We have this odd fixation in the US (and perhaps elsewhere) that we believe we are powerful and smart enough to prevent all badness - Make It Never Happen Again. Never mind that smoking causes two orders of magnitude more deaths annually in the US, 3400 people die from distracted* driving! It could be your daughter next!

What's happened to critical thinking and moderate stances? Why can't people be reasonable any more? To echo a sentiment I first read here (the provenance of which I am unsure), "Our increased reliance on laws to regulate behavior is a measure of how uncivilized we’ve become".

*- Distractions also include: pets, sandwiches, passengers, and beautiful people.

Part of what bothers me is this notion that "texting while driving impairs a driver to the level of .08 blood alcohol level." (This quote comes from the NYS Senate bill mentioned in the article.) If that's the case, can we expect that the punishment for texting while driving will be similar to the punishment for DUI? If not, why not?

If you ask me, this is just a lot of hysteria being put in the service of revenue generation and more money for our government's corporate partners.

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2015/s6325/amendm...

Seems like this would be hard to prove, often my girlfriend will be using my phone while I am driving, how would this tell who was using it? I don't think there is a way. This means if the driver was the sole person in the car you could do this, otherwise it would be ambiguous.

Sets a bad precedent. Next they'll be analyzing receipts and purchases an hour or two before to determine if you were at a bar, working too late (tired), or whatever. Submit your health data as well, maybe your decision making was impaired by poor diet and lack of exercise.

Curious to know if it's even possible to know whether a driver has manually sent a text message / composed it via voice / given it to the passenger to compose text.

At least with breathalyzing, it's binary. You're either drunk or you're not, there's no middle ground or room for interpretation.

With all the proactive wiretapping and data accumulation, why don't they just ask the ISP/cell-provider for the data instead?

There's zero chance of me disputing that they messed with the phone and created fake entries to bust me for causing an accident.

The cynic in me thinks these are benefits they would lose if excellent public transport was available more readily than personal vehicle transportation. Therefore, why would they be in favor of more people using public transport.

What happens if you simply don't have a phone with you?

I often leave my phone at home when going on short (say, 30 minutes, tops) trips: to the grocery store, post office, bank, etc.

Statistically, I'm way more likely to be involved in a crash on one of these short trips close to my home, I've heard. Let's say that I was. How would the police know if I legitimately didn't have my phone with me or was refusing to hand it over? Short of searching both my person and my vehicle (which now gets us into other legal territory), they wouldn't know. Could I then face possible repercussions for _NOT_ having my phone with me? (i.e. "He admitted to owning a mobile phone but, when asked, refused to present it for inspection.")

I can only assume that for this software to work, you will have to unlock your phone. Even if this software does only what it "promises" to do, what is preventing a hypothetically corrupt officer to use one of their other tools (such as the CelleBrite UFED) to dump the entire contents of the phone while it's in their custody, or compromise it with a state sponsored virus?

Seems like too big a loophole, with no real benefits.

Could I store my smartphone in the trunk to avoid such a compelled search? Probably not, as I think about it, since they could allege I put it there after the accident took place.

In Riley v. California, the Supreme Court decided unanimously to limit the ability of law enforcement to search cell phones while making arrests, requiring police to obtain a search warrant before examining the data contained in an arrestee’s device.

IANAL, but I presume this sidesteps that by:

1. Pinky-swearing that they won't look at the individual's other data.

2. Coercing consent to a search by threatening to take away their license.

3. Performing the search before arresting so as not to get into "search incident to arrest" (SITA) territory.

Seems dubious at best.

So what would the evidentiary standard be in cases like this? As far as I know, no mobile device out there differentiates between a text sent via hands free vs one entered on the keyboard, so all this device could do is tell whether a text was sent, not how, which makes it nigh useless since "I was using handsfree" is unfalsifiable.

Why not a mandatory gastroscopy to see if the driver has recently eaten? In many countries eating while driving is just as illegal as talking over the phone. Surely we want to have the full image of what was happening before the accident here?

Can't tell if the guys making and marketing this are human cancer or genius capitalists.

"the person's license or permit to drive and any non-resident operating privilege shall be immediately suspended and subsequently revoked should the driver refuse to acquiesce to such field test."

Wow. Driving without owning and carrying a smartphone means you lose your license because you're refusing to give up a smartphone for search.

On the other hand I can get a burner bottom tier pay as you go Android for my mom and MiL, toss it in her glove compartment, and tell her to give it to the cop to keep her license if she gets in an accident. Both aren't interested in smartphones and my MiL refuses to carry any sort of phone.

I've illegally driven without a smartphone a couple times when I've forgotten it at home.

Interestingly the punishment for driving without carrying your license (wallet left at home, etc) is lower, or used to be lower, than the proposed punishment for driving without a smartphone.

The optimist in me thinks autonomous vehicles will solve this and put the burden on the web service and car if anything.

Why not request the data via a warrant?

A whole new form of intrusive search! With added presumption of guilt!