alt Hacker News> Automatically shutting off/disabling or limiting the use of cell phones (all of which come with sensors that can detect when you are going at speeds you'd expect while in cars) might help.
I can’t think of a way to implement this that wouldn’t ban passengers from using their phone while riding in a vehicle. Which could be even a bus or limousine.
Replies
Not entirely. The phones can defect if there are other phones nearby, so a single phone in a car on a highway going 75mph could be assumed to be a driver, but that is still just an assumption.
A lot of people would be fine with that. Drivers are impaired while on the phone, even hands-free. Not to mention texting while driving!
I kind of picture the cellular telcos doing this. Maybe buses and trains come with wifi hotspots allowed to connect. Otherwise auto passengers could use their devices offline, maybe read an ebook or something. Not the end of the world.
I don't disagree, but I can totally imagine a society where this inability is perfectly acceptable because it severely reduces the #1 killer of people from 5-55yo. I don't think we live in that society, if Apple and Google flipped a switch tomorrow to do that people would freak out, but I could imagine a rational, fictional society that had different shared values.