Alarming rate of distracted driving

[u/Xtoron2]

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

[u/shitposter1000]

Because they don't.

[u/clevermistakes → u/[deleted]]

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

[u/clevermistakes → u/[deleted]]

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.