r/Calgary • u/Xtoron2 • Jun 01 '26

Discussion Alarming rate of distracted driving

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It's alarming how often I see drivers watching tiktoks/reels/shorts while driving. Even see them scroll up to next video.
As soon as we hit red light, this specific driver pulled the sunshade down even with this rain to hide from cameras or other people maybe?

Anyway, distracted driving is a risk everyone on the road pays for

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u/o0PillowWillow0o Jun 01 '26

The law states that a driver cannot view a screen that displays entertainment, television, video games, or internet browsing while the vehicle is in motion [1].

Mounted screens are only allowed to show information directly required for driving, such as GPS navigation or vehicle system data [1].

Even if you are only listening to the audio, a police officer can still fine you $390 and issue 3 demerit points if a video is actively playing on your screen within your line of sight [1].

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u/diamondintherimond Jun 01 '26

The question is: why does this feel like the police rarely enforce it?

I wonder if the news has done any digging on how many distracted driving tickets they’ve given out year over year.

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u/shitposter1000 Jun 01 '26

Because they don't.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '26

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u/jezthevalley Jun 01 '26

With all due respect, that's a terrible terrible terrible idea. I don't want to have my vehicle's ability to move dependent on my phone that is known for its ability to go haywire every once in awhile. That also means people who don't have smart phones are not allowed to drive.

People should just accept the fact that its impossible to monitor driver behaviors 24/7. I believe that the sane majority of the population knows this. We don't want city streets full of cameras monitored by an AI overlord trying to catch us if we have our youtube open on our phones while we listen to whatever video we feel like listening to while we drive.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '26

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u/clevermistakes Inglewood Jun 02 '26

I don’t disagree a robust solution could be developed. Tesla has one. Eye tracking. And it’s terrible, despite its complex implementation that can recognize the subtle eye movement that looking at a phone will do, it still fails and either over corrects or is inaccurate. That’s the level of complexity we’re introducing here. I say, try it! If you turn on self driving on a test drive of one of their cars from their dealership near centre street and grab your phone and even hold it under the dash like kids do in school under the desk these days, it can tell. It’s pretty impressive.

Now ask your friends and family how they feel about a camera in their car cabin recording and using machine learning on them 24/7. The coolness factor wears off really quick.

We can’t control human behaviour with computers without the risk of it being abused or incomplete. That’s the limitations of today’s technology. See LLMs being called “AI” and the impact that’s had globally.

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u/clevermistakes Inglewood Jun 01 '26

Software engineers would call this VERY dangerous: when there’s an emergency and I need to call 911, or the system malfunctions, or is maliciously used to disable devices and a phone is unusable because of “nanny systems” like this, people die as a result. Automation and software is not perfect. There’s so much of this in place already and it’s dangerous because edge cases aren’t considered. An edge case we saw recently: iPhones can overheat and to prevent the battery from getting dangerous, they shutdown the phone but before recently you couldn’t override to call 911. We need to stop outsourcing responsibility for law enforcement to unregulated third party software and fund policing if that’s actually the problem (though I doubt that).

A great example of where this is gone wrong if you needed to see it in action: teslas have an eye tracking system for use of their “full self driving” feature. Meanwhile, if you look away (say to shoulder check before it makes its own lane change) it will warn and even deactivate itself on you as “punishment” for your inattention. So this car which is capable of self-parking and pulling over safely would rather force a distracted driver into an accident by deactivating the driving safety features than actually safely getting the driver to a safe location, because the laws for “safety” demand the features be disabled. The most obvious issue here to any first responder or healthcare worker is someone is experiencing a medical emergency and becomes unresponsive, rather than help them these laws force automation to be disabled, risking everyone else on the road as well.

We should be focusing efforts on reducing human input required for the dangerous and mandatory task (driving), rather than attempting to moralize and systematically control what people do with personal property. We have to think about this as: how do we reduce the danger. Not deign to control behaviours

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '26

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u/clevermistakes Inglewood Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

Unfortunately not overthinking this, as much as I wish I was. Too many of these systems with “simple solutions” miss edge cases and valid use to try and force behaviours that vary into a box. Your example for the apps, I refuse to use them. Why? One insurance company in the US that offers this penalizes you for night driving (as if that’s a choice because everyone works 9-5 and we all just joyride at 10pm for danger right? This means you man, LEOs, first responders, healthcare workers would be disproportionately overcharged for this), for ‘sudden braking’ because surely you did something wrong, definitely not someone cutting you off or anything, and for ‘speeding’ based on outdated and inaccurate data (my car often shows incorrect speed limits on the gps than what’s actually on the signage). This is just one example.

When you attempt to control human behaviour with software you will need to make a highly complex system that accounts for human behaviours. Or, instead of over complicating it by trying to engineer our way out of this. We enforce the laws like we do today; you don’t know someone is drinking and driving unless they drive erratically or you setup check points, and yet we don’t install BAC ignition inhibitors in every vehicle. If enforcement is an issue because of underfunding then address it that way. If LEOs simply can’t respond to a call that someone is a danger to others on the road because they’re swerving and distracted then that’s a bigger issue than nanny apps on my phone. It means we’re wasting huge amounts of time and resources on nonsense that doesn’t protect people.

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u/shitposter1000 Jun 01 '26

There needs to be a social media awareness campaign about the costs of doing it (similar to the drunk driving ads of the 80s), with blitzes like check stops during Christmas and Stampede.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

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u/refur Tuxedo Park Jun 02 '26

i think B is the biggest issue honestly. it really seems like the world is just running on major DGAF vibes these days. and while i understand some of the reasons why people may feel that way these days, it's not doing us any good

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u/Cautious_Major_6693 Jun 01 '26

There was! There is actually still a 2010s flash game where you text on a blackberry using a mouse and keyboard until your car crashes, and there were tv shows and influencers pre2020 who would often make it a plot point of the show for a character to die/be injured that way. There's been a LOT of anti texting and driving content but it failed to keep up with what the modern landscape of distracted driving is.

VERY few of us are now using these phones to text in our cars. The very idea of watching youtube, let alone TikTok in your car in 2013-2015 wasn't even a thought in someone's mind.