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Comment on New York eyes a 'breathlyzer' for texting while drivingparent

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What if my passenger was making the call or text on my phone (which isn't uncommon, at least with my group of friends)?

What if the texts were minutes before at a parking lot, while the car was off? How does anything but a copy actually seeing a cell phone in my hand while driving prove beyond a doubt I'm guilty?

The (vast?) majority of cars on the road at any given time are single-occupant. For mobile phone offences, the proportion probably goes up for the reasons you cite.

E911 pings should provide moving speed at the time of the text. An officer is going to take your Driver's License, so they should should be able to differentiate between you and your passengers.

How accurate are E911 pings?

What if I give my phone to a passenger? My driver's license has literally nothing to do with that.

My wife and I both have expensive smart phones. We frequently let the passenger use the driver's phone for, e.g. navigational purposes. If we get in an accident while I'm driving and my wife is using my phone to configure a route, how is a cop to know that?

E911 pings should provide moving speed at the time of the text.

Are E911 pings sent before you call 911?

Modern Enhanced 911 emergency systems (E911) systems automatically track the locations of people who call 911. This technology saves lives, as it allows emergency services to know the precise locations of callers. Like most technology, E911 also has a sinister side. Using a tactic called E911 pings, police can make reverse 911 calls to determine the locations of any cell phone built after 1999

- https://21stcenturylocksmith.wordpress.com/2015/03/24/how-po...

seems to imply it only works when calling 911.

An officer is going to take your Driver's License, so they should should be able to differentiate between you and your passengers.

They can really use my driver's license to differentiate between who was holding a phone a few minutes before? That's amazing!

Pretty sure E911 piggybacks on the periodic pings that happen to towers. You cell phone needs to periodically hit the tower to determine CDMA power for the code division to work correctly. Either way positional(and extrapolated from that, speed) data is available to carriers.

Fair point on who's holding the phone but I think there are certain cases where it can be determined. I'll full agree that any solution isn't perfect, however the stakes of someone driving distracted are high enough that I think it's at least worth trying to tackle it.

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