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The Darwin thread

canadmos

Cake Tease
May 29, 2011
21,933
21,453
Canaderp
Wow, not many times have I ever read of people bouncing off of a locomotive.

Usually they are just splattered.
 

kazlx

Patches O'Houlihan
Aug 7, 2006
6,985
1,958
Tustin, CA
Not a day goes by that I don't see somebodies daughter texting in traffic. My brothers daughter has 3 texting tickets in a year. Her Mom has 2.
My sister in law literally just managed to total her car while trying to use the gps on her phone. She hit a parked car....
 

maddog17

Turbo Monkey
Jan 20, 2008
2,818
106
Methuen, Mass. U.S.A.
with technology today i'm surprised they haven't figured out a way that in order to operate your car you'd need to plug your phone in and open an app that would shut texting off and won't allow you to drive until the app is used. they can do it with breathalyzers why not phones?
 

fremont

Chimp
Sep 10, 2014
24
0
London
with technology today i'm surprised they haven't figured out a way that in order to operate your car you'd need to plug your phone in and open an app that would shut texting off and won't allow you to drive until the app is used. they can do it with breathalyzers why not phones?
Everything can be possible now. In time, you might see that app in phones.
 

Jm_

sled dog's bollocks
Jan 14, 2002
20,089
10,665
AK
with technology today i'm surprised they haven't figured out a way that in order to operate your car you'd need to plug your phone in and open an app that would shut texting off and won't allow you to drive until the app is used. they can do it with breathalyzers why not phones?
Nobody would ever vote for a candidate that would do that. People want to text all the time while they are driving. They want self-driving cars so they can be surfing the net the whole time. Self driving cars are the answer to the demand that society is screaming and dying for right now (literally).
 

maddog17

Turbo Monkey
Jan 20, 2008
2,818
106
Methuen, Mass. U.S.A.
Nobody would ever vote for a candidate that would do that. People want to text all the time while they are driving. They want self-driving cars so they can be surfing the net the whole time. Self driving cars are the answer to the demand that society is screaming and dying for right now (literally).
i can see your point but hopefully (ya right!) people would see that there is a safety benefit for it. protect yourself and the one's you love and don't do something stupid yourself where you may wind up in jail for life. the self driving cars are still going to be years away. just trying to regulate that will be a nightmare
 

CBJ

year old fart
Mar 19, 2002
13,144
4,966
Copenhagen, Denmark
What if you had two phones? What about a passenger with a phone. How about your Smart watch or iPad. I think technology is moving to fast to make such an arrangement possible.
 

Jm_

sled dog's bollocks
Jan 14, 2002
20,089
10,665
AK
i can see your point but hopefully (ya right!) people would see that there is a safety benefit for it. protect yourself and the one's you love and don't do something stupid yourself where you may wind up in jail for life. the self driving cars are still going to be years away. just trying to regulate that will be a nightmare
There are laws that people will break no matter what the penalty. Even if the penalty was death, if someone thought they could get away with it, they would, then it would become a habit, and so on. As much as I like upholding the law, I realize that there are human issues and they have to be designed around. People aren't responsible, so someone has to step in. Now, would people like to be told they can't do anything on their phones while they are driving by the government, which wouldn't stop anyone, or would they be happier as self-driving cars are phased in? I would bet on the latter based on their behavior.
 

maddog17

Turbo Monkey
Jan 20, 2008
2,818
106
Methuen, Mass. U.S.A.
What if you had two phones? What about a passenger with a phone. How about your Smart watch or iPad. I think technology is moving to fast to make such an arrangement possible.
not much you can do about 2 phones. unless one is a work provided and one is yours then you would have to plug in your personal phone for the car and maybe companies would have to do something on their end. a passenger wouldn't matter since they should be the ones texting and not you. can you text with an ipad? smart watches are new so that's an unknown right not. i don't think that tech is moving that fast to make it impossible, it will have to be up to government officials to speed shit up and make it a reality
 

AngryMetalsmith

Business is good, thanks for asking
Jun 4, 2006
22,041
12,732
I have no idea where I am
There are laws that people will break no matter what the penalty. Even if the penalty was death, if someone thought they could get away with it, they would, then it would become a habit, and so on. As much as I like upholding the law, I realize that there are human issues and they have to be designed around. People aren't responsible, so someone has to step in. Now, would people like to be told they can't do anything on their phones while they are driving by the government, which wouldn't stop anyone, or would they be happier as self-driving cars are phased in? I would bet on the latter based on their behavior.

In the 50's it was still possible to claim the "I was drunk" excuse for causing an accident while driving.

Sure people still drive drunk, but with changing social attitudes and stiffer penalties, fewer do. Eventually using a smartphone while driving while be treated the same.
 

eric strt6

Resident Curmudgeon
Sep 8, 2001
24,344
15,086
directly above the center of the earth
That applied to my time with the fire service. Stupidity = Job Security and there were plenty of dumbasses coming up to play in the hills that could not find their way out of a wet paper bag. No warm clothes, no food, no water, couln't bother to pick up a free map at the trail head ( of course even if they did they wouldn't know how to read one). My favorite was folks lacking the pervious list having no flashlight hiking into the hills to watch the sunset figuring that the flashlight ap on their 1/4 charged cell phone with its gps would do the trick. They would call 911 as the phone ran out of juice not knowing anything but the name of the park and we would find them hypothermic 4-5 hours later less than a half mile from a road...
 

Westy

the teste
Nov 22, 2002
55,953
21,996
Sleazattle
Say what you will about the decision process involved in that, but I guarantee that kids name will live on in perpetuity at that high school.
Meh, if you are going to die because of a rocket powered skateboard at least die colliding with someing, not having it 'splodin in yer face. Wear your PPE, folks.
 

eric strt6

Resident Curmudgeon
Sep 8, 2001
24,344
15,086
directly above the center of the earth
TWIN BRIDGES, Calif. (KCRA) — A 23-year-old man died Thursday after crashing into a fence on an intermediate trail at Sierra-At-Tahoe, the resort's officials said.

The crash happened about 1:15 p.m. when ski officials said the snowboarder lost control on the hill, slid off the trail and hit a snow fence. The man was not wearing a helmet at the time of the crash.

Witnesses told the resort the man was going at a high rate of speed before the crash.

Ski officials said the early season conditions did not play into the incident.
 

Jm_

sled dog's bollocks
Jan 14, 2002
20,089
10,665
AK
TWIN BRIDGES, Calif. (KCRA) — A 23-year-old man died Thursday after crashing into a fence on an intermediate trail at Sierra-At-Tahoe, the resort's officials said.

The crash happened about 1:15 p.m. when ski officials said the snowboarder lost control on the hill, slid off the trail and hit a snow fence. The man was not wearing a helmet at the time of the crash.

Witnesses told the resort the man was going at a high rate of speed before the crash.

Ski officials said the early season conditions did not play into the incident.
Well, not the first time:

https://liftblog.com/2016/03/15/yan-high-speed-quads-20-years-later/

On April 4, 1993, a 9-year old boy was killed and another child injured when loose bolts and a subsequent derailment caused two chairs to stack up on Sierra Ski Ranch’s Slingshot lift. The same lift had sent an empty chair to the ground two months prior when a grip failed. Lift Engineering settled a wrongful-death suit after the accident for $1.9 million. Sierra Ski Ranch’s marketing director would later state, “we found they just didn’t withstand the test of time” when the company committed $6 million to replace its three Yan detachables in 1996.
To be fair, this was Tahoe and somehow I feel that Jan Karpiel must have been involved...

I remember it was a big deal when the resort had upgraded 3 lifts to "high speed" and then they had to rip them all out because of the Yan lift problem.