<p>^ Yes, they should be strapped to the roof. Or taught to play “the quiet game” for prolongued periods of time (my kids fell for that only a few times…)</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Ha!</p>
<p>At first glance I read that as: </p>
<p>Yes, they should be strapped to the roof, my kids fell off only a few times…</p>
<p>Actually, one of the times I was most worried driving home was after I had played a driving simulation racing game. I kept saying to myself, “This is real now, not a game… this is real now, not a game.” I won’t even play Mario Karts any more.</p>
<p>It seems a little over the top, but I think that their motives are good. It just is something that is not going to be manageable for law enforcement and there will not be any reasonable way to enforce it. I see a lot of people saying that there is no difference between talking on a hands free device and speaking with a passenger in the car, but there is. A passenger can help monitor the driving situation, a person on the other end of the line cannot. I know that the car makers are working on new technology to disable your phone when you start the car, but am not sure how I feel about that yet.</p>
<p>It’s true that banning it, without making the fine high enough, will do nothing. In CA we have a law against using the phone without being hands free, and I do think I am the only driver in CA that actually follows the law! As long as the cost of the ticket ($20) is less than the cost of a bluetooth earpiece, people are going to keep talking.</p>
<p>What is absurd is to actually NEED a law to ban texting while driving. It is so odd to need a law for something that everyone should just know is completely stupid.</p>
<p>I totally disagree with this. We got our son a gps so he could use the bluetooth feature to let us know where he was on the road coming home. </p>
<p>They should ban drive through restaurant services before they ban bluetooth. How safe is drinking a cup of coffe from McD’s, Starbucks or any other place, much less eating food, while driving?</p>
<p>It is typically the person with a cell phone at their ear that seems to slow down et al.</p>
<p>No matter what the legal speed limit is any person could be ticketed for driving too fast for conditions even if below the posted speed. The same can apply to cell phone use. Keep it legal but ticket those who alter their driving while using a cell phone. Easy enough to observe the long term conversation or eyes off the road for texting.</p>
<p>We require automobile insurance that is for the protection of the other drivers, riders, etc. </p>
<p>I’d support this since you can always pull off at some point and return the call while not moving.</p>
<p>Wis–the idea of making it illegal is to deter the dangerous behavior, rather than ticketing it after it happens. Just like alcohol limits seek to deter drunk driving; ticketing someone after they do so is second best to stopping them from doing so. The same “well, I can handle it” thinking applies to both cases. And sometimes they can. But other times they can’t. i don’t want my life or the lives of others to depend on someone else deciding whether they can do the things that statistically have been strongly connected to less than stellar, and often dangerous, driving.</p>
<p>^^ Good point - there probably aren’t a lot of drunk drivers who don’t think they can handle driving drunk and there are probably almost zero cell phone users in cars who don’t think they can handle it, ditto with the texters. </p>
<p>There was a moron in the lane next to me on the freeway today who was driving way under the speed limit and way slower than everyone else, not in the right lane either, who, sure enough, was dialing is cell phone (eyes down looking at the cell phone in his hand on his lap).</p>
<p>There was a bigger moron next to me today on a major 50mph road going substantially slower than everyone else causing everyone to have to cut around him for quite a distance. He was ‘doing his nails’. Weird.</p>