CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 16years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
Mobile phones could become useless in moving cars as government considers new blocking technology
Campaigners say texting, checking emails, and making calls while driving should become as socially uacceptable as not wearing a seat belt or drink-driving
Read full article here:
Passengers are going to love that, especially those travelling on buses and, depending on how it's implemented, trains.
I struggle to see how it would be possible to do this in any way that couldn't easily be worked around.
If they actually cared, increase the penalty and do some enforcement.
The networks know exactly which handsets are moving around (this is how Google traffic knows about traffic) so I guess in principal they could selectively drop your connection if you're on the move.
The other option would be to force manufacturers to make faraday-cage style car bodies, so your phone simply can't communicate (unless you're holding it out of an open window). That would take a while longer because turnover of vehicles is only however much.
I'm not convinced this will ever happen though because it would mean we could no longer be tracked while driving. I suspect a meeting won't happen quietly in the background between shady suits and the idea will die off.
If they actually cared, increase the penalty and do some enforcement.
Indeed. Societal expectations have changed enough (through advertising/penalites/enforcement etc...) to make drink driving unacceptable by your peers on the whole (I think) - I'd like to the think the same will happen for phone use.
I also hope one day it will be as socially unacceptable to admit you're driving yourself just one mile down the road to go to work... or at least if you question it you're not called a tree-hugging lefty weirdo (largely true in my case, but that's beside the point).
Lack of signal won't stop drivers playing with music / sat nav etc on their phones. But it would stop passengers using their phones to communicate which is not that risky. Agree that proper penalties, enforcement and social attitudes are the solution.
I haven't noticed much mention of hands free systems recently. With voice recognition it's getting more practical to send texts, change music etc with two hands on wheel and eyes on road, albeit partly distracted. Is hands free a sensible way forward?
two hands on wheel and eyes on road, albeit partly distracted
Distracted is the operative word.
Try counting backwards from 20, while also saying the alphabet, starting with A. It's quite difficult.
The reason people drive and use phones is because driving 'is' easy, and that is only so because most of the time we allow just enough error in ourselves and of others so that nothing untoward happens. When nothing untoward happens regularly, you come to expect it. And when something does happen, it's such a shock to our learned experience that it must surely have happened because of something else, or someone else.
Setting aside the argument of social versus technical solutions for a moment...
It should be possible to create a technical solution that allows passengers to use their phones (and maybe even drivers to use data for things like maps), while preventing drivers from texting, usng social media etc. Think about cameras observing the driver to detect drowsiness or if the driver is drunk. The same cameras can detect if the driver is using a hand held phone. Then the phone can transmit information to the vehicle about what type of app it is running (phone, text, facebook, maps etc). The vehicle is then able to jam the signals (or issue an alert, maybe even bring the car slowly to halt) if the driver is using the "wrong type" of app.
Yes, it could probably be defeated in some way, but a well designed system could be quite difficult to defeat, and most people simply would not bother.
The "it could be easily defeated" argument is often used to argue against the introduction of things like speed-limiters / black boxes. But people these days are less inclined to tinker with their cars, perhaps less than 1% would try to defeat such systems.
Even then, the remaining non-speeders would create an effective rolling road block
Not sure if this will be practical however always think the rules on mobile phones are arbitrary as are allowed to speak on a phone when driving also allowed to operate a touch screen mobile phone style interface. You can operate a phone from an ipad as long as its integrated to the dash (tesla, Cadillac)yet if you attach a phone to the dash in the same place it’s not legal , you could pair you’re a phone a device wired in the vehicle with exactly the same interface and place it in the same position.
I was looking at car videos on line and new top end cars like the tesla and Cadillac have I pads integrated in to the dash, so controls for things like heater or radio now involve taking eyes of the dash. In an a normal car you can feel every control for heater and the switches so can operate the vehicle without taking eyes of the road.
With touch screens you cannot feel the buttons and like an I phone the buttons move. I would think for safety any touch screen device should be banned from being used, so in a tesla and similar cars the touch screen disabled while vehicle in operation.
GM, ford and tesla puts style over safety with these I pads in dash, it seems strange that a controls on an old wreck can be operated more safely than the best cars.
In respect to mobile phones and cars is it operating a touch screen when driving that is deemed unsafe in which case, why are these devices not banned in cars like tesla or is it speaking on the phone that is deemed unsafe in which case why are hand free devices permitted. You are allowed to operating an I pod when driving which has the same interface as an I phone. It would be legal to drive on a hands free phone and operate an I pod.
I would tend to think non touchy feely button controls such as I pad type interfaces should be banned from being operated while driving, however this would be impractical so possibly regulation on new cars should allow all main controls to be operated with tactile location fixed buttons to allow operation while driving and the I pads controls disabled while driving.
I don’t think the government will deliver this legislation on blocking any times soon or indeed ever, the government has not even managed to align incentives on diesel vehicles the government despite the evidence, the passive smoking of diesel fumes in town centres, “encouraged” by government policy is a akin to the tobacco conspiracy of the past with greater concerns for commercial interests than health with lower "road tax" company miles tax on diesel cars.
My new car (2015 Golf) has the CD player in the glove compartment so at least there's no chance of the driver changing CDs in normal driving. Still got a touchscreen radio, although the controls for channel and volume on steering wheel are much easier to use than touchscreen,
You must log in to post.
Cycling in Edinburgh Flickr group
Video embedded using Easy Video Embed plugin
posts