On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 1:43 PM, tjpa <[email protected]> wrote: > What if the crash occurs while the driver is reading the fine-print legal > notice?
Just about every state either had or still have laws on the books the forbid the operation of a television anywhere in the front seat area of a car. A careful parsing of the language obviously says that a computer screen of any sort is not a television, not even when it is displaying videos or even television programs. Most states have failed, either through oversight or intent, to update those older laws to encompass other types of display devices, including cell phone displays. Were states to update those laws, a lot of the distractions that kill and maim an awful lot of people would be explicitly forbidden. The latest stat I saw on deaths caused by drivers distracted by using a cell phone was for 2009 and the figure was right at 2,600 on United States roadways with 570,000 injuries and with a total of 1.5 million crashes. Those figures were for deaths, injuries and crashes proven to be attributable to cell phone distractions. Who knows how many others there were wherein cell phone use could not be proven to have been a cause. A Harvard study showed that cell phone use tends to degrade driver performance about the same as having a 0.8 blood alcohol level, i.e., in most jurisdictions, driving drunk. Steve ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
