Re: Colorado hands-free driving law taking effect in the new year

Andrew <andys@nospam.com> wrote:

David Yurman wrote on Wed, 11 Dec 2024 07:51:04 +0100 (CET) :
 

Beginning on Jan. 1, 2025, Colorado drivers will no longer be allowed to
use a mobile electronic device while driving unless they use it via hands-
free accessories.

 
Notwithstanding the police and fire vehicles have tons of electronics in
them and they're not hands free, the fact that most people can't comprehend
(because they simply guess at everything is there is no reliable scientific
evidence that the use of cellphones in the USA in vehicles had any effect
whatsoever (up or down) on the reliably reported accident rate over the
period before cellphone ownership percentages skyrocketed, during the
period where cellphone ownership percentages went from 0% to nearly 100%,
and afterward, to today.
 
The accident rate, as reported by the US Census Bureau, which has been
reporting these figures accurately since the 1920's, shows no effect.
 
Actually, the accident rate has been slowly trending downward, but that was
happening before, during the rise in ownership, and after the plateau.
 
Nobody can find a single cite on the entire Internet showing US accident
rates rising from before, to during and after cellphones existed.
 
The *only* people claiming it did make money out of creating the laws.
1. Lawyers
2. Police
3. Insurance
 
Nobody on this newsgroup has ever found a reliable cite showing the
accident rate in the USA rising in accord with cellphone ownership.
 
All they can find is lawyers, police and insurance companies saying it.
But those three entities have a reason to skew numbers for money.
 
If you look at the government US Census Bureau figures, there are blips
here and there (since accident rates depend on many factors), but there is
zero evidence of the rise that the lawyers, police & insurance claim.
 
And for all the morons out there who love to claim "absence of evidence is
not evidence of absence", then simply show evidence of these accidents that
you religiously feel must exist simply because you want them to exist.
 
Likewise with the idiots out there who love to claim "correlation does not
imply causation" instantly wipes out all the good data that you simply do
not like, then again, show evidence of your claim that the accident rate
skyrocketed when cellphones were introduced.
 
You have plenty of data in the US Census Bureau figures becaue they list
them for every year since the 1920's for every state and for the USA as a
whole.
 
So you can watch every state and list when the cellphone laws went into
effect and you can see that there is ZERO evidence of a rise (or fall) in
accidents due to the astoundingly huge and precipitously sudden rise in
cellphone ownership rates.
 
For those who are slightly intelligent who claim (reasonably so) that
nobgody has reliable statistics for whether, given the thousands of
accidents a year, whether the cellphone itself was the cause, that's true.
So live with it. Don't fantasize that it caused it when you don't know.
 
Likewise, for those who are a bit more reasonable, who claim that we can't
even tell when a cellphone is being used in a car given the thousands of
accidents per year, that's also true. So live with that lack of data.
Don't make it up simply because your friend of your sister had a cellphone
and then there was an accident.
 
Back to the ignorant, the fact that you can find an anecdotal case of a
cellphone causing an accident is meaningless in terms of statistics. Yes, I
know, you can't handle math so you think 1 is the same a 1 million, but
stop fantasizing that every sensational news storey is what happens in the
statistics.
 
I'm sure very moron out there can dig up one accident out of the hundreds
of thousands over the years which *was* caused by a cellphone. For sure.
 
But that's ridiculous to make a law based on that. You may as well make a
law that crying kids and wife arguing should be made illegal simply because
each of them has caused one accident by your Aunt Mary with your uncle Jim.
 
In summary, the law is baseless.
 
Mainly it's political because 3 agencies love to make money on this law:
1. Insurance
2. Police
3. Lawyers
 

I don’t believe statistics that tell me distracted driving caused by using
cell phones hasn’t led to more accidents. I can see with my own eyes how
people are extremely dangerous to be around with their erratic driving,
excessively large gaps between themselves and the car in front of them, and
their eyes pointing down rather than ahead. I don’t care what the
statistics say because as a motorcycle rider I watch like a hawk what
drivers around me are doing and I make it a point to look inside their cars
to ensure their attention is on the road. And then there are the people
around them who are affected by the distracted and erratic driving,
sometimes leading to accidents on their part as they try to avoid or pass
the distracted driver.

Then there is the epidemic of people driving with their high beams on in
town and blinding the rest of us. Unfortunately I can’t see if they’re
looking at their phones because I can’t see anything from the glare they’re
producing.

We will have to agree to disagree on this issue.