German Judge: If Sex While Driving Is Legal, Why Isn't Driving While Phoning?

from the those-deep-philosophical-questions dept

Six years ago, we noted in passing that a court ruling found that driving while having sex is perfectly legal in Germany (separately, it's apparently a popular practice in Russia). Part of the point was in discussing the troubling trend to try to pick off each and every "distraction" to outlaw -- and it seems like a judge in Germany is wondering the same thing. The judge, issuing a fine for a driver talking on his cell phone, started questioning whether it was legal at all to fine drivers for talking, noting how many other driver distractions were perfectly legal -- including sex, masturbation, shaving, changing the radio station and others. The judge isn't necessarily saying it's good to do those things (in fact, he notes the opposite), but he's questioning the constitutionality of banning just one of many distractions, and has apparently sent the issue to Germany Constitutional Court to examine the issue.

Filed Under: driving, driving distractions, germany, sex, talking

New Jersey Politician Adds Most GPS Devices To Driver Distractions To Ban

from the sigh dept

We've pointed out time and time again how silly it is for politicians to run around trying to ban each and every driver distraction, rather than just focusing on beefing up laws for reckless driving. There have been laws or proposals against driving while talking on a phone, texting, viewing a video screen, faxing, eating, shaving, playing video games and even having sex. And now, Comboman alerts us to a proposal in New Jersey to ban drivers from using GPS devices that require manual programming. Instead, drivers could only use those with voice control features. Next up? Who's going to ban adjusting the radio dial or the air conditioning?

Filed Under: driving distractions, gps, new jersey

Study Says Listening To Sports While Driving Is Dangerous, So Let's Ban That, Too

from the how-far-should-we-take-this dept

A new study from the UK says that people who listen to soccer matches on the radio while driving behave more erratically and dangerously than non-listeners. Indeed, says one of the researchers, "It is widely accepted that the distraction of talking on a hand-held mobile phone may lead to accidents but other activities may have a similar impact – such as listening to sport on the radio." Since the UK's already banned talking on the phone while driving, will it now push for a ban on listening to sports while driving? After all, if "other activities may have a similar impact", they're all worthy of their own bans, aren't they? Here's a novel idea: instead of creating bans on one single activity after another, just crack down on unsafe driving with existing laws, regardless of the cause.

Filed Under: driving distractions, sports

Driving Distractions Are, Indeed, Distracting

from the who-knew? dept

This shouldn't come as much of a surprise (if at all), but as Slashdot points out, there are many driving distractions out there, and all can be potentially dangerous. The study found that it's not just mobile phones, but eating or changing the radio station or even talking to others in the car. Basically, what the study found was that when there's cognitive overload from too many tasks performed simultaneously, activities that are more core may squeeze out less developed processes. Thus, speaking and listening (which are learned at a young age) are likely to squeeze out more recently learned processes, such as driving.

While this isn't at all surprising, what does it mean for the various attempts to legislate against driver distractions? Despite some attempts to ban distractions one by one, it's never going to be possible to ban all driver distractions. You can't make it illegal to talk to someone else in your car or even to change the radio station while driving (though, who knows...). The real issue shouldn't be to focus on banning each and every driver distraction, but in educating drivers to the dangers they face with those distractions, making it clear that they need to be extra careful while engaged in any such activity, and that it's best not to do any such thing in heavy or highly variable traffic. Yes, there will always be some folks who ignore this and assume they can drive just fine with these distractions -- but those people would do the same thing even if the distractions were banned.

Filed Under: driving, driving distractions