Landmark Texting While Driving Case

It's good to see the courts are finally taking this seriously. I have had my share of close-calls with texters at intersections. It's time to put down the phone and drive.

When people realize they can get a few years in a maximum secutiy penintentiary, they might start to adjust their driving habits.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/06/justice/massachusetts-texting-trial/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

 

Yep. A necessary evil. It's the wrong thing to do and bad decisions have Consequences.

 

It's practically stopped drinking and driving.

 

This. Unfortunately all the penalties in the world don't keep people from doing stupid shit. I too have had plenty of near misses, or people who have just annoyed me for driving slow because they were texting. They recently just passed a law against texting while driving here in PA and I still see just as many people doing it.

 

good...can stand getting near someone like that. 15 minutes ago i almost got hit by someone who was texting while merging without a turn signal

 

Yeah I seen it on yahoo, I don't understand how people have more important things to do than drive there car (while driving).

 

PSA ads like this should be shown in the US.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0LCmStIw9E

 

This is good because it makes the consequences concrete. No, it will not stop all people from texting, just like DUI laws do not stop some people from driving drunk. But a lot of people do not drive drunk, not because they are concerned with safety primarily, but because they don't want to go to jail if they get pulled over. Without a DUI law, our roads would be covered with many more drunken slobs on Friday and Saturday nights.

At minimum, this ruling should get some people to rethink their driving habits and behavior. Some people who otherwise did not see an issue with texting while driving might now see it in a different light. The potential consquences are no longer an abstraction. An example is being made and one does not want to be that example.

Part of the reason for sentencing like this is deterrence. It will not deter everyone, but it will indeed deter some folks out there who pick up the phone and remember this and think, maybe this is not a good idea to be texting right now. The potential consquences have gone from some vague abstraction about safety to something concrete that could seriously mess up your life and your future. A car is not a toy, its 3,000 pounds of steel moving with signifigant momentum and energy. Unexpected things can happen real fast when something weighing 3,000+ pounds is moving at 65MPH and you are not paying attention. Your decisions and how you handle yourself while driving can have serious life-altering consequences for not only you but those around you. If your negligence and inattention causes you to kill someone when that 3,000 pounds of steel is moving at 60MPH, you can go to the pokey for a long time.

 

i don’t text and drive. i don’t even like talking! thats why i am looking at new head units. that have blue tooth since my truck dose not have it.

 

Not really...
druglibrary.org/schaffer/misc/driving/s18p6.htm

 

Sarcasm perhaps? Sadly this will have zero effect on anything.

 

Actually, it will. This ruling is now a legal precedent that other judges will refer to when using sentencing guidelines for distracted driving, expecially texting. It is inevitable that more cases will now be prosecuted. This is how the legal system works. The precedent has been set. That is why this is being touted as a landmark case.

Basically, the court is saying--Put down the phone and drive. If you don't, we have no problem with sending you to prison for a signifgant amount of time and/or ensuring you never drive a motor vehicle again. Your future will be ruined, you will have a 1st degree felony conviction, you wont be able to get a job. etc..Just because you wanted to text your buddy or update your facebook status while driving at 65 MPH.

 

WOW! That was realistic.
That would never get air-time here because it's "too gory and morbid"

I remember the Ohio Sate Patrol movies in Driver's Ed in the early '70's with REAL fatalities (very gory). I've worn my seat belt ever since!!

 

Well, I have had my close calls. Just this last weekend I actualy got a good test of my Tacoma brakes. I did a full panic stop because a teeen girl that looked like about 19 drove straight through a red light 2 seconds after it turned red. I literally saw the cellphone fly out of her hand--she was having an animated conversation and was not paying attention to the light. I would have been T-Boned at a 50MPH intersection.

On another subject, the Brakes were flawless. I was impressed. They felt a bit spongy on a full panic stop but no tire squeel and the ABS did its job imrpessively.

I have had more than one incident like this and I am tired of it. Bith times it was some young jackass with a cellphone in their ear or in their hand up to their face at an itnersection. Put down the damn phone and drive.

 

This all began with the ban of talking while driving. Everyone moves to text which is even worse. Now its too late because people would rather text than call each other.

 

^Brake assist and brake force distribution are responsible for the Taco's good panic braking performance.

 

Have to realize that he'd be going to jail for homicide by vehicle regardless of any texting laws. So I fail to see how it REALLY changes much. It's not like people are going to be sent to jail for being pulled over and texting. If no one was killed here it would be a non story. You're not going to see a story about someone texting while driving and hitting a mailbox and being sent to jail for years.

 

Hitting a mailbox while texting won't send you to prison but it will put you into a high-risk insurance category and will pretty much triple your bill. When there is an incident, there are always consquences for one's bad decisions or actions while driving.

In this case, If it was just an accident without cause, he woud not be charged with homicide. He was charged with negligent homicide because he was driving while distracted and this was ruled the cause of the accident.

I wonder what he was distracted with?

 

Whatever it was, it worked quite well and was better than I expected. It was spongy and the ABS brakes pulsated, but not so much as a squeak from the tires and the stopping distance was impressive.

 

I almost got hit by a girl that was texting and driving the other day. She flew through the intersection when her light was red. My light turned green for me to take a right, but I looked before I took that right and noticed her coming.