Vehicle: 2018 Mazda 3 Touring
Tag: CERA 879
V.I.N: 3MZBN1V77JM218759
Tag: CERA 879
V.I.N: 3MZBN1V77JM218759
Distracted driver hits Toronto actor, appears to drive away from scene while on phone
- Thread starter matthew
- Start date
bigpoppa
Well-known member
Lol wtf how do you know the VIN?
Clique of One
Active member
With all the sadistic, sociopathic, brain dead, knuckle dragging, two legged vermin behind the wheel, that use their vehicles as weapons against anyone on two wheels, or even two feet, not driving a cage is dangerous. Sadly, 99% of the time when I confront these trash, they are Dumb, Gutless, Mouthy, White. And without a doubt, born in Canada.
At 66, still riding legal since May 1971, and riding shotgun behind my Dad before that since 1966, I've seen it all, and it's getting worse.
Back in the 60's a wayward driver was considered a Homicidal Maniac.
About 10 years ago I started to consider most drivers as sadistic, sociopathic terrorists, that use their vehicles as weapons.
But nobody cares.
At 66, still riding legal since May 1971, and riding shotgun behind my Dad before that since 1966, I've seen it all, and it's getting worse.
Back in the 60's a wayward driver was considered a Homicidal Maniac.
About 10 years ago I started to consider most drivers as sadistic, sociopathic terrorists, that use their vehicles as weapons.
But nobody cares.
I haven't had my morning coffee yet so babbling some incoherent thoughts.
The Muslim thing about cutting off the right hand of a thief to stigmatize them for life could be modified to cutting off the thumbs of texting drivers.
How about leaving a sum of money in my will to a hit man that, in the event of me being killed by a careless driver they bump off the driver?
More seriously now that I have had a few sips of coffee:
Would you get into a car with a drunk driver? If the answer is no what would you do if you were a passenger and the driver started to text or read a text?
I rode in the back seat with someone driving who would turn around to talk to you. Never again, after I saw that.
As others have said, I feel that distracted driving is at least on par with drinking and driving, if not worse, since the driver is making a conscious, unimpaired, choice to not pay attention to the road. The challenge is convicting people of this. Drinking and driving is a criminal offense, which requires a certain burden of proof. Breathalizers are an accepted form of proof. Aside from video evidence, and confirmation that the video hasn't been tampered with, getting a criminal conviction for distracted driving would be tough.
There are way more dashcams and helmet cams than breathalyzers now. They're not always able to capture the offense but often enough they can. It's also easier to set up cameras in an enforcement blitz than a checkpoint for drunks. What's missing are the harsh penalties.
$490-$1000 and three demerits isn't chicken feed. What's missing is people's expectations that they can't contact you 24/7.
I thought they already did this? Well at least the request of records from the Telco do determine sent/received messages/texts/voice/(data?). AFAIK the police don't typically inspect the actual device to find things like games or movies.
How many people would say "Stop the car and let me out. I'll find my own way home."?
Would that be too embarrassing?
BTW my wife knew someone that did that, killed someone, got her license back and continued to look at the people she was talking to while driving.
If the text was composed but not sent and erased on the device would there be a record?
Does receipt of a text prove it was read at a specific time?
A thousand dollar fine and some points would be something I could recover from. My wife or kid being dead, not so much. Harshness depends whether you're the victim or the perpetrator.
The telco only knows what actually got transmitted (or received). If you were typing but never sent it, I don't know if there is a way to find that in the logs (police would need physical possession of phone to try).
Some messaging systems (like imessage/bbm) automatically send a read receipt. This obviously gets transmitted when you read the message but I'm not sure how it looks on the telco side (eg. is it encrypted data or can it easily be identified as a read receipt). I'm not sure how these messaging systems deal with systems that read out your text message, does it send a read receipt? If so, is it the same content whether it was spoken or visually reviewed? That could be a hole for a defense lawyer to use.
In previous court cases with crashes that I have seen, much of the time, the police establish a short history of texting. For instance, you are on the 401 heading from Toronto to London and have sent and received 20 messages while on route. They don't necessarily prove that you were texting at the actual instant of the crash, just that you were texting while driving at some point during that trip. Again, if the police had the phone, they could correlate GPS data with the time of the text messages, but I haven't seen that happen.
Laws are constantly chasing technology, so I wouldn't be surprised if it became standard protocol to collect communication devices at a serious collision site and clone them before returning them to the owners (hopefully this can happen at the crash site). Before the data was reviewed by the police, I would hope a court order would be required.
kiwi
Well-known member
Eventually there will be a high profile law suit, most likely in the US, where someone will sue Facebook/Twitter etc for allowing access to the system while in a moving vehicle. You will then start seeing these apps getting locked down or have to go through a screen to consent that you are ok to use it (passenger use)
Which is ****ing stupid....and it probably will happen.
It's already here. I have CarPlay in my vehicles. When a text comes, the message is read to me. Then I can voice reply and it sends out the text for me.
