A few weeks ago I wrote about the dangerous new trend of “selfies” – drivers taking a photo of themselves and then sending it, while driving.
I guess I should not have been surprised that, where there is a photo app, there is a video app. Taking and sending a video of yourself while driving is growing through use of an app called Vine, and making and sending the video is now called Vining. The National Organizations for Youth Safety sent this link.
The link is frightening not only for the behavior but for the unconcerned-for-safety attitudes of the people in the videos.
I suppose we could conduct an analysis of whether taking and sending a selfie or recording and sending a video while driving is more dangerous. We could also try to measure whether and explosion involving dynamite and some other explosive inflicts more damage.
The addition of Vining to the list of teen driver distracted driving conduct only underscores the point, made many times on this blog, that our distracted driving laws need to focus not on the particular device being used by a driver, as most of them currently do, but on driver conduct. In other words, most state distracted driving laws do not expressly address or outlaw recording and sending a video, which technically is not a text message. A video might be illegal if it involved hand holding a cell phone, but many laws do not cover the recording aspect, which is likely to be the principal source of the cognitive and visual distraction. So, another front in the war on distracted driving, where our laws are behind the curve.
