[leephillips]

This will make driving safer for me. I'm already checking my speedometer and other instruments and often use a GPS. Now I can do all that while not removing focus from the road. This looks like a great device and the pre-order price is fantastic.

And yes, I have no problem with the head patting/belly rubbing. Have you ever seen a cop driving a patrol car? He's juggling radios, phones, a computer with a big screen for looking up warrants and stuff, entering plate numbers, looking out the windows for suspicious behavior - the actual road is a mere distraction. People can learn to manage their divided attention, and if they can't handle checking a speedometer without crashing into the guardrail they probably shouldn't be driving.

That said, I wouldn't use this to text while driving. Seeing who's calling and waving my hand to answer for a brief "I'll be there in 10 minutes" seems reasonable, however, and is safer than fumbling with the phone the old-fashioned way.

[kohanz]

The thing with an activity as ubiquitous as driving is that when judging the usefulness or conversely danger of a certain aspect of it, you have to consider the least-skilled (or more susceptible to distractions) group of drivers. Saying "I can do activity X and driving together" is a nice anecdote, but it doesn't give much information as to the overall safety of activity X and driving.

For example, I would guess that there are people out there who can safely drive a car with their blood-alcohol level past the legal limit. There are presumably people who can multi-task (text or phone & drive) safely too.

Once these activities become acceptable, you can't pick and choose who is allowed to perform them based on some skill metric.

[danielweber]

Do cops really type things into a computer and read the results while in motion?

[MichaelApproved]

Yes.

Deputy who killed former Napster COO after drifting into the bike lane while distracted by his laptop will not face charges because he was answering a work-related email

- Milton Olin Jr, 65, was fatally struck by a Los Angeles county sheriff's patrol car December 8, 2013, as he rode in the bike lane in Calabasas

- Deputy Anthony Wood was returning from a fire call when he took his eyes off the road to type a work-related message on an electronic device

- Olin was director of operations for Napster between 2000 and 2002 and was a prominent entertainment lawyer

- The victim's wife and sons have filed a wrongful death lawsuit claiming Wood was negligent

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2736376/Deputy-kille...

[jacquesm]

> while distracted by his laptop will not face charges because he was answering a work-related email

Somehow I feel that if I struck a cyclist while answering a work related email (not that I'd ever do such a thing) that I would not be getting off that lightly.

[x0x0]

eh, in sf, you get a ticket for killing cyclists. Sometimes not even that. It's really not a big deal. So it isn't as if the cop got a special deal.

   "We do not know of a single case of a cyclist fatality in which the driver 
   was prosecuted, except for D.U.I. or hit-and-run," Leah Shahum, the 
   executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, told me. [1]

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/opinion/sunday/is-it-ok-to...

[khc]

Do people get prosecuted anywhere for fatal traffic accidents, except when they are severely breaking the law?

[jacquesm]

In NL if you hit a cyclist as a motor vehicle driver you're in deep trouble.

[untog]

In conclusion: yes, they do it, and yes, it's a bad idea.

[FireBeyond]

(Firefighter/medic, not cop) - we have an exemption from cell phone laws, but with the stipulation that it is to be used sparingly, and only in an emergency, i.e. it's recognized that it's not a good practice but sometimes needed (for example in my area, ambulances contact the hospital via cell phone, not radio, and depending on the severity of the patient in back, there may be a need for a driver to make contact - whilst ideally we either have additional manpower, or similar, it's not always possible). Personally, I think there abuses of this.