Yukon judge rules phone wedged between ear and shoulder is 'hands-free'

Holy shit. Maybe we can't blame the judge, since he's just pointing out that the law is poorly written.

It's been shown that handsfree is just as distracting and using your hand. It's not that you're holding something in your hand, it's that you're involved in a coversation with somebody not in the car.

What if you're involved in a conversation with someone in the car? And I had some rent-a-car that got upgraded for free recently. I swear I was a hazard on the road until I turned the radio off. There was so many buttons on it. I just wanted the local weather/news station but it had Sirius and iPhone bluetooth and aux in and fucking quadrophonic climate control and don't push that button or you're on the phone to the call centre in India. Sheesh!

For some reason, conversing with somebody in the car isn't as distracting, because you can have pauses that the other person will interpret correctly. Ie if the driver goes silent as he's making a left turn, say, the passenger will understand. Of course having a wicked fight with your spouse or turning around to slap your kids in the backseat may be deleterious to your driving ability.

Agree about the complexity of modern cars, especially if you're not used to it.

it didn't have thumb controls on the steering wheel, or voice command?

Yeah, it had like 15 buttons on the steering wheel. Maybe it did have voice comand. I told it to "Fuck off" about 15 times and, in hindsight, that's exactly what it did.

No kidding. I had my car in for service last week and they gave me a new BMW 750 for a loaner and it took me a good ten minutes just to get out of the parking lot. I felt like I was in a space shuttle. I also felt like a noob when I had to ask how to start the bloody thing (you just press the 'start' button is all).

Upside was the car was ridiculously overpowered so I took a few hours off work to go drive it up in the hills!

No kidding. I had my car in for service last week and they gave me a new BMW 750 for a loaner and it took me a good ten minutes just to get out of the parking lot. I felt like I was in a space shuttle. I also felt like a noob when I had to ask how to start the bloody thing (you just press the 'start' button is all).

Upside was the car was ridiculously overpowered so I took a few hours off work to go drive it up in the hills!

Boy, they could see you coming.

Traded up, yet?

If I am recalling correctly the problem with phone use and driving isn't the holding of the phone in your hand or talking on it. The problem is button use and the manipulation of the controls.

When you start trying to manipulate the device your brain disconnects from driving and focuses on the hand dexterity movements. The problem is that when people do this they think it's easy and not distracting. That's the brain being sneaky however, and it seems easy and something that doesn't take much attention because it more or less steals all your free brain run time and you don't even have enough attention to notice other things are struggling.

This is issue is multiplied by reading anything, numbers or words. The focus and processing of symbols into language is a full time job for the optical processing of your brain.

Bottom line texting while driving is staggeringly bad. But just holding a phone and talking on it is not really a big deal. The loss of control over the vehicle from only having one hand on the control is negligible as most people drive effectively one handed most of the time.

The public noticing bad driving from people with phones is just another case of the Van fallacy. Your brain that wonderful pattern matcher that is, notices bad driving and holding a phone. While ignoring the seeming lack of connections from other bad drivers and driving when their isn't a visual clue.

A law that properly accounts for the actual risks of phone use while driving would be very hard to write and near impossible to enforce. However I doubt that education alone would be enough to get people to avoid the risky behaviours.

Yeah, when we bought our minivan last summer, there was a pretty steep learning curve learning how to use the tech, but now I'm loving being able to change songs, alter volume, take phone calls and everything else.

I wonder how you get the phone from your pocket to "wedged between ear and shoulder" without using your hands.

Very wild sex.