It isn't so your headlights allow you to see better, it is so you see other vehicles better because of their headlights.

The thing with rain, and I'm not talking just heavy rain here, just enough to keep water on the pavement, is that everything gets greyish and usually the it is a little darker because of being overcast. Depending on your vehicle colour you can really start to blend in, and the clouds of misty spray of tires kicking up water from the pavement and any droplets on your side/rear windows and edges of the front where the windshield whipers don't reach makes it worse.

But I'd not stop at rain. Headlights 24/7 period, which is exactly what I use myself. For me turning on the headlights is as totally automatic and consistant as putting on my seatbeat. I really wish other people would help me out by doing so too (a number of people do here), instead of relying on judgement calls about how dark it is. Because dusk/dawn lighting can be tricking, what seems like an environment where other vehicles are easy to see without their lights on can from a different angle be a lot more difficult.

My first vehicle that had an alteration to support lights on all the time was back in 1987. It was a government surplus fleet vehicle. They had all their vehicles fitted with, if I remember correctly, an automatic shutoff that turned off the lights if you turned off the ignition. Basically a battery saver so you could just have the light switch knob pulled on all the time. The government happened to be in the auto-insurrance business, a monopoly infact, and that had a "Lights On For Life" campaign to reduce accidents which included a headlights on all the time policy for all government vehicles.

I agree, I was just ebing a dick last night.

But Id put more effort myself, into shooting drivers using their cell phones before I jump on a person not using their headlights in the rain.

I mean you cant wait a couple minutes to get home before you start running your jaws to your wife/husband about your crappy day? Im sure its a treat for them also, hearing you bitch. Then they ask you to repeat it several times because the ambient noise is carried over the line better then your speech or the crackling and static. Or better yet, just bullshitting with someone, then honking your horn because someone cut you off and is probably on a cell phone also talking about how bad you drive.

I wish cell phones did cause brain tumors.

Some months I put on upwards to 15,000km (nearly 10,000 miles) and 2500+ minutes on a cell phone (no brain cancer for me i have a 3 watt booster and external antena). That's just going to lead to a LOT of overlap.

I have friends that generally say "ya, I hate people talking on cell phones while driving, but this one guy I know I actually trust to do it safely". That'd be me. It is about attitute and disipline, that driving is clearly and always first. So I'll do things that are normally considered poor phone ettiquette. Like sometimes I'll just stop talking because something important about driving is coming up or happening.

I'll also pull over if I expect the phone stuff to require a lot of concentration, or if I'll be dealing with someone where the altered phone ettiquette is going to be an issue.

We already do these things like this when we are driving, such as talking to passengers. We just haven't yet in society as a whole developed and accepted the ettiquette to promote safer cell phone methods by drivers.

Brahm's right as to the reasoning behind headlights being on. It is significantly easier to see another car in the rain if its headlights are on. Where this helps most is on highways, where the increased distance between cars makes rain a bigger visibility issue, and where pedestrians and fallen trees aren't as big a problem. The reason I care more about this than cellphones is that while there may not be great reasons to talk on the cellphone for extended periods of time in the car, there's no reason at all not to turn on your headlights. Additionally, not using headlights in the rain is illegal in North Carolina, whereas cellphones are legal to use. Enforcing one would just require police to actually enforce it, making it a police issue, whereas the other one would first require legislation outlawing it and then for the police to enforce it.

As for hands-free sets, studies have shown that they don't solve the real problem with using a cellphone while driving, which is that your attention is elsewhere. There's something about the way people think while they're talking on the phone that makes it more distracting from your immediate environment than listening to music or talking to someone in the car. That's why cellphones, even with a headset, tend to make people worse drivers, while other activities that use your hands, like eating, don't have as big an impact. To tie this into Shadowrun, that's why the Car skill is linked to the Reaction attribute: it's partially derived from Intelligence.

do you happen to have a link?

i recall a recent study (an no, not the mythbusters one ) about the use of handsfree. but i dont recall it doing any comparisons to doing anything else in the car, including talking...

it sounds a bit strange to me that talking on a phone, even with a speaker phone or handsfree setup, is more distracting then just talking to someone in the car.

ok, so it could be something about brain prosesses, but i would like to read up on said study.

as for eating, i dont know. somtimes i wonder if life would be simpler if we where squids or somthing. there are any number of times where i feel i need a extra arm or 6...

I'd be pretty choked too if I had asked you to respond to phone calls and it took you 2+ hours to find a spot to pull over.

Of course it is hard to say just how much of this "cell users are bad drivers" antedotals are just that they are visible, and the bad driving caused by listening to loudly played Sammy Hagar "I Can't Drive 55" (that's when my driving is at it's worse ), or chatting up my passengers, or just being a all around moron is that having a cell phone in had visually sticks out. Just like driving a minivan or an SUV doesn't make you a bad driver, but so many people drive SUVs and minivans and it visually sticks out that they are driving them when they try to lanechange overtop of you.

This can happen too, depending on what you are talking about. But it can happen with in-person conversations as well. "Did you turn off the stove before we left?" That's a question that will take your vision off the road back to your house.

Like a huge number of crimes, speeding is something that cannot be porevented ahead of time by a cop unless he installs some sort of speed regulator on your car or sits beside you. Pulling them over while speeding stops them though, at least until they get back on the road and out of sight, although most people I know stop speeding for a while (days to weeks or more) after they get a ticket.

Not every crime is that way, and I'm not looking for another good-cop/bad-cop debate.* I just figured I'd point out that little tidbit, since it seemed the original post was ignoring it or unaware of it.

* This is only because I'm busy and tired. Otherwise I'm more than happy to debate almost anything almost any time, which is probably a great shock to everyone here, as I'm sure you're all used to just my laid back and happy go lucky persona.

Of course it is. All he has to do is put up a giant sign that says "Radar gun in use" and park his patrol car in plain sight.

On a highway, significantly more dangerous. You badly, badly overstate the "dangers" of cell phone use, but pulling over and then re-merging are legitimately hazardous.

~J

It's quite the opinion if you think that every law is passed for a good reason and every bit of warning literature is always a legitimate concern.

(More on the earlier can of worms after some sleep, as it requires some legitimate thought)

~J

I deny that claim. She could put the cell phone down, look, pull out, and pick the phone back up.

I deny the blame. He ignored posted signage. Cell phones do not interfere with vision. Would he have ignored it any less if he was laughing and joking with people in the back seat?

This time, you've managed to give few enough details that I can't provide a meaningful disagreement, but I suspect the cell phone is not at fault.

Edit: never mind, you did provide enough details. He was approaching a place where cars regularly enter his lane, and was (by implication) looking somewhere other than the road. A lot of people overstate how much attention is required to drive, but to divert it at one of the few places where all visual attention, at least, is needed is simple, old-fashioned negligence.

~J

She should have could have, but she didnt. People that I see with cell phones most times feel they must answer the phone and must talk to the person on the other side no matter what is going on. I get it in my house, my house line will ring and everyone around freaks out becasue I didnt answer it. Like the world is going to end.

True he would have possibly ran the sin anyway, but why is that if I see ten cars run that sign at least 8 of them are on cell phones and if I see 10 cars stop at that sign 8 of them are not on the phone? That guy just happened to stick out in my mid while I was typing that post.

And cell phones have been a major increase in the reason why people arent looking where they are going.

Look, I have been to many driving classes, corporate and state funded classes. They have pressed the issue driving takes a lot of attention and diligence to avoid accidents. I am confident enough to say that because I am not distracted by a cell phone and pay attention to what I doing and what others are doign around me I havent had an accident in 12 years that involved other cars or people. In fact because I pay a lot more attention to the road I have avoided many accidents.

Ill explain my two accidents so you know it wasnt a lack of attention. The first was trying to get into a cell phone tower that was surrounded by a bunch of poles. There was a path to get by. But due to heavy rain and it being 2 am I misjudged my turn and clipped the pole. The second was was backing down a dirt road to get out of a cell phone tower lot. The the back wheel got stuck in a deep mud puddle. Rocking the van back and forth to break free, the right side tire grabbed and I wasnt ready for the left wheel to come loose like it did. It spun the van around, clipping a tree stump. Since I was in a turn doing that, the left tire was turned out and the tire clipped the stump, breaking the tie rod.

Anyway we are just going in a circle. I feel cell phones are a distraction that causes many more problems then wed have if cell phones were outlawed while driving. You feel otherwise. Im done with this.

In general I will respect your desire to end this discussion, but I have to say, at what point did you decide that this was no longer the responsibility of the people involved and had become the fault of the item itself?

~J

Texas, at least in the DFW area, has a lot of places like that. There's even places where unmanned radar stations tell you the speed limit in giant numbers, and your exact speed in giant numbers right under it. Almost nobody ever slows down at them, despite it being an area where there are lots of police.

It's an odds game. If there are 500 drivers passing through during the hour you're driving to work, and only 20 of those get tickets it's very easy to just assume it won't happen to you, or that you'll be able to slow down enough once you actually see the officer or your radar detector pings.

Sure, having the signs in place probably does slow some people down, but it's a far cry from preventing speeding from happening.