Texting while driving is illegal in 49 out of 50 states because it takes both your eyes off the road and takes at least one of your hands from the controls, making for an incredibly dangerous situation (Montana doesn’t have a law banning it, if you’re curious). I’ve only attempted texting while driving a few times in my life, and it felt sketchy enough for me to swear off the practice for good.
Banging out texts to the group chat at the speed limit is one thing—at least you’re only breaking one law. But some people even text and drive while they’re breaking the speed limit, which feels like an even more potent recipe for disaster. According to a new study released by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), there is a correlation between speeding and cell phone use. And it’s not the good kind.
The study, which used data from insurance companies’ safe-driving apps on driver phones to collect data, found that drivers are actually more likely to use their phones while speeding. According to the IIHS, this flips the commonly held notion that drivers usually only use their phones at slower speeds, and highlights how frequently people might be combining two dangerous driving activities.
The Results Paint A Scary Picture
In the nationwide study, the IIHS found that as people increased their speed over the speed limit, their cellphone usage also increased. The correlation shifts greatly depending on what type of road the user was on. For example, on highways and other limited-access roads, where you need to enter via a dedicated on-ramp, the share of driving time handling a phone rose by 12% for every 5 mph drivers went over the limit. But on roads where you have to be more actively involved in driving, that percentage dropped. From the IIHS’s release:
On other roads, such as arterials and routes that connect towns, every 5 mph over the local limit was linked to a smaller 3% increase in phone handling. These roads often have traffic lights, intersections, roundabouts and stop signs that require drivers to take action periodically, even when traffic is flowing.
You’d think that as speed limits grow, people would be more attentive behind the wheel, since stuff is going by faster and incidents can occur in the blink of an eye. But according to the data, the opposite is happening. Scarily, the IIHS found that phone usage actually goes up as the speed limits increase. From the report:
The increases were larger on roads with higher posted limits. On limited-access roads with 70 mph limits, for example, for every 5 mph a vehicle exceeded the limit there was a 9% larger increase in phone handling than on similar roads with 55 mph limits.
A similar pattern showed up on roads with more access than freeways. Compared with roads posted at 25 or 30 mph, there was a 3% larger increase in phone handling for every 5 mph drivers exceeded the limit on 45 or 50 mph roads and a 7% larger increase on 55 mph roads.
Why are people mixing and matching these two law-breaking activities? The IIHS has several theories. The simplest is that drivers who take more risks—a.k.a., those who more often use their phone behind the wheel or speed regularly—are more likely to risk doing those things at the same time. Another factor, according to the organization, is related to stress. It references research that shows phone use and speeding spike (separately, independent of each other) during rush hour and school drop-off times.
The IIHS says that it could also be as simple as drivers responding to road cues like lighter traffic, fewer pedestrians, and long gaps between traffic devices like stop signs and stoplights, where you actually have to be an active participant in driving. It sort of makes sense—when you’re cruising down an open, high-speed highway with no traffic and tons of visibility, you might feel more comfortable grabbing your phone to send off a quick text, even if you’re already going 10 mph over the limit.
How They Got The Data
Depending on how you feel about data tracking and big corporations watching your every move, the methodology for getting this level of data will be either deeply fascinating or deeply unsettling. The IIHS analyzed nearly 600,000 trips across the United States between July and October 2024, excluding Alaska, California, Hawaii, and New York. Such a large sample size wouldn’t have been possible if not for the immense amount of tracking data that can now be extracted from each user’s phone, thanks to telemetry-monitoring apps tied to insurance. From the report:
More nuanced information about driver behavior has recently become available with the proliferation of safe-driving apps. These apps, which promise cost savings for drivers who enroll, let insurers adjust premiums based on how each person drives. Using a smartphone’s GPS and other sensors, the apps track speed and location, time of day, events like hard braking and rapid acceleration, and phone use. With large amounts of aggregated data, researchers can now measure phone use much more comprehensively than before.
The study included only trips that lasted longer than 18 minutes and involved at least two minutes on an interstate. The data, supplied to the IIHS by Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT), also excluded any driving time spent more than 5 mph under the speed limit, to eliminate data produced from heavy traffic.
If you’re wondering exactly how the study determined a driver was handling their phone while driving, the IIHS provides a pretty detailed explanation that makes me scared to even touch my phone while I’m in my car:
Drivers were counted as handling their phones when the phone’s internal gyroscope detected a significant rotation while the screen was unlocked. The phone-handling rate was calculated as total phone-handling time divided by total driving time. To identify speeding, CMT matched each trip’s GPS location to a speed-limit database. The IIHS researchers then used statistical methods to estimate phone-handling rates for limited-access roads and other thoroughfares, across different posted limits and with different levels of speeding (for example, 5-10 mph over a 60-65 mph limit on a limited-access road).
Bad driver or not, it’s a reminder that no, you’re not crazy, and yes, your phone is monitoring your every move at all times.
What Can Be Done?
While those monitoring apps mentioned above incentivize safer driving by offering lower premiums to people who go the speed limit and don’t touch their phone while behind the wheel, the results from this study prove they can’t ever really fully eliminate the problem.
Police are already on the lookout for speeders and cell phone users, but most of the time, those two types of enforcement happen separately. The IIHS suggests the best way to approach this is to develop safety cameras that monitor for both speed and cellphone use at the same time. Road cameras designed to catch phone users in the act have been used overseas, in places like China, for years now.
Another idea the IIHS doesn’t mention in its news piece on the study, but does mention in the study abstract, is to make roads seem more convoluted to keep drivers’ attention:
Countermeasures that raise perceived roadway complexity may also reduce the likelihood of both phone manipulation and speeding.
How exactly road builders would go about making highways more complex isn’t clear. Maybe a bollard that pops up from the ground once in a while, at a random time in the day? Or a stoplight that turns red every 45.6 minutes? Maybe highway workers can simply start occasionally releasing robot dogs into the road that drivers need to avoid. That would certainly get me off my phone and lock into the act of driving. If you have a better idea, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com
I think here in Germany, it’s illegal as a driver to use your phone or any electronic device while holding it in your hand, except when the car is stationary and the engine is off (i.e. you are not driving). I don’t think it’s illegal to text while the phone is in a holder. I have used a phone while holding it my hand while driving once in my life, and it was sketchy AF. Never going to do that again. (It was against the rules, but any statute of limitations has run out on it long ago.) I do text while sitting at a red light (phone in holder); the worst that can happen is that I miss the light turning green, and I get honked at.
So if you are parked in a parking spot with the engine on it’s illegal to use your phone in hand? It sounds a little harsh but also perfectly German.
Yes, as far as I know, that is exactly the situation.
I’m going to critisize this study. It’s not because I think it’s okay to drive distracted; it’s not. But, by eliminating people driving under the speed limit, they artificially pump up the results to feed their narrative. People who routinely use their devices while driving don’t not use them when stuck in stop and go traffic. I think this is just a case of people being in situations where they don’t think driving takes all their attention – wide roads with all cars going close to the same speed and in the same direction, whether that’s fast or slow. The fact that it seemed to increase with the increase in speed isn’t surprising either – faster roads with less congestion to deal with. I bet you’d see a similar correlation with speed drops under the speed limit. When you’re sitting in slow traffic you often have excess brain capacity, just like when cruising down an empty freeway.
Not that I don’t think phone use is epidemic, but I agree this is flawed and there are several other flaws I see with this study:
—They are only looking at people who chose to allow insurance companies to track them and were also dumb enough to engage in several risky behaviors simultaneously and, presumably, regularly while knowingly being tracked. This is not the A-Team or even a decent average span of people that were being sampled, this was a group of particularly careless morons with poor impulse control and grasp of consequences and that’s coming from an unapologetic misanthrope who is inclined to believe the worst in humans. (Though that includes statistics gatherers, as numbers make for some of the best lies and that attribute is very attractive to certain types of people selling an agenda. The agenda here can very well be an excuse to exercise greater control over the populace in the interest of further “safety” software in cars that override or otherwise limit driver control.)
—The phone gyroscope only indicates that the phone was being used, but do we know that was the driver or a passenger using it? It seems there’s no way to discern this. As so many cars have simple-to-use hands free capability—simpler than picking up the phone to use it, IME—and have for a while now, I don’t see the possibility of passenger usage being an insignificant factor that’s not being accounted for.
“—The phone gyroscope only indicates that the phone was being used, but do we know that was the driver or a passenger using it?”
This is exactly what bothers me- when I’m driving I often ask my wife to check Waze, see who just texted, call the restaurant, etc., which she does on my phone because it’s the one sitting right there on the charger. .
Well said. Also sadly true tidbits about human behavior. Let’s sell flawed data to help make new mandates that make corporations money. I recently did a bicycle tour in Albania. It was very safe and the drivers were all nice and not on their phones. I’d never do a bike ride in the USA. I guess if you grow up where there might be a random person/dog/cow or sheep in the road, you are a better driver.
That’s a bicycle safety theory: the more cyclists in an area, the safer it is as drivers are more accustomed to seeing them and expecting them and I find that seems to be true if I’m in an urban area where people ride more, even though drivers are further challenged by pedestrians, signage, looking for their destination, parking, lights, other cars, etc. That can also corroborate what this study says about phone use commonly increasing in open areas where people feel they have the luxury to do so. The anti-cycling cyclists also use that theory to argue against separated bike paths, but what that does is keep many casual cyclists, older people, kids, and other people who would want to take up cycling from doing so, working against the very numbers they think they can achieve (and disputed by the numbers from before the paths existed). Cycling isn’t fun if it feels like negotiating a minefield except for the spandexers, but I think their ignorance and senses of entitlement are so strong that they think being right about the legality of their road access will stop a 6k lbs vehicle from testing their spandex’s ability to double as a sausage skin. While they’re often against paths, they do seem to take over the paved ones, terrorizing kids trying to learn and other path users in their constant attempts to break personal Strava records. IMO, the safest combination for cyclists (I have no data, merely anecdote from limited locations, so this is a porta-potty toilet-paper-quality opinion) is the urban location with a mix of paths and road with paths being the primary. Drivers still have plenty of things to track to keep them engaged and bicycles are still expected, but the exposure of the cyclists is limited and the frustration level of the drivers is reduced in kind.
I find it fascinating that some people download the driver monitoring apps from their insurance company and then proceed to drive like a jackass with their phone open.
And then probably complain that the “promised” decrease in insurance premiums from using the app instead turns into an increase due to their overall jackass behavior.
Question: does it monitor activity or that the screen is on?
My phone, even when plugged in to my car, often leaves itself unlocked and the last app open (typically spotify) and will even play video content while connected via apple carplay. Normally after a little while I notice that it’s distracting and have to reach down to hit the power button to shut off the screen.
Same. The article seemed to indicate the apps notice abnormal movement from the phone rather than screen status.
Just turn the car into a faraday cage. No Android Auto, No Apple Carplay, No screens, aux cables, Bluetooth or any of that. Just CD player, radio, and A/C. Boom! Problem solved.
What about the massive increase in incidents as people are unfurling enormous paper maps to navigate that we (rightfully) haven’t had to use for several administrations now?
And what do you do when you have to switch CDs?
And have you listened to terrestrial radio lately? The ads are more frequent than the content.
I used to be able to change CDs without eyes leaving the road, though of course it did draw attention away even if I was at least able to see what was going on around me. The cubby under the stereo fit about 8 CDs and I knew how the cases were arranged, so I was able to use one hand to pull the empty case, open it on the passenger seat, eject the old CD, and finger-through-the-hole, find the retaining fingers in the case to insert it without scratching. Adding a CD was a similar procedure.
I do listen to the radio. Pretty much all the time when driving. I have to pull over once my album on my phone plays and I want a new one. Takes about three minutes to do. Back when you could get CDs I had them lined up and could swap them out in five seconds
6 CD changer my friend, they are rare but awesome for a road trip, 6 should last you until the next gas stop easy.
Which came first ? are people who use their phones more likely to speed or are people who speed more likely to use their phones ?
I think it’s just a matter of people who are irresponsible are most likely to do both
Drivers were counted as handling their phones when the phone’s internal gyroscope detected a significant rotation while the screen was unlocked.
I suppose this is one way to identify drivers playing with their phones. The other way would be to get on the freeway and look around. Texting is prevalent, but I see people watching videos while driving on the streets of LA every time I’m out. Some will watch while holding the phone horizontally against the steering wheel; this is generally reserved for cineastes who prefer higher quality, long form films. Some will watch the phone vertically in an a/c vent cradle, which is popular with TikTok viewers. Some particularly daring drivers will look down and watch a video in their laps as they travel on an eight lane freeway.
I’ve also seen someone driving while swiping on Tinder.
We are a deeply flawed species.
Maybe it’s just LA?
Same things happen on my commute, so it’s not a localized problem.
I could text without looking on a phone with physical buttons (back when we were tapping the numbers multiple times for various letters), but no way on a smartphone. But that’s just one reason I like CarPlay so much. Voice to text is excellent these days.
I remember when Minnesota first passed their ban on using a phone behind the wheel. They interviewed a state trooper about their big enforcement push they were going to kick off as soon as the law went into effect. He explained how texting and driving was as dangerous as driving drunk and that it was important to enforce the new law for safety, then said they were going to mostly hand out warnings because they “didn’t want to ruin anybody’s driving record.” If it’s that dangerous, treat it that way. Don’t give out warnings.
This is the same mind set that lets people off the hook for DUI and DWI rural outstate MN.
I’d be curious to know how many of these folks are texting/scrolling social media – and how many are trying to be helpful by reporting/updating traffic conditions on Waze?
I use the carplay interface to send my waze reports. Can also do it with voice commands.
I haven’t used Waze in a million years, but I never reported anything because it’s a completely unnecessary distraction.
This! I hassle my wife about doing this all the time.
Wouldn’t you use the car’s interface for that?
(Of course, now I’m thinking about the number of people I see on the road driving very new cars but holding up their phone to have a conversation…I wonder how many people connect their phone to their car’s entertainment system?)
Not everyone has Carplay or any sort of connection other than basic streaming audio between phone and car.
I know when I use Google Maps – I get Waze updates, and prompted to report if something (Police, wrecks, construction, items in road) still exist or not.
Of course my phone is kept in it’s holder on the dash for the entire drive – so all i need to do is press the “button”. But not everyone is so … advanced.
Ah, so that’s why so many people want to register their supercars in Montana. They can avoid taxes AND penalties for doing stupid shit.
/s
There’s a similar article on the old site, and I replied there, but I’ll post something similar here.
Vehicles have sensors to determine passengers location. Phones have sensors / GPS to determine if they’re moving more than 5 mph.
If a vehicle senses a phone, and there is only one occupant in that vehicle, then the phone and vehicle communicate to each other and the phone is unusable for actions that would distract the driver while the vehicle was in motion. Obviously, 911 calls would still be available.
If a passenger was detected, then they could look at their phone if they felt they needed to, but using those same gyroscopes mentioned in this article, if the phone was given to the driver, the screen would change to “Pay attention to driving!” or something like that.
Our 2024 Chevrolet Trax disables many of the infotainment-screen functions while the vehicle is in motion. Once the driver pulls over and stops, the greyed-out functions become available again.
Phones could be set up to do the same thing.
People who say they drive just fine while using their phone are the 2020s version of “I drive better after I’ve been drinking”
“Our 2024 Chevrolet Trax disables many of the infotainment-screen functions while the vehicle is in motion. Once the driver pulls over and stops, the greyed-out functions become available again.”
Which just causes many people to do those functions on their phone.
But if phones did the same thing, in the name of safety…
The article asked, “If you have a better idea, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.” so this was my idea.
CarPlay would need to get a lot better or be replaced with automotive OS interface that works.
iPhones work like this, sort of. It’ll make you confirm you’re not driving by tapping a button. You can’t use the phone without doing that first, you can only use CarPlay/Bluetooth functions otherwise.
The problem is, this only works if you turn on Driving Focus, or set the focus to turn itself on when connecting wired or Bluetooth. It only works if you’re already attempting to be a responsible driver, which kind of defeats the purpose.
I have an aftermarket head unit that disables most of the setup/options menu unless the vehicle is in park. (Yes, I know how this can be bypassed, but I was lazy and purchased a prewired harness.)
I like to text when I drive. When I hit send, I speed up as fast I can to try and get to the recipient before my text. So far, no joy, but I’m getting close, I can just feel it.
I know someone who was pulled over for speeding and mouthed off to the cop. The cop came back with a speeding ticket and a cell phone ticket. He didn’t even have a phone with him.
Lesson – don’t mouth off to cops. Nothing good can ever come from being anything but scrupulously polite. You might even just get a warning.
There is a time and a place to argue your innocence if you feel you have been wronged, but the side of the road is not that time and not that place.
He’s lucky he didn’t get a seatbelt ticket tossed on there too. And equipment violations, and anything else a pissed-off cop can come up with.
In high school, after getting a speeding ticket I told the cop, “I’m going to fight this, and I’m going to win”. He was not amused.
I did fight it and I did win. Little did the cop know that my father was the supervisor of road sign placement with the county Public Works dept.
But there was a 50/50 chance of the cop not showing had I kept my mouth shut. There was now a 100% chance of him showing up.
Exactly. Cops do get it wrong sometimes. I too have won in court on a ticket or two back in the day. Nothing but warnings in many years now though. An upside of getting old(er), and looking very respectable even as a not white dude, I guess.
But doing ANYTHING to make YOUR ticket memorable in any way is not ever in your favor. Be polite, sign the thing, go about your day, and deal with it appropriately later. Either yourself or by hiring counsel.
I fully approve this type of abuse of power.
Seeing a car weaving out of it’s lane near me and realizing the driver is not paying attention because they need to look at their phone pisses me off as much as a drunk driver. They are putting themselves and everyone around them at risk. It’s a selfish and disgusting habit. Nothing on your phone is that important that you can’t wait until you pull off the road to look at it.
Either use your car’s hands-free or don’t use your phone at all while your driving. Wait until you’re sitting on the toilet to text and scroll like a normal person.
What if your car also has a toilet built into the seat?
That solves half the problem. I only speed when I have to pee really badly.
My gripe is the people you see on their phone in their hands while driving an expensive car that you know damn well have Car Play. Guess not smart enough to figure it out?
Yeah, you have to wait to sit on the toilet to read “The Morning Dump”… it’s in the name!
Not too proud to admit this but…
I have a certain hand signal that is shared with the phone idiots that surround me in most traffic situations.
Of course those idiots are usually not in tune to recognizing these when they are offered up.
But using my horn for 10-15 seconds usually annoys them enough to look over at the noise.
And gives them the second opportunity to see the special hand signal being offered.
YMMV of course.
Let me stop you right there. NO, it’s not “one thing”. We need to set a hard line here, don’t do anything to make it ever sound okay.
more than just texting, also scrolling reels on social media, choosing the next song, filming a tiktok, ect.
I do not text and drive. I don’t even like phone calls on the hands-free setup. I’ll pull over rather than carry on a conversation. When I go fast I’m very much paying attention to the road and other drivers because I know there’s some in there who are not actually driving and are just sitting the the seat with their brain tuned out.
Ditto – if I am in a hurry, I am focused on driving and nothing else. I think you misspelled “most” when it comes to how people drive.
One thing I find amusing is the comparison between how people drive and how they wander around supermarkets. Most people have ZERO situational awareness in both situations. I literally had a dude just walk right into my cart last night. I was stopped…
A lot of the problem is that modern cars are so numb that they build a sense of impunity in their drivers. Most of the speeders I see are in crossovers, luxotrucks and luxury cocoons.
When you’re driving an insulated two ton box you feel less of a sense of danger, especially when 90 feels like 50 and there’s no feedback. People don’t know how to be bored, societal stress if high, attention spans have collapsed, and people lack respect for the physics of driving.
I don’t see guys in classics or in sports cars doing 20 over on the highway. I don’t get divebombed by Corvettes. I don’t get cut off by boomers in their classics. It’s always the people least interested in driving being the most routinely dangerous.
I stow my phone in a cubby or the opposite door pocket. We’re operating heavy machinery in public, the act of driving deserves to be treated with respect.
While I never see guys in classics, Miatas, or Corvettes speeding, I definitely see lots of guys in German performance cars, Mustangs, Camaros, and newer Supras doing like 100 mph in 55 mph zones. See also, guys with lifted diesel trucks pegging their speedometers with giant clouds of black smoke following them. Then there are the dudes on Harleys and sportbikes who seem to think they have unlimited lives.
Of course, I also have to dodge crossovers trying to break the sound barrier, but bad behavior is abundant out here!
I am also doing everything in my power to dodge owning crossovers, including Dodge crossovers…
All true, but I think a lot of modern sports cars in their way offer a different flavor of the same problem: they’re *so* good they invoke that sense of impunity. And with bikes, I think people willing to take risks are more likely to engage in risky behavior. I think the driving world would be a bit better if everyone chilled out a bit.
I used to notice many people texting away while waiting at red lights or stop signs, primarily in the early morning on the way to work. Both men and women, in their late 20’s to early 40’s, dressed like on the way to the office or some such professional work place. Seeing as they just left home I wondered why texting away in the vehicle, decided they were all adulterers and could only text their lovers in the time space between being at home with family and then being in the office. For me, being in my vehicle is my quiet time, do not want to be bothered by anyone.
When I worked at a law firm, I lived about a mile from the office. I got bitched at by the managing partner a couple of times because I walked into the office not having responded to the text he sent during my 3-minute drive (I usually walked but during a blizzard or 95-degree heat, I would drive). After that, I always checked my phone right before pulling out of my driveway and as soon as I parked.
No way I would have had time for an affair in those days.
I live about halfway down a street that ends in a cul de sac. On nice evenings I sometimes sit on my front porch and have a beer while watching the cars go by and admiring the view (we’re on the side of a hill overlooking farmland). One afternoon three cars in a row went by with people using their handheld phones. One was headed home and apparently couldn’t wait 15 seconds to pull in their driveway, and the other two were headed out and couldn’t wait 15 seconds to text before pulling out of their driveways.
I’m convinced that luxury SUVs won’t actually function if there is a woman driving unless she is holding her phone horizontally in front of her face with it obviously on speakerphone. And every one of those things has had Bluetooth as standard equipment for a good 15 years now.
Ditto. Are you old too? Those of us who grew up without the damned things are nowhere near as addicted to them as a general rule.
I too enjoy being disconnected on occasion, and rarely use my phone in the car even via BT. One of my daily driver cars doesn’t even have it.
Yes, I am old too. I figure if it is truly important then I will receive a phone call. I will admit to being addicted to you tube, but can say have learned much along the way, some even useful.
LOL – same. Nobody texts me about anything critical. And I too watch way more Youtube these days than TV. Most of it actually educational and instructional stuff (with a side of cop videos). It’s an amazing resource. Almost as good as books, but easier to get to.
> Those of us who grew up without the damned things are nowhere near as addicted to them as a general rule.
Sadly I don’t think that’s true. Middle-aged and older people are glued to their phones just as much.
Naw, not really. I spend a LOT of time at universities. Kids are glued to them in a way us old farts just aren’t. Some older folks certainly use them more than others – my 78yo mother uses her phone and iPad more than I do for sure, because she no longer has an actual computer. The iPad is JUST good enough to do what she needs to do, and anything more complex I do for her anyway. And she is FAR more social than I am, so she is constantly texting with the rest of the Golden Girls. My mother is definitely a Blanche, BTW.
Way, way back I met someone who was an investor in a company that ran a bunch of phone sex lines. Remember those? This was in the early days of mobile phones, so no bluetooth or hands free yet. She said their peak hours were not late night as you might imagine, but evening rush hour followed by morning rush hour, or as she put it, no hands on the wheel time.
Me: *hangs up call to 1-900#*
“Oh yeah, I do “remember”
those…
JANE: (walks out of the bathroom, very furious)
(to Jerry) don’t call me anymore…
(Jerry doesn’t say anything and waves his hands)
(Jane walks by Kramer and turns back)
JANE: (to Kramer, in a very sensual voice)
you either…
(sticks her tongue out 🙂
(Kramer and Jerry look at each other, with their mouth open)
They are speeding because they are late, while texting that they are only five minutes away.
Are drivers using the phone more because they are speeding or the opposite? Or do they speed more when on the phone because they are distracted and not paying attention to their speed?
I think they might have this causation backwards.
I was super confused as well. The headline and a lot of the article does a terrible job at explaining what the study found and what it means. This was the only part that cleared it up for me:
“The IIHS has several theories. The simplest is that drivers who take more risks—a.k.a., those who more often use their phone behind the wheel or speed regularly—are more likely to risk doing those things at the same time.”
That makes sense. If you’re a bad driver, you’re speeding. And you’re using your phone. Therefore, those two activities will go together more often than texting happening without speeding.
The headline absolutely makes it sound like speeding is a cause of texting. Nope. They are independent events that have a correlation, that’s it. It seems like a big “duh” is the appropriate response here.
They called it a correlation, and speculated about the cause. Correlation does not equal causation.
It’s the same as distracting touch screens on the dash trying to change a setting. For me texting T9 word with my Razr phone 20 years ago was even harder.
Texting T9 on my old Nokia was way easier than texting now. With the raised keys, I could feel the buttons and type without looking. Now, that’s not possible.
One way to lower texting while driving, speeding, really any and all traffic violations is to reduce driving altogether. The best way to do that while also improving the quality of life for millions, reducing wear on roads, saving billions of barrels of gas is to make WFH absolutely mandatory for all jobs that don’t have a damned good, PROVABLE need for that work to be done in an office more than 1-2 days a week.
Since I do not trust companies to be truthful whatsoever about that need I think financial incentives for WFH to be paid by higher property and sales taxes on office space will go a long way to encourage compliance.
Yikes
Why?
Forcing people to stay home because the government knows best is some insane commie shit. For the good of us all, you should never have power over anything
I’m amazed so many “car enthusiasts” are so rabidly anti-car. Fucking disgusting.
Cars ARE awful in a TON of ways. Guess im disgusting while acknowledging that while still liking cars.
Two things can be simultaneously true.
Yes. Yes, you are.
Chill and be nice to people you don’t agree with.
No.
A WFH mandate doesn’t mean 24/7 employee house arrest, jesus.
But then again I can see Amazon trying to pull that so
WFH
Mandate
How is that not house arrest? If you are being forced to do your job at home, what else would you call it? You commie freaks will twist anything.
lmao it’s been covered already in here, read more silly!
A lot of enthusiasts are anti-car because the vast majority of drivers are not enthusiasts and ruin driving and the world for the rest of us. I’m anti-car because most appliance drivers hate the world around them. They’re dangerous, inconsiderate, demand more speed, parking, and space in places they don’t live in.
I would rather not have to put miles on my cars if I had the option of transit. That would be less wear, gas, and maintenance.
A couple times a month I’m nearly struck just commuting on the highway because other people are distracted or impatient. Walkable cities are so much more pleasant to explore. Whenever I take my bike or Miata out to hit twisty roads there are inevitably people rounding blind corners halfway in my lane, then get mad when I honk at them.
Is it really so different from forcing people to leave home so they don’t suffer the litany of abuses being broke offers?
Anti-car and anti-commute are not even close to the same thing.
My commute will not be enjoyable in any car.
And companies forcing millions people to spend hours each day of their own time and their own money on transportation costs solely for the purpose of propping up corporate property values is better?
No it is not.
Work from home isn’t forcing people to stay home unless you allow it to be. You can still go wherever you want. You’re just working from home. You can make WFH a car enthusiast’s dream, I think.
I work from home and have since late 2020. It’s a blessing and a curse. Blessing because now I drive almost entirely for fun. I don’t need a reliable daily driver because I don’t have to rely on a car to get me to work. I don’t have to worry about being late because of traffic or putting a ton of miles on a car I love. I put 162,000 miles on my 2012 Smart in part because I used to have a 60-mile commute.
I can also work in my pajamas, play with my parrots, use the bathroom on demand, and don’t have a boss breathing down my neck. My wife is next to me right now, despite the fact that she works in a completely different industry.
It’s also a curse because there can be several days in a row where I never leave home, and sometimes I don’t get mobile enough or enough exercise. At the very least, being forced to go to a physical place every day forced me to get some steps in.
But the cars? I love that part. I am free to enjoy cars how I want to without having them tied to a commute. Maybe if more people did WFH, traffic wouldn’t suck as much for those of us who love to drive.
WFH depends a lot on the type of job. I was a materials scientist/engineer/manager for 40 years. There was never a time when I could have worked from home for more than a day a week, if that. It was important to be with people at work, but also close to one another to allow for spontaneous communication and ideas. Even 100 yards or down a flight of stairs was detrimental. Besides, I was often in the laboratory or manufacturing area to run experiments or check on things and understand how things were doing.
The exception wasn’t really a job in the real sense. When Samsung bought the technology of the company where I worked, they also hired me (to work in Korea). It turns out that I could have worked that job from home (in California) because they didn’t really want me there. I was given the job because the Chairman of Samsung said when you acquire a company, you should hire critical talent. It took me 18 months to figure that out. The pay was good and I didn’t rent out my house, so my wife could choose where she wanted to live and when. This is one of the decisions that allows me to be happily married for 40 years.
Sometimes you might, you know want to see other humans? Or maybe you like working at the office? Or having face to face meetings actually improve outcomes?
I use public transport to go to the office anyway.
Then make it available and hybrid folks can find each other, ez (okay I know not “ez” but easier)
Maybe THEY don’t want to see YOU. Maybe they prefer the relative privacy of their own place rather than the Big Brother surveillance state of an office. Maybe they prefer not wearing pants on a Zoom call or dealing with creepy coworkers. Maybe everyone comes in just to have the meeting canceled or to have the boss not show up as a power play. Maybe showing up everyday is gross overkill and more harmful than positive to worker morale.
You WANT to go into the office? Fine. That doesn’t mean everyone else has go in to keep you from being lonely.
Your original post said, and I am quoting here:
“ The best way to do that while also improving the quality of life for millions, reducing wear on roads, saving billions of barrels of gas is to make WFH absolutely mandatory for all jobs that don’t have a damned good, PROVABLE need for that work to be done in an office more than 1-2 days a week.”
U-turn much?
In any case don’t know why a simple comment making a potential case for going to the office grinds your gears so much that you have to take it on a personal attack level.
Hope your day will improve from whatever is causing you this distress 🙂
Not sure how you see this as a U turn. You put up a few talking points in favor of RTO and I countered them.
RTO by its very nature is a forced action, not a voluntary one and one that needs to be justified.
I’m all for WFH (I’ve done it for the last five years), but at the same time there are tons of people who want to work in an office and find value in it, even if it’s not a “damned good, PROVABLE need” as you say.
This rant was a fun tangent I guess, though? People text too much while driving, so therefore the government should mandate people work from home. Ok!
I see it as mandating the option of 100% (or a higher percentage) WFH availability.
Laws affecting company policy, not an employee. There’s not enough RTO proponents in the rank and file to result in all these three-five days a week in office requirements.
A top down pressure to enable WFH is hard. There’s so much gray area in the reasons for RTO versus WFH. The battle is already ongoing between employers and employees. It needs to be bottom up (employee) pressure.
It will only gain acceptance if it’s an ADDITIONAL option, rather than a forced action.
My argument is not to eliminate office work altogether but to disincentivize it in favor of incentivizing WFH unless it can be proven as a necessary evil.
A someone who has worked from home for nearly 20 years for a company that today is 90%+ work from home, I very much agree with you on this one. The average white collar computer jockey has no need of relocating themselves, at their own expense, twice a day to tap away on the keyboard all day.
I do fully realize that there are some adverse knock-on effects for businesses surrounding offices, and companies stuck with unused real estate. But in the long run they save a fortune in not having to provide expensive office space. My company reduced our office footprint by 2/3rds post-pandemic, saving a ton of money in the process. The little bit of added electricity it costs me to work from home is FAR outweighed by not having that commute every day – and my TIME has value too.
IMHO, anything that can be done to disincentivize driving is a good thing. It’s the most dangerous thing the average person does every day, it’s terrible for the environment and expensive. And I say that as someone who LOVES cars. Freedom is only having to drive because you want to, not because you are forced to.
“I do fully realize that there are some adverse knock-on effects for businesses surrounding offices, and companies stuck with unused real estate.”
And THAT is the real incentive for the mandates. Any company that owns its own property is hugely incentivized to mandate RTO for reasons that have nothing to do with productivity or worker morale. Any company that makes products that are used to commute, e.g. Ford, is hugely incentivized to mandate RTO. Any government that receives revenue from corporate office use is hugely incentivized to support RTO. Which is why I argue those incentives must be removed.
That’s certainly a big chunk of it.
Another big chunk is simply management incompetence. They fear that if they aren’t breathing down the employee’s necks, the employees will be goofing off. And the pervasive theme in US corporate culture that time spent is more important than actual output. If I can do my job in 20hrs a week, and that is the job I am being paid to do, why do I need to have my butt in a seat for 40hrs a week? My company values results, not time spent getting those results. Of course, if you are paid by the hour, slightly different story, but much of corporate America is salaried. Those who aren’t often have jobs where it is pretty easy to establish productivity metrics – for example, customer service phone reps and claims processors, to throw out two jobs done by WFH friends of mine who are paid hourly.
I expect such managers think they can figure out if an employee is underutilized and goofing off, maybe even had a napping bed installed under their desk with surprise visits to the workbench, keystroke recorders, badged entry, toilet surveillance cams, etc. That’s much harder to do if the employee is in their own home.
Your time and expenses lost commuting is a price they’re willing to pay.
And its not like employees don’t figure out office workarounds. Like the guy who subcontracted his workload offshore for 1/5th his salary, pocketed the difference and spent his workdays in the office watching cat videos instead:
https://www.developer-tech.com/news/us-developer-outsourced-job-china-and-watched-cat-videos/
Of course the employer blames its early efforts to enable WFH as how this employee was able to make it work.
Absolutely. I’ve worked for a micro-manager who had a cube right next to mine. That was not fun.
I have a fun similar story – I had a client who was allowed to work from home for a famous university. He was the backup and storage admin. He actually used that to be able to move all over the country while doing his job remotely. He did a great job, but he also kept everything about those systems very close to the chest. *I* knew more about them than anyone else at the University, but he didn’t let me know what any of the passwords were (not that I normally do once I am finished a deployment and they are changed). This went on swimmingly for about five or six years. He would fly in and meet me when they needed to do a deployment or upgrade, and in the end he actually would just get me datacenter access and just be in a Zoom while I did the work.
But then he *disappeared*. For weeks. They could not get ahold of him at all. And he had a university phone and a university laptop of course. Zero response, just disappeared. He showed back up and spun a BS story about getting lost on a hike and being in the hospital. The university gave him the benefit of the doubt. Things were fine for a month or so, then he disappeared AGAIN for a couple weeks. This time the fired him. He refused to give them ANY of the system passwords – said he would give them for $200K. The university ended up hiring us to both have me go onsite and do password recovery on all the storage and backup systems and their entire fiber channel switch infrastructure, and to do his job on a time and materials hourly basis while they hunted for his replacement. I did the storage admin work, a colleague did the backup admin work. Between us, we billed less than 8hrs a week for the almost six months it took for them to hire and have us train up his replacement – who needless to say, got a whole bunch of additional job responsibilities. They were paying this guy over $150K a year for no more than 8hrs a week… And of course, now all passwords are in a central password vault that managers can access too.
And the kicker – we figured out what happened – my coworker who did the backup stuff should be a detective. He found the dude’s MUGSHOT and arrest and trial record. He was in jail – for *peeping* on a woman. the first time was his arrest – he evidently couldn’t get bailed out and sat there until his arrainment. The second time was the sentence (with credit for time served) he got. He never fessed that up to the university.
So I definitely get that management fear – but it is still VERY much a management problem and not a remote work problem. It would have not been hard to look at what was actually being done and figure out how much time it was taking to do it. In the case of the dude subcontracting, if the work was getting done efficiently and properly, I don’t even have THAT much of a moral problem with it. Though of course the company should have just outsourced that job in the first place if it was that simple.
Yeech! Some people amIrite? Might as well have claimed he was off hiking the Appalachian trail.
I’m surprised the university let him get away with keeping the passwords to himself given the potential for blackmail.
It was crazy.
It’s not really that unusual in small organizations with segregated duties – or in a lot of cases – only one IT dude for the whole organization. And the IT staff at this university is quite small. Plus he did a seemingly great job for a long time – he was there 15+ years, started when he was a student there. Very trusted, and the only one touching any of that gear for a long, long time.
But once we figured out what a total scam he was running on them, some dots got connected. He was always SUPER paranoid about anything going wrong that would affect things running. WAAAY more so than our typical clients. Half my job was talking him down off the ledge when we were doing upgrades and expansions.
I like this! Although, in my current position, I would still have to be in the office several days per week to look at parts, pull reference materials, and so on. Most of my meetings are with vendors in other states, but people in the office will still gather in the conference room and use Teams so we can share screens. Strangely, I gained an appreciation for many of my coworkers during the shutdown…not having to be exposed to so many personality quirks for 8 hours every day was a blessing.
I also wasn’t lacking for opportunities to drive when I worked from home. I did do a lot of that driving in pajamas though, especially if it was just to pick up a curbside order.
On the topic of enforced work-from-home, I was recently told about an employee at one of our vendors who was fired for being verbally abusive/racist in the office, but was brought back on a strictly remote basis for what sounds like contract work.
Exactly.
I would actually welcome a hybrid situation where maybe I go into the office a day or two a week – I do enjoy being around other people. I get that fix when I work in-person at client sites. But in my case, I was 125 miles from the office when I was originally hired nearly 20 years ago, but have been 1600 miles away for the last 10 years. I get up there twice a year usually. Once for our annual “all company meeting”, and once for my annual review. Occasionally for other special training sessions. I got down there 5-6 times a year when I lived closer.
I blazed a trail in my company 20 years ago. I was the first non-sales resource hired as full-time remote. Only sales dudes were remote back then. Today 90% of the company is, including the entire management team. Even the owners rarely bother to go into the office anymore. The only people who go into the office every day are those who lack good WFH situations for one reason or another, or they just want to. Everyone gets to choose what works for them. Nor are there any geographic limitations, we have people in 28 states now, from Maine (in the summer anyway) to Hawaii.
“I would actually welcome a hybrid situation where maybe I go into the office a day or two a week – I do enjoy being around other people”
A lot of folks get that other people fix nursing a cup of coffee in a coffee shop for the day.
Meh, I hate the stuff. And I actually LIKE my coworkers and wish I could spend more time around them in person, and not just as voices on the phone and in e-mails. I have no interest in being around randos. That is just a worse, noisier way of being alone.
And I’m sure they like you too 🙂
They do! I’m actually a lot of fun in person. Clients LOVE me. I’m pretty good at making complex IT implementations fun and not as stressful as they tend to be, and I am a very good troubleshooter. Decades of experience help.
People like me too…except the ones who don’t.
LOL – I am sure there are people who don’t like me. Only one client that I can think of, and he was such an a-hole that we fired him. My company does that if you are more bother than we want to deal with.
I get irrationally angry when I see someone in a relatively new car (within the last 5 years) on their phone while driving. Put it down and use the onboard system.
The one thing has ticked me off with android for me is google started using AI to summarized messages if you are sent a few messages at a time and it always misses a lot of info. Like no google I do not want my messages summarized just read me the full messages I was sent.
Wait, AI is just being pumped into everything without actual use-case or need? Shocker.
You can turn the summary off under settings. Not an excuse to be handling your phone while driving.
How many other features do you lose when you do that though? I know you can shut off AI summaries in GMail, but then you lose stuff like spell check too.
I will have to see next time I am hooked up in the car because yeah it is dumb hate when they add new settings and automatically turn them on instead of asking.
Same, it’s absolutely baffling to me. All I have to do is hit the voice assistant button on my steering wheel and tell Siri exactly who I want to call or text, and it does it. The worst case is I have to use the click-wheel in my CX-30 to go to texts and pick the one to read out. And that’s why I love the click wheel, I have it down to muscle memory to toggle over to texts, and then it’s a 0.2 second glance to find the one to read. In what world is picking up your phone better than this?
I don’t bother with my phone while driving, but you’ll never find me using any of the voice interactions with my car. I don’t talk to my car, it’s a car. I’m also not interested in my car talking to me.
Sometimes data privacy matters.
Exactly. I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but even I can figure out speech to text and bluetooth while in the car.
Carplay is a pretty poor interface and locks out a lot of features in apps.
For example changing to a different saved podcast in Apple Podcast
Carplay voice-to-great works great, and there SHOULD be limited functionality in what you can do on-screen while driving. You’re supposed to be looking at the road.
I feel like this sort of thing is obvious enough to not need a study. If you’re speeding, you’re probably late. If you’re late, you’re probably contacting someone to tell them.
There must be a LOT of chronically late people on my commute.
This is why I try to get up and out earlier. Around 7 am dumber things start happening on the highway.
Why not call then?
If you’re not smart enough to leave a bit earlier, you’re probably not smart enough to do that
Actually, the science suggests the opposite, that people with higher IQs are more likely to be chronically late.
Probably only because a higher IQ person is more likely to be doing more things and going more places. Dummies arent so busy.