REALLY SERIOUS BUSINESS

Whenever yours truly sees an idiot texting or talking on a cell phone while driving, quiet anger sweeps over yours truly as driving is REALLY SERIOUS BUSINESS that can and does kill in seconds, especially when seeing people doing stupid shit like this while sharing the road with yours truly. Ditto for interactive displays embedded in the dashboard designed to show Joe Bozo how to get to Starbucks, thus requiring Joe to take his eyes of the road in order to read the damn map or better yet, look and listen REAL HARD to the audio directions that may happen REALLY FAST when said Starbucks is located in a busy or hard to access place.  IMHO, this is where tech becomes downright dumb, stupid  and very dangerous. Apple has motion detectors in the phone along with gps connects so, when Joe gets in the car, it's pretty damn obvious said phone can GO TO SLEEP until Joe gets out the car. Ditto for the interactive display because, as stated before, driving is REALLY SERIOUS BUSINESS.

End of rant but stats, in this case, don't lie as driving deaths are up 13.6% due to distracted drivers too stupid to realize just how serious driving truly is.

Modern society is impossible to imagine without the automobile, yet it’s also one of the biggest destroyers of life. In the United States, crashes claim 1,000 lives every nine days. Last year, 40,000 Americans died, about as many as from breast cancer and more than twice as many as from murder.

It is both making the problem worse and creating a potential solution. First the bad news: Vehicle deaths are surging, up 14 percent in the last two years. It’s the first significant rise in a half century, which qualifies as a public-health emergency. The recent increase, by itself, exceeds the entire annual toll from skin cancer.

The only plausible cause is the texting, calling, watching and posting that people now do while operating a large piece of machinery. Insurers understand that, as The Wall Street Journal reported, and are raising rates.

Apple, Google and Samsung, among significant others, can fix this without question.

The other answer is technology. “There is strong, robust technology available that could solve a lot of the distracted-driving problem immediately,” Teater points out. Apple and wireless phone companies could install a driving mode on phones, much like airplane mode, that would allow only directions, music and podcasts. It would turn on automatically in a moving car (and passengers could override it). The companies’ refusal to do so suggests that they take convenience more seriously than safety.

Automated cars are coming but not now. Think about this, I know I have.