Hacker News Reader

Comment by andersa | Hacker News Reader

Why would someone be using their phone while driving? Is this something I'm too European to understand? Literally never occured to me to do that, and I haven't ever been in a car where someone did it.

Obvious exceptions being to look at a message while stopped at a traffic light or other safe location, or having the navigation app open with the phone fixed to the dashboard and otherwise not interacting with it.

View on HN

Might be. Here in the US, as a cyclist who has to look at drivers to ensure that they see me, something like 1 in 10 are using a phone with one hand, texting or swiping Facebook/TikTok with their thumb while driving with the other hand. An even larger fraction pick the phone up at any stoplight to check messages or scroll, and occasionally need to be honked at to realize the light has turned green.

It's not quite a lethal problem when their peripheral can notice a car in front of them (which is probably moving with traffic), but it could be lethal for me. Car drivers are used to looking for cars, they're not looking for me on a bike - even with a florescent yellow backpack, flame orange helmet, and obscenely bright red blinky rear light.

I've given up hope on people not talking on their phone or occasionally dialing a call with their fingers or updating navigation apps or starting a voice-to-text or using their phones at stoplights. But could we at least get a few of the most-used OSes and non-driving apps to not work when they're being used by a driver? If there are no other phone Bluetooth beacons continuously in range (you're known to be not a passenger), there is a car stereo Bluetooth beacon, and GPS says you're in motion on a road at road speeds, don't play video. Don't allow new social notifications. Don't allow Tiktok or Facebook or Reddit to run. At least make an effort at it, stop the easiest 80%.

I'm convinced it's going to take a horrific accident going viral - someone plowing through a class of elementary students on a field trip while live-streaming or something like that - to cause change.

"The EU mean percentages of car drivers self-reporting different mobile phone uses at least once while driving in the past 30 days are: 47.7% talked on a hands-free mobile phone, 28.6% talked on hand-held mobile phone, and 24.2% texted."

So it's just you I'm afraid.

> Obvious exceptions being to look at a message while stopped at a traffic light

This exception is "obvious" until you've sat through an entire cycle because the car in front of you didn't notice the light turning green.

That's one thing that horns are for. Granted I hate using it, and other people hate it too, but I've gotten pretty good at a friendly beep-beep instead of a lean on honk.

Same. Get a lot of practice these days :|

I call something similar a "Facebook" stop. The light changes to green, the car sits there for awhile, the driver looks up and realizes the light is green, then accelerates faster than normal to recover.

I wasn't really thinking of a long browsing session, more like you got a ping so on the next stop pull out the phone for a couple seconds to see what it was and if it is really urgent so you can find a place to park.

I once drove 5 blocks behind someone with a tablet mounted to their windshield, big enough for me to discern they were attentively watching an MMA fight. After 5 blocks they turned the wrong way down a busy 1-way street.

There's not going to be a rational answer for 'why', it's just addiction.

At least around me in CA I see folks every day looking at their phones while driving. I believe license requirements and overall driving safety is much higher in Europe vs the US. I have friends from Europe who are shocked at how easy it is to get a license in the US.

A coworker was in an accident because some teenager cut 3 lanes of traffic from the left lane to the exit because he almost missed a Poke stop. It was his passenger playing, so the driver can still make horrible decisions based on a phone even if not the one personally operating the phone.

I realize this anecdotal story is not a 1:1 example. It's definitely more general into distracted driving in general, and just how teenage decision making isn't very mature at all.

I sincerely hope they lost their license over that one.

I think this is a useful anecdote because it really underscores that the problem is distractions. There’s a fascinating body of research looking into how well humans perform repetitive tasks that generally require little thought but sometimes unexpectedly require quick reactions. The short synopsis is we’re ok in a carefully designed environment but dog water if left to our own devices.

> Is this something I'm too European to understand?

My guess is: yes. I'm almost too "I look at the car, not the driver" to understand but I have actually seen this as a passenger in America. I drive myself places.

One difference is that manual transmissions are much more common in Europe (they are effectively gone in the US), so you're less likely to have an extra hand free to hold a phone with while you're driving.

The GPS app is doing something screwy and I’m getting lost so I look at the map to figure out where I need to go. Other than that I don’t use my phone in the car, if I get a call I can take it on my Apple Watch.

The distraction is the phone call not the device you answer it on.

Obviously that means the solution is to treat talking to passengers in the car as an equivalent offense to drunk driving, according to the other commenters in this thread.

I was biking around Hilversum in the Netherlands today and saw two drivers looking at their phone while driving.

I frequently see people on the highway, in the fast lane, watching videos...

That is actually insane. Maybe Tesla is right, self driving cars really can't come soon enough, and they'll be safer than humans.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com