Distracted Walking, Cycling, and Driving

[danbrotherston]

You'll find that you can in fact operate a mobile phone while walking quite easily.  When you're only traveling 1-2 meters per second, it isn't challenge to also be aware of your surroundings, as they change very slowly, this means it isn't even dangerous most of the time.

I'm afraid to say, quite frankly, that is your opinion of your abilities.  I could also have the opinion (I don't, for what it's worth), that I think I can drive a car and operate a mobile phone at the same time.  But it does not make it right.

Most pedestrians I have negative interfaces with on my bicycle are so engrossed in their devices they are absolutely oblivious to everything around them - maybe 0.5 m radius at most, but often less.  One time I actually completely stopped my bike just to see what would happen, and just stood there.  I waited.... until they walked... right... into... me.  Then they looked up with the most horrified look you could imagine, completely shocked and surprised.

But, back to the topic at hand.

How have other countries handled similar bans?  Did they start right after mobile devices (smartphones, really) took off, so there was always a culture of not using them while driving?  When in Florida in November I was very surprised at the number of people carelessly chatting away or typing, while driving - I guess they don't have any laws there about it (or the penalty/enforcement is low).

It's an opinion backed up by physics, statistics, and even your anecdote.  Stats show walking injuries, unlike vehicle collisions, have not gone up with mobile phone use. Physics dictates I am more able to maintain situational awareness because the flow of information is much slower, and physics also dictates the possibility of harm is vastly lower. As for your anecdote, what happened when the person walked into you, they were embarrassed, and you were annoyed, as opposed to you being hospitalized or worse, if they were in a car.

A driver might have the opinion they can use a mobile phone and drive, by I have statistics, physics, and anecdotes which say they can't.

As for the laws, I'm not sure more broadly, in the US at least, states vary quite a bit on this, in many states it is entirely legal to text and drive [1], in fact, there are states where literally drinking while driving a car is legal [2].  Many of these states often have as expected, a higher than average number of traffic collisions.

Florida specifically seems to have limited restrictions and so called "secondary" enforcement, I'm not sure what is meant by that.

So far as I understand, most laws have been reactionary to the traffic collision statistics (and some states are just don't seem to react to traffic deaths at all). To us in this forum, and generally today, the danger makes sense, but I don't think there was a real understanding at first (and even among some people today) that mobile phone use while driving is dangerous, or if I'm more cynical, people didn't care about that danger. For that matter, the first cell phones my family had, or really, were common, were car phones that *ONLY* worked in a car.

That being said, I have to wonder how many people you saw in Florida on their phones, I see probably a dozen people daily here texting and driving, and usually more in Toronto, and we have severe penalties, and I'll be generous and say moderate enforcement.

[1] http://www.ncsl.org/research/transportat...-laws.aspx
[2] https://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2012...tates.html

Edit: This article seems on point for this sidequest of a discussion: https://thebaffler.com/latest/whos-afrai...ian-fraade