The cellphone paradox - where are all the accidents?

In many ways I can agree with you about things getting worse, but then something happens in the world somewhere that gives me hope.

The 4 men who stopped the terrorist on that France train, 3 of them were young American men. There are still good people in the world who will put themselves in harms way to protect other people, and stop something horrible from happening that they actually had a chance to stop vs. looking the other way and hiding.

The news is shining the light on an event that saved lives. I think people are just tired of being terrorized and afraid.

I've seen it maybe twice in 40 years. It's an imaginary problem. And for all you know they were using their right foot and had it on both the gas and brake at the same time... unless you have X-ray vision of course and could actually see their feet. Or perhaps their brake light switch was broken making the brake lights come on and off without any one pushing on the pedal. Someone who rode their brakes like that "all day" would be emitting smoke.

No one has suggested that people should left foot brake if they don't have the skills necessary. Some people just aren't trainable or don't have the ability, or are too easily confused for anything above bare minimum.

Seems unlikely. Do pilots mash the bottom part of the Rudder pedal which also controls the front steerable wheel instead of the top part of the pedals that controls the brakes when they want to stop on the ground?

In my experience as a driver and pilot those things just don't happen. Even if it did, there's no reason it would be any more likely than right foot brakers mashing the accelerator instead of the brake in a panic situation. Since with LFB each foot has a defined task instead of the right foot sharing two tasks there is reason to think it would be less likely.

That was for unintended acceleration, not foot confusion.

I flew an old Lark and got in the habit of pumping the brakes up on final. Just another thing to add to the checklist...

What if you are mutant with three feet? Then you could operate the brake, clutch, and accelerator independently. It would make waltzing easier too.

--scott

brake,

As in ### "I'm Jake the Peg, deedle, eedle, eedle, um" ###

Mike.

To say nothing of driving a Model T.

There is probably no check box on the form for cops to check "distracted cell phone user" on the report. As if the cop would know the cause anyway...

As long as you're agreeing that phones & text don't mix, that's one less driver I have to worry about :-)

There are dozens of other factors contributing to the decrease in "accidents" (I call them collisions because 'accident' implies nothing could have prevented the collision).

Better roads, smarter cars that brake automatically, awareness of the danger lead to conditioning people beinf boy "as" st - plus the high fines associaed with talking in an active school zone,

he parked his car.

nnnnnn

obviously not true....significant cultural shifts in perception, buying, activities...revolutionary.

look again.

Brockie had 'heel-and-toe' mastered when he was a nine-year old. The first front-wheel drive car he drove FAST, he had 'left foot braking' mastered in about nine minutes. Hell, when he got out the car he was probably speaking fluent Finnish, without a trace of an Oz accent.

Left foot braking a front drive vehicle in competition can allow the driver to hang the rear end out like a rear driver. Generally it is done with the hand brake - but on a SAAB the hand brake operates on the front wheels - so jabbing the brake with the left foot while the right is firmly planted on the "loud pedal" can break the rear wheels loose, allowing them to slide, shortening the turning radius significantly.