when I text....I try to think of where the recipient is. If I think they are in a car I do not text. reading texts and texting is WAY too dangerous.
but of course there is no way to know where the recipient is. and this Judge is just a WAD.
Same here. I do not text or use my cell phone at all while driving – I keep it in my purse or turned off if I am charging it. It is very dangerous, some say even more dangerous to some extent than driving while “moderately” drunk. (The reasoning being that even an impaired driver is paying or probably trying to pay attention to the road while someone looking at the cell phone and reading or writing texts (or posting to FaceBook, Twittering, surfing the web, etc.), is not paying any attention at all during those times – an impaired driver will have a slower reaction response but will still have a reaction response, where as if you have your face buried in a cell phone, your reaction time is zero).
But if you read the entire article, what the court did in this ruling was to uphold the dismissal of the lawsuit filed against the 17 year old who was texting the 18 year old driver who caused the injury accident, citing that there wasn’t enough evidence that she had culpability for the accident.
“While the appellate court found that the Kuberts -- who also sued the girl after learning that she and Best had exchanged 62 texts the day of the crash -- didn't present enough evidence for the claim, it said other third-party texters could be held liable in accidents, depending on what they knew about the driver receiving the messages.
"We do not hold that someone who texts to a person driving is liable for that person's negligent actions," the opinion said.
But "when a texter knows or has special reason to know that the intended recipient is driving and is likely to read the text message while driving," the opinion said, "the texter has a duty to users of the public roads to refrain from sending the driver a text at that time."
The way I read this is “if” the sender of the text knows full well that the recipient is behind the wheel and responding to the sender by texting back while driving, when it is known by the sender that the recipient is driving, i.e. has “special reason to know”; then the sender could also be held culpable. I might be somewhat analogous to being a passenger in a car driven by someone who is drinking behind the wheel and passing them even more alcohol to drink.
If you have about 35 minutes and especially if you think texting while driving is no big deal or have teenagers with cars and smart phones, watch this.