Texting While Driving?

[Nomad559]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3378025&page=1&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

Records Show Text Message Exchange Around Time of Fatal Crash

Text messages were sent back and forth on a 17-year-old girl's cell phone moments before her sport utility vehicle slammed head-on into a truck, killing her and four other recent high school graduates, police said Friday.

Bailey Goodman was driving her friends to her parents' vacation home when her SUV, which had just passed a car, swerved back into oncoming traffic, hit a tractor-trailer and burst into flames. Five days earlier, the five teenagers had graduated together from high school in Fairport, a Rochester suburb.

Goodman's inexperience at the wheel, evidence she was driving above the speed limit at night on a winding, two-lane highway and a succession of calls and text messages on her phone were cited by Sheriff Phil Povero as possible factors in the June 28 crash in western New York's Finger Lakes region.

[mrcheerful]

1. Up here in Grand Rapids Mi the press had a report that distracted drivers were the leading cause

of auto accidents. It has gotten so bad that aggressive drivers are now considered to be the safest drivers as they are more aware of whats going on outside of the auto. People are doing everything from cell phone use to reading and driving, which means they are not paying attention to what is happening on the road in frount of them. Add to that the inexperinced driver and it's accidents looking for a place to happen. So far this month theres been at least 4 accidents that ended up in death as a result of teens not paying attention to the road. Also teens are easily distracted by passengers in the auto. Nothing like seeing a car load of teens flash through a red light or stop sign to ruin ones mood.

[liberal N proud]

2. I don't know how many times I have seen drivers doing other things while driving

From holding a book up to or above the steering wheel to putting on makeup.
Just this past Friday, I was following a young lady who was evidently brushing her hair. Every few blocks a wad of hair came flying out of the open sun roof.
The police need to worry more about distracted drivers than speeding IMO. Driving is a full time job when behind the wheel.
When I am driving I am a terrible conversationalist, my mind is on the road and the other idiots who are doing more than just driving.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. While you can say that it shouldn't occur.... you can also ask yourself

why text messaging capability exists without this feature.


http://technopedia.info/tech/2006/09/02/voice-recognition-for-text-messages.html
Text messaging got a shot in the arm past week. Remember the times when we had to press a number key multiple times to represent a character. This was improvised by the T9 recognition pattern. Now, it’s even better. You just read out your message and the message is typed in your cell phone. Text messaging just got better.


Sprint Nextel corp has launched this service past Friday. The service is not available on all cell phones but only on selected few. You could dictate upto 20 words per minute. A Reuters reporter testing the MobileVoiceControl product on a Sprint Treo 700p smart phone found text responses were 100 percent accurate on 10 e-mails entered by voice, although it took the system an average of 53 seconds to generate each email, with response times ranging from 30 seconds to 2 minutes.

US is way behind in the technology of cell phones when compared to the Asian countries. It is interesting to note that this technology has been introduced in the US prior to the Asian countries. Text messaging is not as popular as it is in the Asian countries. This new develoment in text messaging system could be a fresh start for the boom of texting in the US.