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Hold the phone. Did Colorado just make it legal to text and drive?

Dittohead not! said:
Annoying as that is, it's still not in a class with cruising down the freeway at 75 to 80 while not watching the road.
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They shouldn't be driving that fast, to begin with.
 
Gaius46 said:
NY's law say while "operating" a motor vehicle. I always wondered whether sitting a stop light, at a dead stop in bumper-to-bumper traffic or sitting parked with the engine running would all qualify as "operating." Probably yes in cases 1 and 2. 3 - probably no but who knows.
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Yes, I am believe you are right. Same with DUI. If you have the keys in the ignition, car on, you sitting in the back....you are operating the vehicle.
 
JasperL said:
There is no reason to name call, I just completely disagree. If you drive drunk or text, you're putting me and my family at risk of injury or death. Both happen probably every hour of every day caused by drivers who are impaired (in the case of alcohol) or distracted with their phones. I don't believe anyone has a right to put my life at risk because they want to get drunk and drive or cannot wait for 5 minutes to answer a text message.
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Sorry to jump in. You family is already at risk being out in public. It is the increased risk that you are opposed to. Correct?
 
JasperL said:
You said "It's probably even fine to text while driving on city streets in traffic if you've got a blackberry, or alternately, are doing voice to text or using default messaging."

Not hard at all to test. Have people on a closed road or test track text and see their reaction time to various things versus someone who is watching the road, not playing with their phone. That's been done - they react as poorly as someone who is legally drunk, which is illegal, and we jail people for it.
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I don't think I've ever seen any studies with voice to text or default messaging. The problem seems to be that you have to look at your phone to text. But those methods I named do not require the driver to look at their phone.

JasperL said:
We know that texting drivers get in a lot of accidents - my friend is one victim of that, a teen who was texting and didn't see a Stop sign and plowed through it and t-boned her car. There is no mystery here - typing out a text requires you to divert attention from the road to your phone. It is physically impossible for a person to do that and not impair their ability to react to changing road conditions.
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I think you're still not quite understanding my point. Think about this from the standpoint of rule-making. Suppose you make a simple rule (in an entirely different situation): it's illegal to kill a human being. But then you immediately have an exception you didn't think about: what about self-defense? That's actually an historical example--the first laws were written that way, and there were quickly exceptions that surfaced, such that the moral intuitions involved said that in such circumstance, it's permissible, and perhaps obligatory, to kill a human being.

From this, and plenty of other examples, we can draw the following principle: when making laws, insert exception clauses. There's no way a rule can match the messiness that is reality--too many possible situations arise in which the rule you've just made turns out to be draconian, and is unfairly enforced.

JasperL said:
I assume you meant, "SAFE to text." And I don't really think the burden is to prove there is NO situation possible in which a person can text safely while driving.
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Yes, that's what I meant, and sure, that's the burden you should meet. Should be obvious from what I posted above. The officers who will enforce this law can judge whether a situation is safe or not. Perhaps there will never actually be a single instance of safe texting (I think there obviously are, but that's irrelevant). The point is not whether, in the history of the actual world, any safe instance of texting arises. The point is that, if such a situation comes to exist, you don't want to have to punish someone for doing something that isn't wrong. That's why the law is fine as it is.

JasperL said:
It's like asking me to prove that there is no situation in which a drunk person can safely operate a vehicle. Of course there are situations where a legally drunk driver can safely drive home.
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Just as there are instances in which a competent driver can text safely.

JasperL said:
But we don't care because drunk drivers kill and maim so many people that we impose the presumption of impairment to serve public safety.
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I think it's more complicated than that. There's no external test that is both sound and complete to tell whether someone is too impaired to drive. We have to use blood alcohol level. In the case of texting, there is an external test that is both sound and complete. A good observer (such as a police officer) can observe the conditions present when someone is texting while driving. If those conditions are safe, no fine is necessary.

JasperL said:
I guess what I oppose in the new law is the requirement to demonstrate that a texting driver is driving "carelessly" which means drifting out of their lane, not using a turn signal, etc. My problem with that is if you're actually driving and the car is moving you cannot safely text. That you manage to keep the car between the lines for 5 or 10 seconds doesn't mean you texted safely.
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As I understand it, that's not how the law is going to be enforced. If you're in traffic, the car is moving, and you're doing traditional texting on a cell phone or smart phone, you'll get a ticket (assuming you're observed by a police officer). Those conditions are inherently unsafe. The reason for the change is that, under the previous law, people were getting tickets for texting while stopped at a stop light.

Anyway, don't get me wrong: I'm not saying people should text while driving down the street, or that someone who does shouldn't be penalized. I'm saying merely there are possible circumstances in which it would be safe to text and drive, and since we can know those circumstances, we shouldn't just make a blanket law to punish everyone who is texting and driving--only if they are doing it unsafely.
 
JasperL said:
From what I can tell reading about the law change, that is now legal in CO, as long as you don't do something more, like drift into another lane, or speed, etc. As the law is written it is NOT enough for a cop to see you texting while barreling down a crowded interstate at the speed limit.
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Then that does make it a stupid law.
 
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