Young people and technology

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A young lady about 25 years old here at work complained about the law that forbids texting while driving. She asked what the lawmakers could have possibly been thinking. She said, what do they expect me do to, stop in traffic right in the middle of the road to complete a message? She said that would be dangerous. She said that old people that made laws are stupid. She looked at me and said that she did not want to hear my opinion because she knows that I don't text while I'm driving. Being young must be getting more difficult.
 
I have a friend who was driving a New 2014 BMW M3 when he was involved in a small overlap head on collision, both cars were traveling around 55 mph down a back road. The M3 did what it does and performed miraculously in saving his life, although it took him 18 months to walk again.

The 20 year old girl, driving a older Pontiac that caught fire and burned her terribly, died 2 days later.

The cause was determined to be that the girl in the Pontiac drifted over the painted median of the 2 way street.
They found the cell phone in the windshield heater, the rescue team heard it as it was still receiving text messages.

The girl who died and her best friend were arguing over a boy, and the best friend was angry that she had stopped replying to her text messages in the middle of the argument.
 
Social skills are getting worse because of all of this new technology.

People I see at the gym,instead of actually working out,they are on their phones.

Instead of paying attention to everything while driving,people again,on their phones.

More then ever,people need to be aware of their surroundings,at all times.
 
I have tremendous sympathy for our youth today who have very complex social and communication issues to wade through. But, that does not excuse them from proper use of that technology and to make the effort to learn good communication skills.

I am by no means a grumpy old luddite ... I paid for and bought my first computer in 1989, I had been using them since 1978 when the company I was a partner in became the first Apple distributor outside the US in the world. If you wanted an Apple ][ in Canada, you had to buy it from a dealer who was a customer of mine.

Our local school division had the highest ratio of computers to students in Canada by 1980. Over the last 28 years I have spent far more on software than hardware, and I've spent some real money on hardware. My current laptop is four years old and still has better performance and hardware than most 2016 models being bought right now.

I am comfortable with UNIX, Linux, Windows and MacOS and a few others that few people know or care about. I have been paid by Linux distros to write documentation. That might not sound like much, but trust me, getting money from a company that gives it's software away is no mean feat. Getting anyone involved with Linux to actually make any effort at all on documentation is no small feat either. They contacted me, not the other way around, after reading a How-To I wrote and posted in a forum.

I am only saying these things to show that I am definitely not just aware of modern tech, but I was there on the cutting edge for more than three decades. Teens and young adults learn from me, not the other way around. I know the issues, and I can still remember what it was like to be 18.

Here in Canada there is the beginnings of a push to make texting while driving a Criminal Offence (equivalent to Felony in the US). I have no doubt that it will take no more than five years before we see it come to pass.

When I was a teen, in the early 70's, we saw some films, I don't remember the names, of automobile crashes, mostly from the late 1950's and early 1960's. They were very graphic. And I mean very graphic.

I actually doubt you could show these films in a classroom today, despite how effective they were in getting my classmates to take a long, sober look at the art of driving and the consequences of inattention.

It didn't stop impaired driving, but it laid the groundwork for making impaired driving a Criminal Offence. (The drunk driving laws were in place then, but enforcement was different. Today, it's a zero tolerance thing with all Law Enforcement here, plus penalties have steadily increased.

Young people have different ways of thinking than older adults; we know now that the brains of youth are still evolving and are in many ways primitive until the mid 20's. It makes teaching lessons somewhat challenging when you are up against social mores, because that is king when you are young. But I think there is merit in the idea you can "scare some people straight", as the saying goes. Maybe we need some new videos for the classroom.
 
"They live among us"

-well, she is right

BUT,
she probably drives a 2 ton thing which can maim and kill
-she is not alone on the roads?
 
Girls and boys, young and old, black and white ... all of them look at their phone 99.9% of their time while driving, eating, walking ...
 
Let's not ignore the concept called helicopter parenting that makes these special snowflakes who can't deal with the real world.
 
The only stupid is the one forbidding slapping the living shhh out of morons such as this one.
 
How am I supposed to Snapchat my fishie face selfies in the hot new sunglasses I just bought if I can't text and drive? Come on people.
 
Originally Posted By: Johnny2Bad
I have tremendous sympathy for our youth today who have very complex social and communication issues to wade through. But, that does not excuse them from proper use of that technology and to make the effort to learn good communication skills.

What the heck? The "complex social and communication issues" are the same now as in history. It is, unfortunately, the level of intelligence being brought to the table by young people today. Our youth are morons, unable to deal with anything more than a sentence at a time, and when they get angry, it's dealt with by violence, and hate.
What happened to debate club? Chess club? Social building exercises? Community work? None of these things happen anymore in our educational system.
Where are the parents that play Monopoly with their kids? Do a puzzle? I learned a long time ago that I lose a turn, miss an opportunity, when I go to jail in Monopoly. And it can just be the luck of the draw, where you get punished for something you didn't even do! I learned to be disappointed, not just mad. I did lots of puzzles. It taught long term thinking, analysis, seeing things not only for what they are, but how they fit together, and ultimately, there is only one right way to do something.
We do not teach basics anymore, and no one is held to task for their mistakes. I do not wonder why kids are violent, text while driving, fill the jail system nationwide, and sometimes, pay an ultimate price with their lives.
 
Originally Posted By: OneEyeJack
A young lady about 25 years old here at work complained about the law that forbids texting while driving. She asked what the lawmakers could have possibly been thinking. She said, what do they expect me do to, stop in traffic right in the middle of the road to complete a message? She said that would be dangerous. She said that old people that made laws are stupid. She looked at me and said that she did not want to hear my opinion because she knows that I don't text while I'm driving. Being young must be getting more difficult.


She sounds like the poster child of today's younger society...they have absolutely no common sense whatsoever...
 
What STINKS, STINKS, STINKS about this is that we have the technology to successfully prosecute this kind of thing.

A few big tickets, a few license revocations and the like and the word will get out.

They deterred drunken driving with some real success. Why not this foolishness?
 
Originally Posted By: Rick in PA
simple math 60 MPH = 88 feet per second.
A lot can happen in 88 feet.


If only those texting fools would keep their speed down to 60 MPH.
 
Hi, 21 years old. There's a lot of us youth who text and drive. It's a shame really. Dad was a hard [censored] on me. Taught me the immense responsibility that driving is. Because of this I get extremely PO at the people I see texting while driving. Have already had two near death experiences with cars coming in the opposite direction swerving into my lane which would cause me to swerve to shoulder quickly to avoid the accident. Both times I could see them looking down and as we passed could see the phone being held as they look up and swerve back over to their respective lane, both occasions in a 45mph road which means everyone is typically doing 50.

It seems people truly don't know how much responsibility it takes to drive a vehicle like they don't think about the consequences of their actions. I would not want to be in their shoes if they ever kill someone because of texting while driving and they stay alive. How do you live with yourself after such event? Someone doesn't get to live out the rest of their life, generally, because of a text. It leaves me speechless.

The funny thing is when I'm at college. See students all the time with their face dug into their phone. It gets to the point that they just cross the road at the cross walks without even looking. Yes cars are supposed to stop for pedestrians at cross walks but it baffles me how they don't even consider lifting their head to make sure a car is going to actually stop for them.
 
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I don't know how anyone can text and drive. I'm not comfortable adjusting the heater/ air conditioner controls since they replaced knobs with switches. ( 2006 Buick). I should start to train my wife (passenger) to be the co-pilot.
I don't have a cell phone.
 
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