On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 15:36:10 -0700, Ashton Crusher
wrote:

And if cell phone use and texting is so
horrible, why do we allow the police to drive around all day talking
on their radios and typing on their mobile data terminals? Funny how
when outlawing teh "distraction" would interfere with the police state
suddenly it's not important to outlaw it.

Police and fire do not "type" on their mobile terminals. Most are set
to not allow input while moving. They also do not talk all day on the
radio. Just listen on a scanner and see how often someone actually
talks while moving. It's rare and maybe once per WEEK per officer at
most. Only in hot pursuit will they talk while moving. If there are
two officers in the car, the passenger will do the talking.

There are also other users of mobile data terminals that are exempted
by the Calif Vehicle Code. While the law was written to prevent
people from watching TV while driving, it has been expanded to data
terminals, GPS, computahs, etc. Section 27602:
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/?1dmy&urile=wcmath:/dmv_content_en/dmv/pubs/vctop/vc/d12/c5/a5/27602

Note that ham radio operators have been exempt. Part of the reason is
that there was no evidence of any significant accidents or fatalities
to hams resulting from talking while moving when the ordinance was
inscribed. There are about 2,000 ham operators in the county. I
think I've met about 1/3 of them. In the last 40 years, I don't know
of any that have died or been injured while driving, much less while
talking on the radio.

So, what's the difference between texting, talking, and ham radio
operation? Ham radio is a simplex operation. You can only talk and
listen, one at a time, and not simultaneously, such as on the
telephone. We seem to be able to handle either the input or output
channel quite easily, but not simultaneously. I've done some crude
testing to see if that's true. When I use a PTT (push to talk
microphone) to make a phone call while moving, there's no problem
because my caller and I are operating simplex. The same operation
done with a handset, in full duplex mode, it highly distracting and
sometimes confusing.

If you want innovation in this area, consider adding a typical mobile
radio microphone to a cell phone, add a loudspeaker, set it up for
simplex, and maybe the mythical accident rate will fall. If not, I
can probably arrange the statistics to demonstrate that it will.

For texting, I had a recent bad experience. I was the passenger in a
car where the driver was getting "notifications" continuously roughly
twice per minute. The phone would make an obnoxious noise when they
arrived. He just couldn't resist the temptation to look at his phone
and see what had just arrived. I mentioned it to him, and was
ignored. There was no interactive texting or chat session, but plenty
of approximately 3 second distractions. That's enough for an
accident. Fortunately, there were none, although I was tempted to
kiss the ground as I exited the vehicle.

Note, I'm not addressing Texting... that's not a
'distraction', it is literally a separate task from driving and I
would expect properly done research would show it's in a whole
different class of hazards from talking on a phone. But that's just
an expectation.

Yep. You got it. The smartphone has an accelerometer and can easily
tell when it's moving. Buffer incoming texts and block the keyboard
while the phone is moving. End of problem (until it's hacked).

Apps are already available but it really should be built into the
phone firmwa
https://play.google.com/store/search?q=no%20text%20while%20driving%20app&c=apps




--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558