The Cellar - Nationwide Cell Phone Ban?

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- - Nationwide Cell Phone Ban? (http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=19227)

Can't you just set your phone to go to message after 1 ring?

But it's like a gazillion key-strokes to get it back to vm-after-5-rings. I want a shortcut. </whine>

I'm sure your mom will be ok with the "I'm just trying to be safe" rationale.

You don't know Mom! :haha:

Once I realized our dependence on our cell phones, and the completely impulsive feeling that we have to respond to them immediately, I quit.

I would hear the ring and hop to!

Now I put it on vibrate. When I check it, is when I check it. I am not going to be a slave to a f'ing phone.

It stays in my bag and I check it a couple of times a day. That's it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cicero (Post 522691)

I have to admit that is what I do as well. I like my crackberry so I can check my personal em from work, something they blocked last year, and now I only turn it on when I want to make a call or check mail. Other wise I keep it off more than on. Drives the wife crazy.

Maybe this should be another thread (forgive me) but when is someone going to notice the video screens on everybody's dashes? Cheese&rice! Talk ABOUT a distraction.

Those things are illegal here. They can only be installed in the back.

ETA: Cheese risotto is delicious!

Are you talking about GPS navigation screens, Cap?
Those are getting more common.

Maybe I am. I thought I was following a dude the other day while he was watching a movie. He was all over the road.
Damn. I need to get out more.

You're allowed GPS screens in the front, but not DVD players etc. We have a GPS system. It's pretty helpful sometimes. It lives in the glovebox though till we're going somewhere and we don't know the way.

I was taught to be a defensive driver (drive like no-one else knows the rules of the road).
It wasn't a big shock for me - I grew up a pedestrian, and you had to assume that the driver had not seen the red light at the crossing, had not seen you on a zebra crossing (where pedestrians have right of way) had not bothered to signal before they turned into the road you were crossing etc etc.

I was always very pedestrian conscious as a driver, simply because I had been one for 24 years. It also made me healthily conscious of other drivers.

I am not perfect. The first day I drove alone - day after I passed my test - I was reading a text message while waiting at lights. Not only did I fail to notice the light change, I also left my handbrake on when I tried to pull away. Another time I was changing the station on the radio while waiting to pull out into traffic, I saw a cyclist at the last minute and reversed - into the front of a car that wasn't there when I last checked the mirror. But I learned.

The truth is, it doesn't matter how familiar the road is, how great a driver you are, how well equipped with safety features your car is - there can be an idiot driver, a stray child, an animal, an old person... the unexpected. Wtach the road. Concentrate. Then at least it won't be your fault if it does happen. And it does - to millions of people a year.

:runaway: "Concentrate. Then at least it won't be your fault if it does happen. And it does - to millions of people a year."

I just think about baseball.:blush:

NYPD CELL PHONE CRACKDOWN

Quote:

New York City police issued a whopping 9,016 tickets during a 24-hour crackdown on phoning-while-driving.

Department spokesman Paul Browne says that compares to 500 on a typical day.

The ticket blitz ended Friday. But the law is still the law.

Get caught driving while using a hand held phone and you could be fined $120.

Taxi drivers are held to an even higher standard. They can receive a $200 summons from the Taxi and Limousine Commission for using even a hands-free phone while driving.

Well thats a start.

That sort of approach usually works in my experience. Like with the seatbelts. We had a crackdown on seatbelts recently in my area. Started out with police patrol vehicles staioned strategically about the place, pulling drivers over and making sure they are aware of both the law on seatbelts, and the reasons for that law, give them a verbal warning, let them go on their way. Big signs about the place reminding people to use their seatbelts, schools all doing stuff about it to get the children to be aware of, and therefore able to press for, safe ways of travelling in the car. Loads of stuff in the local press. General amnesty for anyone caught during this brief period. The signs counted people down to the end of that amnesty at which point the zero-tolerance crackdown began.

Apparently the numbers of drivers being seen without seatbelts has reduced. As has the number of cars with children not properly seated and secure.