ago no one had cell phones, and the world go along fine.......

everyone drives like shit when talking on the phone, you, me, and deacon.

fuck deacon, you must be the biggest dumb fuck around if you really believe you drive just as good , on the phone, as off the phone.........you don't .......

people who think they know everything really piss off those of us who do .

Geo (can I call you Geo? Everyone else seems to, but I haven't met you yet), I never claimed that talking on the cell phone or engaging in any number of other tasks has no impact on your ability to react to an emergency situation. For some people it seems to inhibit even their basic driving ability, although in that case that's usually pretty low to start with. My argument is that if you're NOT wandering around the road, running stop signs, or otherwise causing a problem, then there's not a problem to be solved. Part of the reason I think talking on the phone or to a passenger while driving isn't much of a problem for me, personally, is because the phone conversation takes a back seat to the task for driving. If you ever end up talking to me while I'm on the road, you'll probably notice because I trail off or pause or ask you to repeat yourself sometimes, because I'll be changing lanes or exiting or something else. I'm not alone.

For those of you who are still reading, what do you think of the proposal that any traffic violation you get caught committing could be aggravated by being on the phone. So if you run a stop sign, for instance, even if you don't hit anyone, you can still be popped not only for running the stop sign, but have the fine doubled because you were on the phone at the time. If you're on the phone and causing no problem, then there's no problem. But if you're on the phone and causing a problem, now you're hit for it AND doubled because you were on the phone at the time.

N2rock wrote:

Deacon- you wrote way too much, I'm not reading that much.

Where did you give up, out of curiosity? I ask because you still seem hung up on the idea that it's someone clinging to their cell phones, when that's not really the main problem I have with it. Hell, I don't even talk on the phone that much. Considering the top is rarely up on the Jeep, it's not conducive to conversation regardless. But preventing me from having the choice to do so, even if I cause no harm and you otherwise couldn't tell, that's a problem for me. And Murphy's Law was conceived of because the things you notice tend to be different from the actual facts around you. You don't notice when you breeze through a check-out lane, but you do notice when you're stuck in a long line. If someone does something dumb on the road, it just passes by, but if they're on the phone suddenly it's a problem.

Quote :

You're young, I can forgive you for thinking that you can't live without your cell phone for 10 minutes.

You're not telling everyone they have to go without their cell phone for 10 minutes. You're talking about banning the use of cell phones on the road in any capacity. It doesn't matter if I'm on the road by myself to Laredo to visit my parents or only driving across town to visit a friend. There's a pretty big difference, and it's incredibly insulting to put it that way. You can make the same argument about anything, and it's equally lame. You can live without a great many things for 10 minutes. The real problem comes in people attempting to control the behavior of others when the only parameter is their own personal needs and experiences. You obviously work in an office all day, rather than being and outside sales person, for instance, or any one of thousands of other jobs and hobbies that keep you on the road. If you don't need to use your cell phone, don't. But I think killing the planet is a much bigger concern. You can live without your Jeep. We're taking that away for everyone's benefit. Even if you don't believe your gas guzzling SUV is causing global warming, that's a risk we just can't take.

Quote :

But you're wrong if you think it doesn't make people worse drivers!

I said it doesn't make everyone drive worse to the point of causing universally unacceptable risk.

Quote :

I don't want more laws. But it is so obvious that there are more STUPID people driving than there are smart ones. Your theory is to make them be responsible AFTER they have an accident. Mine is PREVENT THE ACCIDENT.

And it's a dangerous precedent to set. Except in extreme cases, you don't punish people for something that might happen one day. You punish them for something they've actually done, where they've caused injury to another party, whether from malice or negligence. Besides, in none of those anecdotes you listed would they have been in trouble for using their phones--in each instance they were already breaking traffic laws. Get them for THAT. In fact, fine, use the phones as an aggravating circumstance. Double the fine, if you want. But if someone is breaking no law and causing no problem, do not fine them. Would that work for you?

Quote :

Again... in an earlier post you said: And yes, we survived for hundreds of thousands of years without a phone in the car, but most of those were without a car at all... Dude, rethink that one! The car has been around much LONGER than the cell phone.

And bad drivers have been around exactly as long.

Quote :

I won't be back in this thread. You believe you're right, and it only pisses me off.

Well obviously you believe you're right, too, and it frustrates me in turn. That's just the nature of these things.

Quote :

CELL PHONE DRIVERS SUCK!

And FYI- I'm a huge hypocrite because I talk on the phone while driving.

Well. I guess if we're all a little bit racist, we can all be a little hypocritical.

Quote :

But if they outlawed it tomorrow, I would be fine with never talking while driving. Sounds to me like you believe that you could not survive that.

It's language like that that's causing a problem, here. You're talking about what someone could survive without, which is insulting hyperbole. The problem is that you're stripping me of a freedom without sufficient cause, in my view. Not just me but everyone.

alot of thought given you have young skywalker

I have. The way we handle stuff in general in this country is frustrating, but traffic regulations are especially problematic.

Deacon wrote:

The way we handle stuff in general in this country is frustrating

Kinda like Home Owners Ass. Some things they take too far.