News British teen imprisoned after texting caused death

Yes the test is very strict, but as soon as people pass they stop driving perfectly because they don't have an invigilator in the seat next to them all the time and driving how you do to pass a test is very un-natural and uncomfortable for almost everyone.

Nexxo, I don't know about you, but I can hit the answer call button and switch it to loudspeaker without looking at the keypad quite easily, after all, many of us can push most buttons on a keyboard without looking at it, and that's 26+ button locations to remember. I also know plenty of people who drive one handed even if they aren't doing something else but are perfectly safe drivers.

Although texting in a car is stupid, even if the woman hadn't been using her phone she probably would have got 4 years because she did kill the woman.

 

The first rather depends on the phone --easy on a Nokia or Motorola, hard on some Samsungs and LGs by my experience.

With the second, I was thinking more of dialling out and texting, which is not at all comparable to operating a computer keyboard. Typing blind may not involve looking at the keyboard, but you do look at the screen for feedback. With a mobile you will generally have to do the same (unless you memorised the exact order of all the names stored in the phone book, and have absolute faith in predictive texting). You also need to take your eyes off the road to read texts. All by squinting at a tiny screen.

As for one-handed driving, as I said before, keeping a phone at your ear may block some of your peripheral view and definitely restricts head movement. And although we may all adopt the casual taxi-driver's one-hand slouch, the second arm is immediately available when required for sudden gear changes, indicating etc. Not so when it is holding a mobile.

Not so. Nobody gets punished for tragic accidents that were considered unavoidable (say, if her tire had popped). But there is such a thing as "driving without due care and attention".

 

Yes, but texting or not, this would be down to driving without due care and attention, there are plenty of things to keep your attention away from the road other than mobile phones. Is there anything saying she was texting at the moment of the crash?

 

Easy solution to stupid problem:
Ban forever the driving licience for anybody causing an accident from a mobile, and charge them with the same severity as homicide (not even unvoluntary homicide).

 

Amen, that's so true, the aim of the driving test is to pass, after that is when you really learn how to drive

Very true, i find it hard enough to operate the radio keeping my eyes on the road, but looking at a mobile ..... i wouldn't really want to do it

Also very true, people do argue that you can drop the mobile and get your other hand back if you need it, but people just wont frigging do it
I saw a women trying to turn off a main road, because she was on the mobile, a good thing to do - stop driving if your on the mobile
However, she was trying to perform the maneuver 1 handed because she wouldn't put down the phone - i mean cmon women - Just say "give me 2 seconds to pull over" put down the phone, get off the road, and continue your conversation - is 5 seconds really that important

On mythbusters they did Mobile phones vs drink driving
They found the mobile phone was far more dangerous then being drunk while driving, and although they did say at least you can put down the phone, you cannot stop being drunk, some people just wont do it

Now back to the issue at hand, even if she had used the phone 9 times 15 minutes before, who says she was on the road at that time ? - couldn't she have pulled over and done it then ?
Also, although it says she was doing 70MPH - it doesn't say what road she was on, what if she was on the motorway, that's a legal speed limit - and how do we know that the older driver hadn't done something wrong
The details here are so seriously lacking, its hard to really judge, so personally - i couldn't say whether or not she deserved 4 years

Edit:

Crash barrier ? - that makes it sound like a motorway, or at least dual carriageway to me

Although it was rainy, she should have reduced her speed, 70MPH is still legal, and as i said - the details here are so thin that its hard to make any really conclusions, Also this was reported by the times, so expect a nice helping of spin on it

 

Not possible to tell from the article, but I'm sure her defense counsel would have raised this argument if he could have. Either way she wasn't paying a lot of attention if she rear-ended someone at 70mph.

Pulling over on the hard shoulder of a motorway/A road just to make some social calls? Again, her defense counsel would have raised that argument if he could.

The idea is that people drive at a speed appropriate to the road conditions. 70mph is a maximum limit, not an endorsement. And I'm sure that a reconstruction of the accident had been performed. Perhaps the old lady braked suddenly, but then the driver still should have kept enough distance to deal with that.

 

I strongly object to the title of this news piece. Crashing caused this womans death, not texting. Someone texting may have been a part of the reason that the crash occured, but it did not in and of itself cause the death of someone.

I hate alarmism and sloppy media reports like this, lets leave them for the Sun or the Daily Crap, yeah?

 

well that is going to ruin your weekend

 

That's why I never text, ever. It's much more efficient to just call the damn person.

 

Hey, if you send a text but you miss, you may make someone's head explode or something...

 

Unless the person is driving and unable to answer a call, or busy at work, or in any situation where they cannot immediately answer a phone and have a phone conversation. And then theres just being polite, say you want to have a quick chat with someone but you're on the Tube and you don't want to be that person who loudly explains half their life story to everyone in the same carriage. There are plenty of reasons to use text messages, just as there are plenty of reasons for E-mail to exist in a world with Instant Messaging.

 

Here in the US a car full of either four or 5 teenage girls rammed head-on into a tractor/trailer truck and they all died. The car exploded so you gotta hope that they were dead from the impact and not the fire, y'know? Anyway, cell phone records showed that the driver was texting while driving. She veered into the opposing lane and caused the accident. Yes I think driving laws need to be tougher on cell phone use.

 

It doesn't really matter. She still "pulled the trigger" so to speak. She caused the crash because she wasn't paying attention. She was paying attention because she was texting while driving. She was texting while driving because either A. she's stupid or B. she thought she could get away with it because the laws aren't tough enough on cell phone drivers. Of course, I can see how it would be really hard to enforce such laws because a driver could easily just hold the cell phone down by their lap while texting and an officer wouldn't be able to see it.

 

But Neo; that's like saying her stupidity killed the person because she was texting, which was a stupid act. Or that the phone manufacturers killed the victim because the teen was texting, which required a phone.

What killed the women was a car crash, caused by this teen. Part of the reason it occured may have been that she was texting at the time (it's not totaly clear whether she was actually definitely texting at the time) but texting did not kill this women anymore than the concept of stupidity or the existance of phone manufacturers killed this woman.

 

Why not reform instead of punish? I think this sentence is alittle harsh, but this bint isnt going to be texting and driving when she gets out in 2 years time, if she does then she obviously enjoyed eating out the (butch) dyke on the top bunk a little too much

 

Things happen in life. you can not be protected your self all of the time if that were the case then we would never get to have or do anything. Who in this world is smart enough to tell all of us what to do. The answer is no one. There are too many people in the world and communication is at an instance. The more people in the world the more stuff is going to happen. We can have all the laws that we want to protect people.but in the end everyone has and will brake the laws weather it be something small and stupid or big and stupid. The fact is we are all human. If you don't want anything to happen then move some were that has no one around for miles an miles an miles and don't have anything just live off the land but then there are other things to worry about isn't there. Just remember that somethings in life are going to happen and we have to live with it.

 

Not a bad first post odin24seven. Welcome.

 

Let's add even more facts (on top of the fact that she'd used the phone 9 times on the journey)

So nobody's arguing her guilt, apart from a few people who haven't checked the story. Figures show you're more likely to cause a crash if you're holding a phone. So there's now a law against it. People ignore it. But does that make the law unjust? Or is it that those people are arrogant idiots? We have a law against murder, it's impossible to prevent murders happening so let's drop it?

One warning to people who persist in using their phone whatever: "motorists should be aware that police carry out inquiries to see if a mobile was in use prior to a serious or fatal crash." And your service provider logs your every call.

QFT.

 

this is why i shout at friends that do this kind of stuff, and i make the phone signal and the no no signal at people that are driving and on the phone and they go all "OMGSORRYSORRY!!!!!!"

 

ouch, cell phone use at night...

the bright light will impair your vision for up to 30 min :-/