US may disable all in-car mobile phones
Transportation boss: 'It will be done'
Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime
The US government may require cars to include scrambling tech that would disable mobile-phone use by drivers, and perhaps passengers.
"I think it will be done," US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood said on Wednesday morning, according to The Daily Caller. "I think the technology is there and I think you're going to see the technology become adaptable in automobiles to disable these cell phones."
LaHood is on a self-described "rampage" against distracted driving, and if making it impossible to use a mobile phone while in a car can save lives, he's all for it — although, according to TDC, LaHood also emphasized the role of "personal responsibility."
In a Tuesday blog post announcing an online video series, "Faces of Distracted Driving", which presents first-person accounts of distracted-driving tragedies, LaHood noted that "Just last year, nearly 5,500 people were killed and 500,000 more were injured in distracted driving-related crashes.
"These lives, and too many others like them, were cut short — not because of malice, but because of carelessness," he added.
The problem is that the average driver doesn't think that he or she is an average driver: nearly two-thirds of drivers think of themselves as safer and more skillful than a driver of median safety or skills — a statistical impossibility, of course.
When faced with the prospect of automotive mobile phones being disabled, we'd be willing to bet that most drivers, suffused with confidence in their own skills, will think in terms of personal inconvenience and a restriction on personal freedom.
Perhaps it might be better to think of the guy texting in the lane to your left, or the gal yelling at her ex on her iPhone in the lane to your right, and think not of your own inconvenience, but of some distracted dolt killing you.
Remember one unassailable statistic, as explained by the late, great George Carlin: "Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider!"
LaHood may be right. Disabling mobile phones in cars should not be looked at as a way of protecting you from yourself, but instead as a way of protecting you from the stupid. ®
COMMENTS
Stopping in car distractions
So are they going to come up with a device that disables kids in the car too?
Exactly !
This happened to me just the other day !
I was driving to work on the motorway, easy does it, like I always do, when a woman in a brand new BMW overtakes me doing at least 80, her face pressed to the mirror in the sunvisor, while she's applying make up !
So I see this, and deciding she's actually good looking an scantily dressed, I decide to take another peak.
So I pull up next to her, doing 80 or 90 and believe it or not, she's still at it, applying yet another coat of plaster, and she almost swerves into me !
That scared me so much I dropped my razor, and that crashed right into the sandwich I was holding in my other hand.
Now, because I had both my hands full I had the steering wheel jammed between my knees. And because I had to avoid being crashed into, my knee hit my phone-holder, knocking it out of said holder, slap bang into the cup of coffey that was sitting between my thighs.
You can imagine what happened next : hot coffey burns my crotch, my phones drowned and to add insult to injury the call I was making gets interrupted !!!
Wimmin drivers should be banned too !!!
And what about...
putting on lipstick (not seeing that red light, with the motorcyclist patiently waiting to be hit from behind), playing the trumpet (true story!), shaving yourself (leaving suitable replies for others to make about this one)
And dogs? What about dogs! And slitherin' things?
And Owls!
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
What you need to know about cloud backup
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Customer Success Testimonial: Recovery is Everything
Data control in the cloud
