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Comment by hajile | Hacker News Reader

The flaw is obvious. People put their phones down when their semi-subconscious driving “algorithm” detect anything out of the ordinary. At that point, they bring their full attention to whatever weirdness is going on. This tends to happen with drivers no matter if they’re absorbed in the radio or just lost in their thoughts. I’d guess that the amount of driving time matters a great deal here.

Inebriated is much different. They are less likely to notice something in the first place because their senses are deadened. If they do notice, their full attention while intoxicated is much less as is their ability to rationally make decisions. There’s no way to un-distract if something gains.

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The issue with drunk driving and texting is not that they can’t focus but can they when they have to. Unless someone’s slam dunk, they can. It’s the time to react when something happens that’s the problem.

With texting and driving there are other major daily hassles. A common scenario for me as I walk my dog is that I no longer assume a car will yield on a crosswalk - even the ones with a stop sign or a signal. May be the impact is that few people bike or walk? Or walk elsewhere like a trail or a park instead of sidewalk and neighborhoods? End of the day, it’s about what we want as a society. If we decide that people should be allowed to focus on their phone, we have to start redesigning the streets now.

Not just as a pedestrian, even as a driver I don’t assume I can go in green light anymore. People seem to miss red lights on the regular now

I don’t assume that a car is going to stop at a crosswalk or stop sign until I can see the driver’s eyes and tell that they are aware of me and are stopping. Otherwise I wait. I have done this since much before mobile phones were a problem.

It was new to me that cars even stop for me. But there was a brief period ‘12-‘16 may be, where I truly felt comfortable walking and biking. This was before Uber and lyft and also before smartphones where this addictive. Most people where still browsing Facebook on their computers.

Was this 1912? It'd be weird because that would make you very old, but it's even weirder to read someone saying cellphones were not very addictive in 2015.

This is true, but people can also judge ahead of time when problems are more likely to occur, letting them put down the cellphone and pay attention to the road when it is more likely they'll need to react quicker.

I'd also guess most people are not constantly on their phones as they are checking notifications/texts and that kind of thing, so you get more of an on-and-off effect rather than just being consistently drunk for the entire duration.

Not that it makes the practice any better, but it does seem like a complicating factor when trying to frame the problem in terms of drunk driving.

>People put their phones down when their semi-subconscious driving “algorithm” detect anything out of the ordinary.

I think this ignores the fact that people can’t actually pay attention to more than one thing at a time, generally. Meaning, they aren’t simultaneously looking at their phone and being vigilant of “weirdness” That switching overhead from one focus to the other may be enough to delay reactions to cause accidents.

So while they’re not offline, the sensory input cycle is slowed enough to be much less useful.

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