Gizmodo 
Enter your username and password.
Tip your editors:
tips@gizmodo.com
Editorial Director:
Brian Lam | Email | Twitter
Editor:
Jason Chen
Email | AIM | Twitter
Features Editor:
Wilson Rothman
Email | Twitter
Senior Contributing Editor:
Jesus Diaz
Email | AIM | Twitter
Mark Wilson, Reviews
Email | AIM | Twitter
Contributing Editors:
Matt Buchanan
Email | AIM | Twitter
Adam Frucci
Email | Twitter
Sean Fallon
Email | Twitter
Jack Loftus
Email | Twitter
John Herrman
Email | Twitter
Dan Nosowitz
Email
Chris Mascari
Email
Danny Allen
Email | Twitter
Columnist:
Brendan I. Koerner
Interns:
Don Nguyen
Email
Chris Jacob
Email
Comment Intern:
Nick Ellenoff | Email
Comment Account Questions:
Comments@gizmodo.com
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
11/08/09
11/02/09
I'm pretty much in agreement that distracted driving is dangerous. Personally, I think it should be the law to take a defensive driving course to get a license. I avoided three accidents on the way to work today. It's ridiculous. #texting
11/02/09
11/02/09
11/02/09
11/02/09
One day you're just calmly driving down the road texting... Then the next you're electrocuting yourself to death in a bathtub full of cold water so your hot girlfriend can have your heart! #texting
11/02/09
11/02/09
11/02/09
11/02/09
11/02/09
11/02/09
ah, turns out they only asked 829 people. which means that this statistic doesn't even qualify as being anecdotal.
hey matt? "Only 3 Percent of Americans Think It Should Be Legal to Text and Drive" is a pretty misleadingly bold headline. you could at least mention in the article that this is from a poll of only 829 people, and perhaps a footnote about how foolish it is to extrapolate the opinions of 300,000,000 people from the anonymous utterances of 829 people with enough spare time to sit around participating in phone polls. I doubt if half of them even own cars. #texting
11/02/09
'Sides, there's a good argument for making "controlled substances" legal. There isn't for texting while driving, unless you consider the population problem...hmm #texting
11/02/09
11/02/09
At a 95% confidence level, their results should be accurate within about 1.15%.
There are some pretty good calculators out there if you're interested in experimenting with various sample sizes and confidence intervals. #texting
11/02/09
829 people = 0.00000276% of the population.
polling on that order could create headlines like '95% of americans are actually 1st generation chinese'. #texting
11/02/09
11/02/09
What on the fucking Earth is so important to text that it can't wait until you stopped the 3-5000 lbs of fast moving iron under your ass? Is it so damn important to have an SMS-chat with your significant other while driving? Do you have to text five numbers to a given phone number every 108 minutes or a nuke will go off under NYC? Or what? Is being bored for a while so much worse than being a danger to everyone in your 100 feet radius? #texting
11/02/09
11/02/09
11/02/09
11/02/09
11/02/09
11/03/09
11/02/09
11/02/09
You are missing the point here. It's not about punishment, it's about prevention.
"I can text and drive perfectly well so I don't need to respect this law."
"Cellphones don't get in my way while driving"
"Look ma, I can do it without my hands too!"
"I can drink and drive perfectly well. I can even drive better while drunk!"
After the accident happens, you can't get the innocent people who got killed back to life, you can't fix the physical and psychological trauma with money or jail time.
And it's not that you're being forbidden from driving. Just turn the fucking fone off 'till you get to work. Is it that hard to do? #texting
11/02/09
Is it? Fact is, the electorate is dumb. Take a look at California's referendum system, where voters passed referendums that put a ridiculously large amount of money towards a high-speed rail system, disapproved of gay marriage, and couldn't agree on emergency budget measures to keep the state from going bankrupt. And then everyone thinks it's Schwarzenegger's fault.
This is why we elect representatives, people who (in theory) shouldn't be dumb and irrational like us, because people vote to their emotions, not their logic. When people are polled, the only things they generally have for reference are either advertisements, talk shows, or their religious advisors to help them decide how to vote. Congress has hearings and testimony and evidence. IIRC it was George Washington who, when asked about why there would be both a Senate and a House, replied that the Senate served as the "cooling plate" for the "hot pot of boiling legislation" that would come from the House (or something to that regard). If the House, elected directly by the public (back in the days when the Senate wasn't), was irrational - imagine how letting the public itself vote would be! #texting
11/02/09
It's not a "crime". That's just the dumbest thing to do while driving.
People are too drunk to drive, we arrest them. People are too high to drive, we arrest them. People text message, totally normal, nothing dangerous at someone not looking at the god damn road.
Seriously. Get real. #texting
11/02/09
I'm not sure what the legalities are of calling cell phones randomly for a survey. However, I'm guessing if you actually included phones capable of sending text messages in this survey, the numbers would be different.
Who the heck even has a landline anymore, anyways? #texting
11/02/09
Well that pretty much just covers the old-people out of touch with technology demographic pretty well #texting
11/02/09
Well, not exactly. It appears I slightly misread. According to the third paragraph, the landline sample was "supplemented" by random dialing of cell-phone numbers as well. It's unclear just how many of the numbers were landlines and how many were cellphones. Nevertheless, the point still stands (if on a sprained ankle), targeting landlines as a primary audience for conversations about a feature for cell phones is more than a little biased. I'd be more comfortable with the study if it targeted cell phones and then picked up landlines as the "supplement".
My own personal reservations about extrapolating the opinions of 829 people to the scale of 300 million notwithstanding. #texting
11/02/09
exactly. one could call 829 random numbers in santa cruz county and come up with a headline like "95% of Americans think marijuana should be legalized!"
they ought to be ashamed, printing such drivel. #texting
11/02/09
11/02/09
Not to mention the vast numbers of "average" Americans who drive every day hopped up on prescription drugs, or the old people who are more dangerous than drunk drivers but who still drive and kill legally every day.
The remaining 3% of us who were RAISED to multitask, and can simultaneously chew gum, txt, drive, balance a checkbook and recite Shakespeare should be the only ones allowed to do so via special merit based licensing therefore weeding out those who are incapable.
Then again, that would be much too practical. Let's just cave in to another Washington ploy to take the focus off of our politicians inadequacies by torch/pitchforking another fabricated demon. #texting
11/02/09
11/02/09