Drivers Refuse to Put Down Their Phones. People Keep Dying - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-distracted-drivers/ <comment><USER2> My horn usage has gone way up. Driving stick in the US you have to pay attention to be in gear at the right time. In the past 10 years I've seen it get exponentially worse as people put their heads down coming up to a red light. Laws are written but not enforced. Friends and relatives die from drunk or distracted driving and it's frustrating because even though driving is a privileged and not a right people with multiple DUIs get back behind the wheel. Honestly, texting and driving should have as strict punishments as a DUI and I know that's an unpopular stance.

<comment><USER3> Driving stick doesn't mean anything. You can be texting and driving stick at the same time easily. You don't constantly need your hand on the shifter.

<comment><USER4> You must not actually drive stick then. The only time I can see myself being able to text while driving stick is on the highway and even then I wouldn't really be comfortable doing so.

When I used to drive auto I could literally have my phone in my right hand with my left hand on the wheel at all times if I wanted to...

<comment><USER5> There are plenty of countries where the majority of cars are manual transmission and trust me, there's still plenty of people texting whilst driving.

<comment> blaser-waffle The US is predominately automatic, but outside of N. America most of the world still uses manual.

I learned stick on a working holiday, driving utes in Western Australia

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a cyclist I'm elevated above most drivers on the road. So I can see many distracted drivers who try to be more subtle about it. Distracted driving is a daily problem, but there's almost no enforcement of it.

I can recall one time where I talked to a driver stopped at a stoplight about how he wasn't paying attention and couldn't stay in his lane. I told him to put down the phone and watch the road. This driver tried to change the subject, acting outraged that before he passed me I left the bike lane for less than 10 seconds to pass another cyclist. I told him that's not illegal but he wasn't having any of it. Apparently I'm just as bad as he is, which makes his distracted driving okay. Except that what I did was legal and perfectly safe, yet what he did was illegal and rather dangerous.

<comment><USER7> As a pedestrian, I'm often passed at close range, at speed by _bicyclists_ that have their head in their phones. It's difficult to fathom this level of negligence.

<comment><USER8> I understand the frustration at a cyclist doing this, but are you more bothered by a cyclist doing this or a driver doing this?

You say "it's difficult to fathom this level of negligence", but a driver doing this is significantly more dangerous -- yet current laws don't take this into account.

For example: a ticket for a cyclist running a red light in NYC is greater than a ticket for a driver texting on their phone.

<comment><USER7> For the same act, of course a car is much more dangerous than a bicycle.

But, I've never been buzzed by a car going 20mph at a distance of under one foot, and certainly not while I'm walking on a sidewalk. I am regularly buzzed by bikes in this manner.

In general, drivers act with the knowledge that if they even tap a pedestrian, they're likely to severely injure or kill them. They might be sloppy or distracted, but they almost never willfully do this.

I encounter bicyclists playing "chicken" with me on sidewalks all the time. There's a cold or smug look on their face as they ride directly toward me-- it's clear that I'd better step aside or be struck.

So, regardless of the actual numbers, cyclists seem more dangerous. I don't think accurate statistics are being collected on this sort of thing, and I think we should start.

(P.S. Have you really seen a bicyclist getting a ticket in NYC? Never seen that in my life. Wow!)

<comment><USER6> > In general, drivers act with the knowledge that if they even tap a > pedestrian, they're likely to severely injure or kill them. They might be > sloppy or distracted, but they almost never willfully do this.

In my experience as a cyclist and pedestrian, many drivers don't seem to act with the knowledge that if they even tap a pedestrian or cyclist that they'll severely injure or kill them. Many drivers do similar things to what you describe cyclists as doing. Ultimately the percentage of jerks among drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians is about the same.

> (P.S. Have you really seen a bicyclist getting a ticket in NYC? Never seen > that in my life. Wow!)

Isn't NYC _famous_ for ticketing cyclists? E.g., for not riding in the bike lane? (Which isn't illegal by the way.) I don't know specifically about the claim previously made but it seems plausible to me.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzE- IMaegzQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzE-IMaegzQ)

I live in Austin and as a cyclist I've gone through bike stop sign enforcement twice (getting a ticket neither time). My guess is that the same thing happens regularly in NYC, but you're not paying attention for such things.

<comment><USER7> Lived in NYC for about four years and never saw a cyclist being ticketed or even stopped. Even that guy that killed a pedestrian in Central Park wasn't ticketed, AFAIK.

Only saw maybe four drivers get tickets, though, and two looked more like some dispute about taxi regulations than actual moving violations.

I will say that NYC bicyclists are far more law-abiding and respectful than my current "bike-friendly" city. (Never thought I'd type _those_ words...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cell phone use is a small percentage of "distracted driving". We should be careful not to conflate the two things.

In 2017, 3,166 fatalities (of 37,133 total) were attributed to "distracted driving". Of those, 434 fatalities were associated with cell phone use. [0]

For comparison, there were 10,874 fatalities from DUIs in 2017. [1]

[0] [https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...](https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812700)

[1] [https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk- driving](https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving)

<comment><USER10> The data is from police reports where there was an accident. Do you think that it's underreported, and that people would not volunteer to an officer they were using their cell phones? Your first link talks about this in the Data Limitation section.

Also, and they don't note this, but people can be intoxicated and using a mobile device. I suspect their model substantially unreports DUIs where distraction was a factor. It is very easy to do a field test and chalk it up to a DUI and not investigate further.

"Honestly, I think the real number of fatalities tied to cell phones is at least three times the federal figure " \- [https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2017/10/18/46...](https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2017/10/18/467836.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's so much emphasis on using your hands with the phone or not and with most laws that allow hands-free usage, people think that's completely safe; but it's not. No one talks about how distracting it is simply having a conversation on the phone while driving. The hands really aren't the most dangerous part of the equation.

Obviously, looking at the phone rather than the road is the worst part, but no one seems to be talking about how hands-free systems aren't helping either and are probably hurting by making people think they are being safe.

I also don't understand why the laws regarding cell phones and even drunk driving are so lax. Any of these should result in an immediate ban on your license for a long time. If I had a gun license and walked around shooting it, I would lose that license as well as I proved I am not responsible enough to operate it and that could result in death.

<comment><USER12> Drunk driving laws are far from lax. In fact, my state puts of signs bragging about how bad you're fucked if you're caught driving drunk. Twenty thousand dollars in fines and court costs plus two years in jail, inability to legally drive for several more years plus the fact you can probably never afford insurance again, is plenty harsh enough to convince rational people not to drink and drive.

But, turns out alcoholics aren't rational people. So after they get out, they drive drunk, but this time they don't have insurance (and they're too broke to sue) so when they do cause an accident next time, the victim ends up needing to pony up the cash to pay for it.

I have several drunk family members who've been caught drunk driving multiple times. They've been to jail, and they don't have a license, but they still drive. This is not a problem you solve by making laws harsher (unless maybe you go to Sharia law levels of harsh and execute people after some number of offenses). You have to tackle alcoholism.

<comment><USER13> That's lax as hell. You kill someone with a car, you better not ever be able to use a car again. Mandatory to sell your car, license revoked, ankle monitor or something if needed to keep you out of your car. Don't play with people's lives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a two-pronged proposal which, though unrealistic, is technically feasible today and could probably work.

1\. Force people seeking a driver's license to undergo classes, regardless of their prior self-education. In my opinion, a significant amount of irresponsible and incompetent driving stems from the early failures in parents teaching their kids properly. People not only don't learn everything they need to, but they don't respect driving as the dangerous activity it is.

If someone succeeds in obtaining their license, they must then re-test every five years to maintain it, regardless of their age and driving history.

2\. Augment the new mandatory classes with virtual reality lessons. The VR headsets will ostensibly drill driving skills before they're practiced in a real vehicle.

But the real reason they'll be used is to force candidates to experience high fidelity simulations of hitting and killing people while in the vehicle. They will be exposed to the immediate trauma involved in hitting a family in a sedan, or killing a pedestrian who was adhering to the rules of the road. It might also be helpful to force them to watch footage of people being seriously injured and killed in vehicular collisions.

This recommendation comes from two hypotheses of mine. As the article states, people overwhelmingly know distracted driving is dangerous, but they can't help themselves. I believe this is because 1) they have no way to activate empathy for the potential danger they present to others, and 2) they do not take driving seriously enough. It is treated as an innate right with loose rules, not a dangerous activity sustained only out of necessity to keep urban society functioning.

Unfortunately, this proposal will never happen. I know parts of it are extreme, but I don't see an alternative for fixing such a systemic problem which _isn 't_ extreme.

<comment><USER15> LOL, you think children listen to parents when "taught properly"? We taught our kids all the proper behaviors, for years. Loads of examples of consequences, restrictions, lectures, etc. they still grow up and make poor choices.

When it comes to acquiring good judgement, for most people there is no teacher like experience.

<comment><USER14> That's a good point. A lot of what you're saying is inevitable for most adolescents due to contemporaneous hormonal and neurological changes they're enduring.

To combat that, we could induce accelerated experience using VR simulation.

<comment><USER16> I play VR driving games, including a steering wheel setup. Wouldn't you know it, I crash a lot in games and drive in excess of 200mph, or drive a 20 ton tractor trailer at 100mph weaving through traffic. If I crash, I reload. Meanwhile, the couple times I've tried to actually drive above 100mph, I've felt incredibly uncomfortable (despite my new car ostensibly being designed for the autobahn and possibly higher than that speed)

VR isn't magic. Your brain is pretty good at subtly understanding you won't die if you make a mistake

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a motorcyclist I fucking hate people who drive and txt. In my state it's against the law and they don't give a fuck.

<comment><USER18> The best thing that learning to ride a motorcycle taught me is "always ride like everyone is actively trying to kill you".

<comment><USER19> Which (for me) translates to making eye contact with drivers whenever at an intersection, stop sign, or looking to see if people's heads are up on the road (or down in their lap) when passing on a freeway.

Riding a motorcycle is the fastest way to realize how little attention people have on the road / surroundings when they drive.

<comment><USER20> > making eye contact with drivers whenever at an intersection, stop sign

The number of vehicles with very dark tinting on front windows has, in my experience, increased dramatically. I do this, too, but it's getting to where I can make eye contact less than half the time.

Maybe I need to bring a very bright flashlight so I can make sure I can see the driver...

<comment><USER21> And this is illegal in many places, but seems to be enforced even less than the phone rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You gotta honk. I honk ALL THE TIME now. It's just enough of a jolt to send a signal to everyone around you that it's time to snap back to attention. It works marvelously. I don't like doing it... but it really works. If the light turns green and no one has moved for a few seconds I give a little tiny honk and like clockwork you can see brake lights in every lane turn off and people begin to activate.

I don't think we can solve this with enforcement. We gotta start thinking outside the box. I have no advice... I wish I did ... but it's an epidemic. Its a symptom of a much larger issue, I think, so we need to try and treat that instead.

<comment><USER23> Unfortunately the added honking causes huge quality of life issues, especially in urban areas and at night.

Self-driving can't come soon enough.

<comment><USER14> Speaking as someone who lives in Manhattan, you won't get much sympathy with this complaint. Yes, honking can be annoying, and yes it's overused (especially by trigger happy taxis).

But it's the only way to actually get someone's attention sometimes. If you live in an urban area you should know what you're signing up for. People are going to honk, even if it's annoying to the rest of us living in the city.

<comment><USER23> I live in Manhattan too. "Just suck it up" isn't the correct response. You even admit that it's annoying, so why roll over and resign yourself to it? One asshole with a loud horn making lots of noise on the streets at night can easily wake up hundreds of people. How is this remotely acceptable? It has a real measured public health burden. We can and should do better; getting proper sleep is important.

And by the way, the vast majority of horn use is illegal.

<comment><USER14> I agree with everything you're saying. All I'm saying is you won't find much sympathy. People really like honking, and it's probably not politically tenable to legislate that away.

<comment><USER23> I think the average person is more sympathetic than you are, to be blunt. You're projecting here.

Loud honking (especially at night) is a common complaint that New Yorkers frequently empathize over. Keep in mind that fully 78% of households in Manhattan don't even own a car, so way more people are annoyed by honking than ever do it.

And it's already illegal, no further legislation needed. The issue is with enforcement.

<comment><USER14> You still seem to be misunderstanding me. I'm personally sympathetic. I'm saying most _other_ people just don't care much. If they did, they wouldn't honk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Selfish people doing selfish things.

Everyone thinks they're above average, that bad things will never happen to them, that they're faster and have better reflexes than everyone else.

And then they kill someone.

<comment><USER25> The odds are that any one use will not kill someone. Everyone thinks they can beat the odds one more time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Yes, it's been illegal for years - but EVERY DAY I see people on their phones - talking, texting. My favorite move is when they're holding their phone like a waiter - it's on speaker phone, but I would consider that in no way "hands free" operation. And they are always driving recklessly (inconsistent speed, sometimes swerving). It's absolutely out of control.

<comment><USER27> FWIW, the data doesn't really bear this out. Vehicle travel has been getting steadily safer in the US for decades. Obviously there are problems that need to be addressed, and those change over time, but the war is a long one and we're winning. See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year)

That's not to say driving with a phone is safe, but it's not a crisis. We address it with the same tools we always have: law enforcement and regulation of safety technologies.

<comment><USER28> We're winning. This is absolutely crazy that 36 000 deaths a year in the USA is considered "winning". Like it couldn't get any better. Hey it's better than the apocalypse from 30 years ago, we are WINNING. If terrorism was 36,000 deaths every year you can bet this would be a big topic of conversation.

Other data to look at, shared of accidents caused by distracted driving are way way up. Perhaps if distracted driving was going down instead of going up, we would be getting much lower than 36,000 death/year

Source: [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-are-you-a- dis...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-are-you-a-distracted- driver-probably-heres-why/)

<comment><USER27> My point was that our reaction to this new problem of distracted driving should be commensurate with our reaction to the "old problems" of, I dunno, DUI or road rage or whatever. Because numerically it doesn't really make sense.

By all means let's work to reduce traffic fatalities. Let's just do it in a smarter way that "OMG phones in cars" \-- I mean, how about work on better civil infrastructure choices so people aren't incentivized to drive in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It seems fatalities per 100 million VMT reached a minimum in 2014 (1.08) and has crept back since then [1] (to 1.19 in 2016, 1.13 in 2018), still not much above 2012 levels (1.14). I can only speculate that the decline has to do with more safer models on the road and then distracted drivers perhaps bumped things up very slightly again.

I think most drivers, at least those not always distracted, notice the prevalence of distracted drivers on the road - cars that drive normally and then, say, gradually slow down to well below the speed limit and the speed of traffic. Which is to say, considering how common they are, it's remarkable these drivers don't cause many more accidents - statistics altogether seem to say they don't (correct me if I'm missing something). A factor to consider is that the "not as dangerous as you think" quality of distracted drivers comes because they do drive slowly, slowing traffic and thereby reducing accident totals (years ago, the introduction of the 55 speed limit reduced traffic fatalities a lot, see same wikipedia article).

Basically, the distraction trends seems to have made driving _more annoying_ but not that much more unsafe. Perhaps something still needs to be done but that something might just some warning bells when driver driving outside the norms.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year)

<comment><USER30> Seems like most people I observe texting seem to do so at low risk times (e.g. at stop light or in stop and go traffic). People looking at their phones in traffic in areas where "things happen" (pedestrians present, traffic entering, etc.) seem to be much rarer. There's not much opportunity to kill someone accidentally in those kinds of conditions because of the low speed which is probably why those accidents don't show in the death based statistics you're looking at.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, get situations of a traffic light turning green and no body moving - it's incredibly annoying but not at all unsafe.

Maybe in the future, traffic can just stop entirely and everyone will virtually work from their phones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Haven't there been some studies that associate smart phones with addictive drugs? Something to do with dopamine dependency. If true, how do you ween people off drugs?

<comment><USER32> Facebook is basically a slot machine. Checking your notifications, almost always it's garbage but one day it could be an old friend reaching out to you. It's designed to be addictive and it's very successful.

<comment><USER33> Nice, that's one of the most insightful and concise summaries of social media I've yet seen. Well worded.

<comment><USER34> If you want to learn more about it, the effect is usually called "intermittent reinforcement". Check out the first two episodes of [https://humanetech.com/podcast/](https://humanetech.com/podcast/) (transcripts available)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Texting while driving should be treated with the same severity as drunk driving. Full stop.

<comment> drunken-serval I'm pretty sure it is. At least in Wisconsin. My uncle has double digit DUIs and has never served time in jail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Rewritten headline:

"People refuse to put down their phones. They keep dying, suffering, showing many signs of addiction, still keep refusing."

Drivers are just a large subset of the population. The phone addiction is a problem with the society as a whole. The impact of this addiction is just most visible, as an externality, in drivers.

I'm not defending drivers, I'm just saying that drivers are people, and this is a wider people issue, not a driver specific one. I write this as a runner, cyclist, walker, and a very occasional driver.

</comment><comment><USER37> It is not about saving lives, and mobile phone distractions are not as bad as you think. Statistics are commonly misused. Speeding kills your pocketbook 2 explores this in depth, fact checking accident statistics in BC: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzmVCSfRR38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzmVCSfRR38)

<comment><USER38> Generically referring to the Misuse of Statistics doesn't really add something to the discussion though. Is there a specific critique of the statistics regarding texting while driving?

<comment><USER39> I think the video shows how they are frequently misused. I wouldn't be surprised if the conclusions in the bloomberg article are also incorrect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Werner Herzog made this heartbreaking documentary on this topic. It has kept me from being distracted by my phone when driving since I've seen it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qf85X3extY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qf85X3extY)

</comment><comment><USER41> Phones have GPS. In states where texting and driving is banned, why isn't there some way to program the phone so that it simply doesn't function if it detects a speed of over 5-10 mph?

I just don't see a problem with that since it's already the law.

It could then send an automated message back to the caller letting them know the owner appears to be driving and can't take your call.

I'm sure many of us here are old enough to remember life before cell phones and I can guarantee you that there's almost never anything so emergent that it can't wait until you get to your destination.

</comment><comment><USER42> It might be time for a regulatory mandate here. Phones have to go offline if they're running more than 15MPH unless docked or handsfree.

I can't believe i'm calling for regulation, but someone will. Question is do we get ahead of it now or before a new Congress does?

I also feel like pointing out this article says there were 3,000 deaths from phone use. Well, there were 40,000 from firearms in the US [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/gun- deaths.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/gun-deaths.html). PRIORITIES!

<comment><USER43> So, how do you get the phone to know whether or not you are driving or merely a passenger?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I have always connected this problem with automatic cars. I haven't looked at statistical evidence, but I think this is a much bigger problem in the US than the UK and I think it's because it's much easier to drive an auto with one hand.

I often see established vloggers and public figures recording themselves with a smartphone while driving and they always seem to be American.

I believe there has been some adjacent research done into the safety of manual cars which has found that they can be safer since they demand more concentration to drive.

<comment><USER45> [https://www.statefarm.com/simple-insights/auto-and- vehicles/...](https://www.statefarm.com/simple-insights/auto-and- vehicles/manual-vs-automatic-transmissions)

"Studies haven't really shown whether one is safer than the other."

<comment><USER46> I doubt that is relevant to the UK though.

<comment><USER45> It's relevant to the hypothesis that automatic cars are safer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Unpopular opinion: Trying to look at it from a constraint problem.

1) telling people not to use their phones. I think this is a losing fight. Why do people use their phones? Because waiting for red lights is boring. We have a 3 minute red light (1 min per direction) in one of our junctions. Almost every driver is distracted at end of 3 mins and somewhat on their phone.

I don't think phones are going away anytime soon.

On the other hands I'd like cars to get a bit smarter. I've really been enjoying my comma Eon. It does a great job of following lanes allowing me to use my brain cycles for higher order environmental awareness about other cars. I feel a bit less guilty changing to another Spotify track on my phone.

But it's also a phone problem too. The touch interface is horrible. There is no tactile feedback. Siri voice commands are really dumb as hell.

The phone could be mounted on the dash and the mobile is needs to guarantee every app can be used via voice with almost as much efficiency and accuracy as touching it.

Basically what I'm saying is. Let's fight the problem at a deeper layer.

</comment><comment><USER48> What floors me about this article is that the data comes from phone users who have installed TruMotion based software. In other words they know their driving behavior is being actively tracked, and they STILL use their phones while driving.

I have to think a good amount of these people are actually unable to make the choice of not using their phone while driving, presumably because the habit is so deeply ingrained.

</comment><comment><USER49> I no longer bike in areas without dedicated bike lanes because of this, and I'm not even sure how much safety a bike lane provides me.

<comment><USER7> The answer might turn out to be that it makes bicyclists _less_ safe.

A couple of years ago I moved to a place with extensive bike lanes and other bike-friendly signage, road features, etc. Sounds awesome. But I've noticed that it significantly adds to the mental load of driving here. I'm an unusually conscientious driver, and I often encounter the feeling of hitting my multitasking ceiling at intersections, partly due to the bicycle-friendly increase in complexity. I suspect that many less careful blow through that ceiling without realizing it.

I'd like to see the question studied.

<comment><USER6> I think this is a real phenomena. Many traffic engineers don't seem to appreciate it.

Earlier this year I did a small study of how often drivers yield to me, a cylist, at certain crossings. These crossings are rather confusing, but the city seems to believe that merely putting signs (sometimes multiple in basically the same spot) telling drivers to yield to cyclists is enough. It's not. Drivers nearly run over cyclists on a regular basis at these crossings. According to my statistics drivers yield to cyclists only about 61% of the time. See the slides here:

[http://trettel.org/pubs/2019/austin- bac-2019-10-15.pdf](http://trettel.org/pubs/2019/austin-bac-2019-10-15.pdf)

There are multiple ways to fix this problem but Austin seems uninterested.

<comment><USER7> That's a great example of an over-complex pattern. The yield sign is awful-- hard to even tell whether it's for the cars or the bicycles.

Here's what worked for me, over thousands of miles of cycling back before bike lanes, etc.:

1\. I rode as far right as I safely could, typically on the white line or a foot away from the curb, and always with the flow of traffic.

2\. I was careful to ride in a straight line, following a completely predictable path.

3\. I had a glasses-mounted rear-view mirror and kept an eye on traffic coming up behind. I never needed to, but I was always ready to bail out to the right in a split second. Towards that end, kept my bike in top shape and practiced quick stops and counter-steering.

4\. Never made left turns if vehicles were present. Instead, passed through the intersection, stopped on far side, dismounted, and lifted/turned bike 90 degrees.

5\. Reflective gear day and night. Never rode in poor visibility (e.g., rain storm).

6\. Most importantly, _always_ yielded to all vehicular traffic all of the time. If a car could intersect my path, I just stopped and waited, unless I could make eye contact and it was clear that they saw me and intended to wait.

With that, never had a close call, nor even got honked at.

Now, you might say that that's not fair, or that you don't want to ride in such a wimpy style. I understand. But I think it's the only safe(-ish) way to ride on public streets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't believe that laws are responsible for this plateau in distracted driving, but instead the fact that hands-free phone integration in new cars became pretty common six or so years ago. So now, even people buying used cars are buying cars that have hands-free usage. My two cars from 2013 the barest base models available of already cheap cars and they both have hands-free support.

The graph showing the downward trend in distracted driving starting at ~2013 is solid evidence in favor of this explanation.

If laws were responsible for the reductions, then the article should point out that states who didn't pass new laws also didn't see reductions in usage.

I do agree that this is a problem, but misidentifying the cause of the downward trend is actively working against a solution. Perhaps we should be passing laws that mandate vehicle-phone integration standards rather than punitive traffic laws.

<comment><USER50> People need to actually use the hands-free option, though. Most of my older relatives have newer cars, but none of them are tech-savvy or motivated enough to set up the hands-free mode or learn how to use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Abstinence based policies are not working. We need to let people hold and talk on their phone. Everyone is trying to hide their phone. Ride in a bus in the bay area and you'll see ~25-50% of people on their phone on a given day. Are there any studies of cities that allowing talking on the phone, but no texting?

<comment><USER52> Unpopular anecdote:

I used to have a great system for texting and driving, before it was made illegal in CA -- I generally drive with my left hand, so I would hold my phone up on the steering wheel with my right hand (at 3:00) and I would text as needed with my right thumb. Since I was holding the phone up on the wheel, I would never take my eyes off the road to text. I did this frequently for years and years, was never really distracted, got very good at it (quick at thumb typing), didn't have any issues to speak of.

Then, when it became illegal, I got like two tickets for doing this in two years. So, I learned to start hiding my phone way down low on my lap to text. Now, if I decide to text while driving, I constantly have to take my eyes off the road and look way down at my lap to text, for seconds at a time. Texting the easy and safe way, where the phone is held next to the steering wheel, has been punished and gets tickets. Texting the unsafe way, holding the phone down at lap level, rarely gets a ticket.

In the next couple years of holding my phone down at my lap level to text, I had not gotten any tickets, but I did have some minor issues doing this. Since I had to take my eyes off the road to text this way, I caught myself swerving towards the center line, or the berm, etc., multiple times. And I almost rear ended someone because traffic stopped when I was looking down at my lap for 1-2 seconds.

Because of these issues, I gave up texting and driving entirely, however, I doubt most people ever will, as I tend to have a lot more self-control than most people (I've completely quit drinking, quit smoking, quit gaming, etc.) Overall, I find it very ironic that the safe(est) way of texting, where you don't have to take your eyes off the road, is punished, while the unsafe, dangerous way (holding your phone at lap level) is not.

Banning texting basically made it far less safe than it used to be -- everyone holds their phone at lap level now, so of course that's a huge issue.

<comment><USER53> My first experience with a giant texting anus was with a guy in a big SUV who I noticed was draping his hands over the top of the steering wheel while driving too close behind me on the Merritt Parkway. Eventually I figured out he was holding Blackberry (back in the day) and texting. All the way to New York. Using me as a human shield. I'm sure he was delighted at his "system."

<comment><USER52> A human shield from what?

<comment><USER53> He was "driving" by using my rear bumper as a guide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Cell phone use is known to impair driving as much as being drunk, and texting more so.

Penalties need to be upgraded to match those of drunk driving convictions, and enforced as strictly as drunk driving is. Including manslaughter and homicide charges when the cell phone use is involved in an incident that results in deaths.

</comment><comment><USER55> Yet another benefit to limiting the need for cars in new building developments. Plenty of pedestrians also look at their phones while walking but a collision of two pedestrians is very unlikely to be fatal.

</comment><comment><USER56> Apple might be able to implement some sort of "It seems as though you are traveling in a car, we have disabled texting and driving." but then that has the obvious issue of preventing passengers from texting.

If you were to embrace the problem, whats the safest way to let people text and drive while on their phone? Something that doesn't force them to look down off the road?

Hands free voice to text sucks.

Best thing I can think of is some sort of windshield heads up display and a keyboard on your steering wheel hah

<comment><USER57> My wife just got a new iPhone, and it now comes with this feature where it blocks texts/calls while you're driving. It's pretty cool.

<comment><USER17> But.... you can disable that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> This seems like an eminently solvable problem.

My car knows when its key fob is inside it with great precision, to the point that I cannot even lock the doors while it is inside. My iPhone knows when it is itself in the car, so when I want to use it while driving, I have to dismiss a warning message, which I adeptly do with muscle memory.

Seems to me if cars supported driver and passenger authentication, most illegal device usage could be stopped rather trivially.

<comment><USER59> Couldn't the driver just authenticate as a passenger? It's not a good assumption to assume that, because there's only one cell phone in the car, it's going to be the drivers, so I don't know know an approach where the driver just can't circumvent the restriction.

<comment><USER58> The car would need to authenticate the driver as the driver, and each passenger as a passenger. Plenty of ways to do it. As an iPhone user, TouchID and FaceID come to mind.

<comment><USER59> That could be an option, I suppose. Not looking forward to the day I can't drive my rental car because I own an Android.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> How do they know when these drivers are driving vs. being a passenger? Do they rely on the driver to click a button to indicate that? Or do they just assume that anytime a cellphone is going a certain speed, the user is driving? I did not see this addressed in the article and frankly, without knowing this, their data is completely useless. For all we know, they're gathering data on passengers.

</comment><comment><USER61> In the last two weeks, I've seen two drivers with phones mounted on their windshields, watching what appeared to be the news while driving on the highway. Both instances were men, at least 40 or older. It shouldn't come as a shock in 2019, but I was still pretty surprised in the moment. Unfortunately, according to the article, my state has no such laws against this type of behavior.

<comment><USER25> No laws against distracted driving? That's kind of a general catch-all, but it would fit...

<comment><USER61> I guess the Bloomberg article is wrong...we do have laws that ban using a phone while driving for manual entry (texting, web browsing). I wonder how watching video content plays into that?

[https://leg.colorado.gov/content/distracted-driving-and- cell...](https://leg.colorado.gov/content/distracted-driving-and-cell-phone- use)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I know software isn't a panacea, but how hard would it be to design the cars so that if you are alone in the car (and therefore obviously the driver), mobile devices shift into hands-free-only mode?

I realize if you had multiple passengers it seems like a much harder technical problem to detect whether the person using the phone is also driving.

<comment><USER53> With technologies like Nearby it is possible to determine if you are near other individuals' devices. It is possible to infer you are in a car based on samples from phone sensors. In addition, it is possible to tell you are not driving a car based on your body movements. The kinds of apps your car insurer likes you to run have to make all these inferences already (if they don't have a hardware component independent of your phone).

<comment><USER62> That's so interesting, thanks! So it sounds like actually there could be a big technical piece of the solution to this problem, if devices already know (or could know) how to shift automatically into driving mode…

If only there were the regulatory will to implement this, over and above being nudged (I guess?) by insurers…

<comment><USER53> To be fair it's a lot more complicated. One reason you don't hear much about what insurance apps really do is that they don't really know the what all that data can tell them. Another is that it would creep you out. Each use case has different sensitivity to false positives/negatives. But, in general, if they've got your accelerometer data and location, they, whoever "they" might be, know you pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> If you were only putting your life in danger rather than other people's, using the phone while driving could actually be rational. Consider how much your life expectancy reduces by using the phone while driving vs how much time you waste due to commuting and not using the phone during that time.

</comment><comment><USER64> Ive noticed in the last month people mounting their phones on their steering wheel or dash and watching tv. Full on Korean dramas or whatnot. As bad as that is there is a special place in hell for drivers who make eye contact with the passenger they are talking to while driving.

</comment><comment><USER65> Sure, it's a problem, but motor vehicle deaths are down pretty substantially in the past decade. The per capita rate is down nearly 50% since the 70s. A lot of this is from safety standards, but I don't really see this as an epidemic.

<comment><USER66> The problem is that it's killing people that aren't in cars, see: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/us/pedestrian-cyclist- dea...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/us/pedestrian-cyclist-deaths- traffic.html)

<comment><USER65> New York expanded their bike lanes a few years ago, I would bet that has had a much bigger impact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Ok ok, but we shouldn't lose focus on the real threat to our cities: e-scooters!

<comment><USER42> And vaping

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Driverless cars need to get here sooner rather than later.

<comment><USER22> Pipe dream. Even if a driverless car was to exist.. it has to contend with millions of other vehicles all being driven by human beings.

George Hotz has a killer talk about why the general approach to autonomous vehicles is flawed. I highly recommend it.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IxuU5L2MEII](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IxuU5L2MEII)

<comment> munk-a I disagree, as soon as driverless cars exist being able to manually drive a car becomes a luxury and shifts from a right[1] to a privilege - when that happens unsafe driving violations should immediately revoke that right and we could quickly up the volume of self-driving cars. AI driving assistance might be the missing puzzle piece here, once it'd mature we can start forcing people on to it and once folks are on it then we can start banning full manuals and forcing full automation as we will have upped driver predictability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Ban cars

</comment><comment><USER70> Would AI drivers text and drive?

<comment><USER71> If you include telemetry, yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> America's puritanical streak is a mile wide. We will ruin your life if you're doing something fun like drinking and driving, but we'll turn a blind eye if you're doing something equally reckless and dangerous like simply sending someone else a text message and not looking at the road.

Texting and driving should obviously be treated the same as DUI if we're going to be logically consistent about recklessly endangering your fellow drivers and pedestrians, but I'm not optimistic about that happening.</comment>


PostgreSQL Query Optimization - <AUTHOR> http://jinchengli.me/post/postgres-query-opt/ <comment><USER2> Maybe a very newbie question but I've always been wondering:

As query optimizer can't explore the whole possibility tree because of time constraint. Would it be possible theoretically (and if so, has any RDBMS implemented it) to do like for prepare statement "tell the optimizer to take its time to give the best optimized code it can" and even, let's be crazy crafting some JIT-ish code heavily optimized just for that one request.

I'm certainly missing a lot of things, but it would certainly make sense for webservices where you have very limited set of "critical" queries that you may want to tell your RDBMS to optimize the best it can regarding current set of data at service startup.

<comment><USER3> To do this, you would have to prepare a plan once and then use it for many queries. The problem with that is that you can't make use of query-specific information when making the plan, and that can be crucial to picking the right plan.

For example, if you have a query like 'select * from products where category = ?', then you basically just have to choose between a table scan and an index lookup. Which is best will depend on how selective the predicate is: if the category in question only covers one in a million products, an index lookup is probably be faster, but if it covers a quarter of them, then a table scan will probably be faster.

If you know from statistics that no category covers more than a small fraction of products, then sure, prepare an index lookup plan for all queries, and vice versa if you know that all categories cover a substantial fraction of all products. But if you have a spread, with some categories being big and some small, then you are best off leaving the selection of the plan to runtime.

It's much the same situation as with ahead-of-time vs just-in-time compilation, but with a bigger penalty for picking the wrong plan, and a smaller ratio of time spent planning to time spent executing, both of which push towards deferring the decision.

That said, perhaps a good strategy would be to do what JIT compilers can do with dynamic deoptimisation: pick a plan that looks good, but guard it with assertions about the things which vary at runtime. So, with the example above, if your categories are mostly small, prepare a plan which uses an index, but guard it with a check that the category is in fact small. If a query comes along for a big category, ignore the prepared plan and make a new one from scratch. Then track statistics about the hit rates on the guard conditions, and if it looks like different assumptions would lead to a more useful plan, switch to those. You could even have multiple plans for different conditions.

As for crazily crafting some JIT-ish code heavily optimized just for that one request, people are already working on that (the slides are in Russian, but the abstract is still interesting!):

[https://pgconf.ru/en/2016/89652](https://pgconf.ru/en/2016/89652)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The main benchmarks that these compilers compete on are those from [http://www.tpc.org/](http://www.tpc.org/). They are synthetic datasets which are fairly naively generated. [http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol9/p204-leis.pdf](http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol9/p204-leis.pdf) is a really interesting paper that looks at how some of the heuristics used in those compilers work well on TPC but break down on real datasets. It can give you a good intuition of when you have to be wary of bad plans.

</comment><comment><USER5> As someone who spends a fair amount of time in databases but also large scale mathematical optimization, it's been a goal of mine to dig into the Postgres code and start hacking on the query optimizer. From a very quick overview, I see tons of potential for huge improvements.

1) The query optimizer doesn't explore all plans, but it also doesn't need to. There are very smart algorithms for exploring branches of microptimizations only when they are likely to improve upon an existing plan, and they range from local search to genetic algorithms to branch-and-cut column generation. Outside of a very limited application of Genetic Algorithms which most users won't ever see used, Postgres doesn't do this very smartly.

2) Most production databases have the same set of queries running on them 99% of the time. Queries are optimized on the spot, or pre-optimized but missing important runtime information. Postgres could take a hybrid approach...pre- optimize queries, but explore LP duality models of the optimization to discover where the thresholds are for alternative plans. For example, use one query plan for all values of columnA, except when columnA = "FOO" or columnB > 42.

3) The statistics that are made available to the optimizer are very rudimentary. Multi-column statistics and conditional probability statistics, for example, are missing. They are left out because gathering such statistics can be very expensive. Understanding cardinality can help understand which statistic improvements could be cheaply obtained, and machine learning models and LP duality information could help determine which of the more expensive sets of statistical information would be valuable for the types of queries that tend to be run on the database. I would estimate that conditional probability collections on multi-column indexes alone could result in massive (order of magnitude) improvements over full table scans.

4) I have not verified this, but I don't think Postgres does any sort of statistical or ML-based analysis on the IO or compute power characteristics of the server. Making this information available could result in huge improvements in query optimization when there is a tradeoff that can be made between IO and Compute (such as how to compress data, where thresholds should be set to activate parallel aggregates and scans, etc.). They could also do some learning on the read-write ratios on a table level, which could also offer some important optimizations.

5) There is room for extensions of the SQL table creation syntax that could make available static information that can both be applied as a constraint but also used for query optimization. For example, lets say you have a multi- column key (or even not a key, but just known in advance) where the information is purely hierarchical from column1->column2->column3. If that is the case, certain values of column3 would only ever occur if column2 = 'bar' and column1 = 'foo'. Even if your query doesn't ever touch column1, the query optimizer could possibly choose to not evaluate a predicate on column3 until it knows that column2 = 'bar' and column1 = 'foo'. And as a benefit, you could get a crucial DML runtime error if that ever magically changes on you.

Now, I just need to learn some C and find some time to hack on it :)

<comment><USER6> As for number 5 - Postgres already does that. This feature is called "constraints". Such constraints can be applied to multiple columns and are used to build better query plans (as well as limiting DML operations)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For comparison, SQLite's optimizer is described in [https://www.sqlite.org/optoverview.html](https://www.sqlite.org/optoverview.html) and, linked from it, [https://www.sqlite.org/queryplanner- ng.html](https://www.sqlite.org/queryplanner-ng.html).

SQLite doesn't want to spend time considering all possible join combinations, accepting the risk that it chooses a plan that is a lot worse than the optimal one.

</comment><comment><USER8> That's a great overview. This will come in handy for training at work.

</comment><comment><USER9> And throw in more memory to the system</comment>


A new blog engine for developers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pothibo/ecrire

<comment><USER2> How is this better than any other existing solution? Specifically, how is this better than Ghost, which it seems to take heavy inspiration from?

<comment><USER3> I am not using ecrire, but I see a bunch of reasons to use that over Ghost, but it depends on each user's use cases. For me, first, Ghost is in Node. I prefer my stuff to be in Ruby, especially if I want to change stuff and/or contribute. That said, if it does not fit your needs...

Side note: I was deceived by Ghost. I was expecting their dashboard to be there on version one, but after a whole bunch of commits and a few months, with money, it is still not there. Anyways, no big deal! :)</comment></comment>


Compiled and Vectorized Queries [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol11/p2209-kersten.pdf <comment><USER2> If anyone wants to watch a slightly higher-level lecture on this topic from one of the authors of this paper, check this out:

[https://youtu.be/m7o9rw5HAA8](https://youtu.be/m7o9rw5HAA8)

<comment><USER3> Videos are available for several editions of this course. They differ in content - some chapters are out, some other come in. It is worth browsing through all the years, including slides, etc.

You can find all of the materials here: [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pavlo/](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pavlo/)

I'm writing this as a huge fan of Andy Pavlo's work - I find it very high quality, and touching subjects that are hard to find elsewhere on the web in accessible form.</comment></comment>