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Comment by ghostbrainalpha | Hacker News Reader

I assume they can tell who the "driver" is by checking who is using their navigation apps.

Although I know this would hurt some really nice passengers who like to set up the driving directions for their partners.

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That definitely won't work — my wife is in charge of my phone while I drive. This includes texting, GPS, and more.

Even if you knew I was the one driving, just looking to see that my phone was in use wouldn't be accurate.

That's a good point. There are so many possible situations where a phone could be "safely" in use while the car is in motion, it would be really hard to use this information against the driver in almost any situation.

In fact, it seems the most likely explanation for Zendrive finding that the heaviest users of phones while in motion rated themselves as extremely safe — they just have bad data about who is actually driving.

I imagine it would be up to you to prove that in court if you want your insurance to pay out.

like all great laws, it would hit the people trying to do the responsible thing hardest. why is it even close to acceptable than a man and his wife doing exactly the right thing should have to fight it in court to get their insurance payout?

Because less scrupulous people would say they were doing the right thing when they weren't, and in a capitalist society like ours we prefer to defend profits rather than make things easier for people who are innocent.

How would you prove that? The only way I can see is with even more intrusive tracking.

When I get a phone call when driving, if I'm alone, I ignore it. If I have a passenger, I have the passenger answer it.

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