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No way to turn that puppy off?
By adamg on Wed, 02/08/2017 - 8:52am
Great Workers you hire huh? No wonder why there's 50 accidents today @MassDOT @CharlieBakerMA pic.twitter.com/sVSEOrUpTH
— T (@YoungDisha) February 8, 2017
While stuck on the Zakim this morning, T was amazed to look over and see a salt truck continuing to spit out salt even though it wasn't moving any faster than he was.
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Comments
ha
lol
Enough to make a bridge designer faint
Makes me think of a nice little Sisters of Mercy song ...
Kevin O'Keefe, long-time
Kevin O'Keefe, long-time traffic reporter for BZ (or was it EEI?) used to call this condition 'stall and crawl'. He had a way with words...
Kevin O' Keefe was the traffic reporter for WEEI
when they were a news station. Joe Greene was the traffic reporter for WBZ. State Trooper Grant Moulison was the traffic reporter for WHDH, and MDC Office Bill Connell was the traffic reporter for WRKO.
Pretty common
I have encountered large piles of salt like that one several times this year. For the most part, those guys do an admirable job, but it doesn't seem like they assign value to the salt they carry. There's no downside, for them, to wasting it, so what do they care?
Perhaps
He was busy filming the traffic and not paying attention to what he was doing
Perhaps
You should note that traffic was fully stopped.
Better yet, perhaps you should mind your own driving and walking.
I do!
Ever since I was rear-ended and had my car totaled while I was fully stopped at a red light by a girl texting, I've been real interested in this law and the dedicated non-enforcement of same. Thanks for your concern!
Glad you're ok. I too am
Glad you're ok. I too am flummoxed by the existence of anti-texting-while-driving laws to which "but they're difficult to enforce" is always appended. Yes, catching people while in the act is difficult, but if you are in an accident, no matter how minor, and it's determined that you were using your phone, you should go to jail. End of story. And where phone makers and cell companies have the ability to block texting while driving and choose not to, they need to be hit with heavy fines every time one of their products is involved in an accident. Traffic fatalities have gone way up as phone use has become more ubiquitous-- why are we tolerating this?
Jail sentence-too severe
But texting while driving should be a standard of fault for crashes. And insurance companies should have the right to limit or deny any claims from the driver found at fault in those cases where texting is proven to be the proximate cause of a crash.
Balony
I'm sorry the OP was involved in a crash and hope they are OK. Nobody should text while driving. However:
A: You don't usually "Go to jail. End of story" for punching someone in the face or DUI, so I can't see it being so automatic for texting.
B: If a car is at a full stop in a traffic jam, I don't really care if the driver sends a quick text or takes a photo. I know that's how the law is written... but I think the law covers anytime your car is running, so you can't even legally send a text from a parking spot if the engine is running. That part of the law is silly IMO.
C: I am often on my phone as a passenger, with friends and especially in taxis/Uber. So just how do we want to hold the phone makers responsible? People should be responsible for their own driving, and focus on driving when their car is moving.
But people aren't responsible. Now what
I agree that people should be responsible for their own driving. But they aren't. And we're being told that it's impossible to crack down on drivers using their phone while in motion because we can't distinguish between this and the safe scenarios you bring up in B and C. So fine, until we can sort things out, let's prohibit B and C as well. Sure it's ridiculous, but we're talking a very common behavior that kills thousands and injures hundreds of thousands every year-- I would say blanket prohibitions are justified until we can figure something else out.
Regarding # B
I don 't buy the "stopped in traffic" or "it's only a quick moment" BS excuse to justify playing with stupid and needless TOYS like Twitter and Facebook. There is NO NEED WHATSOEVER to be texting while driving. And, although you may be temporarily stopped in traffic, you are still DRIVING THE CAR - and that's what your attention should be focused on.
meh
Some people pay good money to get rear-ended by texting girls.
Show us in the law where
you can play with your toys just because traffic happens to be stopped. And a salt spreader driver who isn't paying close attention to the rate of salt coming out the back of their truck does not constitute an immediate emergency situation that needs to be texted to MassDOT via Twitter.
That's weird...
Reminds me of Donald Trump's Twitter feed.
Sort of
But it's a truck, not a horse
Cambridge
I was in Tommy's House of Pizza in Harvard Square back in the winter of 2000, and a city worker ran in to grab a slice and left the salt running. Needless to say the shop was a mess of salt for about two weeks.
You'd think at some point they'd automatically shut off if the vehicle stopped moving.
That corner near my house (Plus salt-is-cheap)
For a while I wondered why one end of my street was always so much better salted than the rest. Never a big pile, but often enough that I could scoop some up and move it to the sidewalk or wherever else needed more salt.
I finally realized that end of the street is where the trucks slowed down and sometimes had to wait before they can turn. I guess salt is cheap and creating a smart-salting-spreader hasn't yet been high on anyone's priority list.
And not excusing anything, but to repeat, I think salt is cheap.
imported from atlanta
spread for all in boston to gawk & mock