Texting while driving in most places can be classified as distracted driving. It doesn't need a special classification; if you were reading the newspaper while driving you could be pulled over and fined for that, texting is often handled the same way.

Some places have additional statutes and fines on the matter, but that is just to try to raise awareness - or revenue.

Unfortunately it appears that fines and education have been completely ineffective on the matter. I lived in a place for several years that would have annual campaigns to discourage drivers from texting while driving, followed by announced enhanced enforcement of the offense.

So what happened? Were people at least smart enough to send fewer messages during the enhanced enforcement period? No. Not even close. Every year the tallies went up.

For one, most of the people doing this are young and their insurance - and phone bill - are paid by the parents. So nothing is hitting their own wallets directly.

I have yet to hear of anyone having their phones confiscated. Although again as the offenders far more often than not are getting everything they need from their parents, confiscation won't do much but prevent them from sending messages for the next 24 hours or so.

For certain very lucky values of "safely", sure. Taking your eyes completely off the road to do something is, quite simply, never a good idea.

A lot of people drive drunk and don't cause accidents (or only harm themselves) yet we don't consider it to be safe.

No, it is far much more like driving drunk.

Generally only the case if your car has an automatic transmission. Rather hard to do that if you are taking a test with a standard transmission.

The cable companies have such a stranglehold on local high-speed internet in some markets that people don't have any other practical choice. If your choice is either cable - and deal with the awful terms and atrocious customer service - or dial-up, you will almost certainly go with the former.

Some markets are starting to see various fibre-to-the-home initiatives (usually by local telcos) that might give cable a run for their money, we'll see how that pans out. Downside is you often end up talking about a contest between two repeat contenders for the title of worst company in America.

How about we just put lights on top of cars that light up brightly when a text message is being sent from anyone in the car? Then the rest of the drivers on the road can avoid those idiots, as the ones who have texting passengers in the car (aside from taxis and such) are generally no better than the ones who are attempting to text while driving.

The bright light would also make it easier for cops to know who to pull over when they are doing enhanced patrols for these shit-heads as well.

It is against the law pretty much everywhere. However that law is enforced pretty much nowhere. It is just simply too difficult to enforce it, as a police officer has to catch the person in the act to even write a ticket. And then the ticket is so laughably small in terms of the monetary penalty as to be pointless to even write.

In other words, people do it because they (wrongly) think they can do it safely, and then (unfortunately correctly) believe that they have nearly a zero chance of getting busted for it.

Exactly how did I change the subject? I was asking for you to actually define a situation where President Lawnchair could share enough information with the American public without that getting to be "too much" for ISIS. You can't define such a situation because none exists.

... and there you go, pretending that the written word has some static value to you. You are perfectly content to treat the word as 1000% fungible when a guy of your own choosing is in the white house, but if the guy there happens to have the cursed letter D after his name - regardless of what he has actually done policy-wise - then you quickly whip out for favorite tomes to rally the impeachment cries.

Your rampant inconsistencies are well noted.

All i want is for you to stop moving the goal posts and describe clearly a situation where President Lawnchair could describe the strategy to the American public enough to satisfy you without you claiming that he is giving it all away to The Enemy.

If the

That you eluded to was really all you wanted, then simply saying "we're going to defeat ISIS" should have been enough (and it is noted that you were happy with that level of strategy when we invaded two countries around a decade ago). Clearly you wanted more. You are not defining well - arguably you are not defining at all - what you want revealed and what should remain

How could President Lawnchair have shared his strategy for ISIS with the American public without it becoming viewable to the rest of the world? You would not have been satisfied has he shared it only with congress under the secrecy veil of "national security interests" - and for that matter some republican would have leaked it had he done that anyways.

Is that cowboy hat supposed to be part of his "rodeo clown" getup?

Your linky-no-worky. Even better slashdot code isn't smart enough to correct for the misformatting and keeps trying to load it as a page in slashdot.

Get rid of your dictator and adopt a representative democracy and it will be over. Indeed, nobody could have thought it would go on this long.