[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What is "the answer" to distracted driving d...
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Ask HN: What is "the answer" to distracted driving due to cell
phones?
It seems like more and more I notice people driving while looking
at their cell phones. Even at stop lights when people just "quickly
check" their phones it distracts them from noticing the lights
change and then only a few cars getting through on green and
several more running the red. What's the "best answer" to this
dilemma in your opinion? Is it steeper fines if caught? More
enforcement? Regulation disabling devices if/when certain
conditions are detected? It's getting to where someone leaving the
bar after a few drinks but focusing on driving is better at driving
then a completely sober person looking at their phone.
Author : jrs235
Score : 10 points
Date : 2021-12-21 20:30 UTC (2 hours ago)
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Apple Carplay, etc.
|
| It gives you 90% of why you check your phone. Reading texts, easy
| access to songs, podcasts, etc.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| There are laws against this in Australia, enforced with camera
| detection of smartphone use.
|
| The laws themselves are not perfect but if you can reduce
| smartphone use down to the acceptable level of distraction in a
| car already, the problem would largely be solved. Android Auto is
| complete trash, but it offers some of those features:
|
| 1. Big, simplified interface with limited options (navigation,
| music, phone).
|
| 2. Voice controlled (sort of, it's garbage in a noisy car at
| highway speeds). This fails a lot in rural Australia as the phone
| networks don't have 100% coverage.
|
| 3. Easy voice call answering. This is largely solved.
|
| 4. Easy text message creation. This is largely a complete joke as
| the voice recognition turns your semi-shouted reply into garbage,
| slowly reads it back to you so you can correct it etc. It's bad
| and distracting in it's own way.
|
| 5. Easy playlist finding for music. Largely solved.
|
| 6. Masking other content. Distractions like facebook and
| instagram should just be hidden - you don't need what makes up
| 90% of those feeds while you are driving. Facebook messenger
| maybe.
|
| Having said that, I mount my phone on the dash when driving any
| kind of distance and the car then becomes a sort of mobile
| office. I can answer the phone, try to answer SMS messages,
| listen to music and navigate mostly with voice control and
| without having to remove my eyes from the road any more than the
| speedometer / radio in the car usually distracts a driver.
|
| Answering a technical question while driving is kind of
| distracting though, so I avoid those phone calls or ask the
| caller to wait until I can stop and answer properly. You can't
| regulate this, you can just educate people.
|
| It's doable if the limited interface of something like Android
| Auto was made more functional.
|
| edit: Remind people they don't need to be 100% available 24/7.
| It's OK to go offline for a while.
| cbovis wrote:
| iPhones have Driving Focus built in now
| (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208090) which is a good start
| but I expect anyone who is happy to use their phone at the wheel
| will disable this pretty quickly.
| mikhael28 wrote:
| Drive a manual transmission.
| joezydeco wrote:
| Dash cameras, front and rear.
|
| Nothing is going to change the habits of these drivers. So be
| alert and have evidence when one of these idiots hits you.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Seriously, everyone should have a dash cam.
|
| They've really come down in price, even 2-channel (front/rear)
| cams are under $200 now.
| rapjr9 wrote:
| Create a localized field that disables the phone except for 911
| calls when the car is in motion. If the car is not moving the
| phone can do anything. Once the car starts moving everything
| except 911 calls is disabled. Now this can't be just a Bluetooth
| signal or RFID signal because those can extend far outside the
| car and disrupt other peoples phones. So you need to limit the
| transmission of the disabling signal to only the interior of the
| car, preferably just near the driver. Using the near field effect
| of radio might be a solution, see this paper:
|
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3300061.3300120
|
| This could give you fairly precise proximity limits which could
| be used to define a zone of no operation around the driver. It
| would likely extend a little beyond the outside of the car, but
| if widely used and known about would not cause most people any
| issues, they'd know to move a foot or two away to regain use of
| their phone. In most circumstances they'd never be close enough
| to be affected.
|
| A similar solution might be to use skin capacitive conduction
| effects to create a body area network for the driver. The driver
| sits on the seat and if the car is moving a signal is
| capacitively coupled to their body from the seat. The outside of
| the phone is metal or has an internal capacitive sensor and
| conducts the signal to circuitry in the phone disabling it. As
| long as the driver is in the seat and the car is moving the phone
| does not work (again except for 911 calls). This might be easier
| to defeat by placing something on the seat, but perhaps some
| capacitive or radar sensing of the driver could make that
| difficult or could detect an attempt to defeat it.
|
| If you want the phone to continue to be disabled at
| stoplights/signs then have the stoplight/sign talk to the car and
| tell it to disallow use of the phone, just the same as if it was
| in motion. If a driver wants/needs to use their phone they have
| to stop the car somewhere away from a stoplight/sign. Or disallow
| use of the phone as long as the driver is in the drivers seat,
| though that seems more dangerous since it forces the driver to
| get out of the car if they want to make a call (though again 911
| calls could be allowed).
|
| Probably a machine learning classifier could tell when the phone
| is in a moving car using accelerometer signals, but I'm not sure
| I'd trust it to be accurate enough.
|
| Extra points if you can figure out how to let background
| processes on the phone keep running so that data transfers are
| not halted while still blocking use of the phone (maybe just as
| simple as disabling the screen showing only an emergency button?
| But then there are also voice assistants. Maybe it's ok to let
| those function?)
| [deleted]
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| Self-driving cars. That was an easy one.
| drdunce wrote:
| they currently drive like they're on the phone ...and drunk
| ggherbo wrote:
| Remove all traffic signals, signs, everything that these people
| rely on to aid their distracted driving.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Short answer: steeper fines & more enforcement (traffic cams &
| tower telemetry)
|
| Long answer: regulation attention-grabbing industries, just like
| we regulated cigarettes
| jawmes9 wrote:
| > regulation attention-grabbing industries, just like we
| regulated cigarettes
|
| There is surely a good argument to be made for regulating
| social media for certain age groups.
| hellojesus wrote:
| The entire internet is attention-grabbing to some extent. How
| on earth would this be enforceable? You couldn't without
| violating the privacy of individuals.
|
| Hold people accountable if they violate the rules. Perhaps
| specific cops for enforcement of this in cities as it would
| likely be self funding until the General public complied.
| second--shift wrote:
| public transit.
|
| No seriously - people aren't gonna not use their phones. But they
| will let someone ferry/train/bus/drive them while they use their
| phones (read, watch, create, etc.).
|
| In the USA, when you force everyone to become a driver out of
| necessity, you get a lot of people who aren't interested in
| driving, driving on the shared road resource. If they had a
| viable alternative, they would use it instead - especially one
| that allowed them to keep using their phones while in transit.
| atoav wrote:
| I can observe this with myself. I have times where I want to
| use my commute to read a nice article, listen to a mix or a
| podcast, and then I tend to go by piblic transport
| obeid wrote:
| public transit
| ironmagma wrote:
| I have an unsubstantiated hunch that the longer traffic lights
| are on average, the more people text while driving. Why? In
| cities I've lived in where the traffic lights are shorter, no one
| gets out their phone because as soon as you do, you'll have to
| put it away because the light turned green. So you never get into
| Twitter/Facebook/etc. But if the stop lights are very long,
| people get engrossed in social media, then when the light turns
| green, their mental inertia keeps them wanting to read more. So
| they read while they're driving.
|
| Would be interested to know if anyone has actual research on
| this.
| drdunce wrote:
| I think this is the solution. You can't keep chasing with
| legislation.
|
| The key is keeping drivers focused and keeping traffic moving.
|
| Also removing all the things that encourage complacency. Lane
| assist etc.
| moistly wrote:
| British Columbia laid down some laws about handheld devices in
| cars, along with fines and points. It seems to have made a
| difference. If we were to sensibly switch to a proportion-of-
| wealth system for fines, as in Norway, I think we'd see even
| better results. A few people racking up $20k fines would grab
| people's attention.
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(page generated 2021-12-21 23:02 UTC)