this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2026
809 points (96.7% liked)
Technology
86264 readers
3212 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
From the way the image is described, there is no obvious reason to think the driver was distracted or otherwise impaired while driving. Moreover, the decision as to whether the driver was distracted by a phone wasn't made by a law enforcement official. We most definitely don't want to make this out to be "normal".
Did you even read the article? Even the title gives some of this away....
It depends a lot on what the law says I'd say. Just like having an open container of alcohol in your car is illegal in many places, it's not a bad thing per se if having a phone on one's lap is treated the same way as if it's being used.
Unlike what the article says, phone use in a car is not seen as a minor traffic violation in many places. In the US literally hundreds of people die each year due to phone use while driving specifically.
I'll tell you what I told the other guy because you clearly didn't read the article carefully, as is obvious from your comment.
Actually, I'll word it a bit differently: based on the description of the image, show me beyond a reasonable doubt that there was ongoing "phone use", as you just claimed. Those are your words, its what you just claimed, so you should have absolutely no issue explaining to me. Right?
Well, that is unless you go back and reread the article and realize that you won't be able to. Not in a reasonable, legally sound manner anyway.
I've read the article already and I'm well aware. And like I said, it depends on what the law says on phone use. It's not as simple as 'oh she wasn't holding her phone so she wasn't using it'. It depends on case law, how phone use is defined and whether the law is using a kind of prophylactic rule.
You can get fined for texting and driving while you're standing still. It's not something that you'd be able to say makes sense based on an article like this, but looking at case law and how the law was written, it does make sense.
Personally I think it makes a lot of sense to have prophylactic rules in place for what constitutes phone use. There is generally no reason why a phone should be laying in one's lap while driving except to be used illegally whilst driving, so such a rule could help enforcement and save lives.