- Image via Wikipedia
The city of Boston recently placed a ban on “texting while driving”. As of Jan 1, more than a dozen states also have bans on sending texts while driving. What about reading texts or emails, surfing the web, typing a URL, do I need to continue. According to reports, provisions allow for entering a name or phone number. This type of reaction is short-sighted and, given the difficulty to enforce, absolutely useless. Legislators are simply following suit of earlier efforts to restrict GPS operation to placate their constituents without really fixing the problem.
Prevention vs Restriction
How fast can you run? If you are average like me, your top speed is between 13 and 20 miles per hour. Mind you, for very short distances. As a point of reference, multiple world record holder Usain Bolt’s speed over 200m is roughly 23+ MPH. He is said to top out at 27+ MPH.
Have you ever tried to type, dial or use your phone while sprinting? Probably not since you’d undoubtedly take a header before you pressed send. Rightly so, I might add. So, considering the proliferation of cell phones with GPS, features of the technology can be disabled if the phone is traveling faster than, say, Usain Bolt’s average speed. In fact, software applications exist that disable texting if the phone is traveling over 10 miles per hour.
The prudent thing to do here is to require that cell phone (and GPS) manufacturers disable certain features of the phone if it can be detected that the phone is traveling at a rate of speed faster than the average human can travel.
In-dash GPS, as well as future In-car WIFI, restrict usage while driving, so why not cell phones?
