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Vermont Cell Phone Ban

Ranb said:
Perhaps. But a quick look at the bills he is sponsoring does not indicate anything like that yet. He is pro-gun though.
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A quick look at the article you posted in the OP clearly indicates that, though. Including, but not limited to, the fact that the he deliberately modelled it on the existing gun laws.
 
ponderingturtle said:
Airplane mode turns off all transmissions so it wouldn't receive calls or data while active. How would it know you got a call when it isn't listening to your service?
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That's the thing: airplane mode wasn't on. I fixed the problem by turning airplane mode on and then off.

As to how I know I was receiving calls that weren't going through, I was calling my cell from my house phone to find it. Instead of ringing, it went right to voicemail. I found my phone on my own, tried it again with my cell in my lap and it didn't ring or register any activity. And once I did get it to reconnect to the network, it didn't find my calls or register anything about them or the voicemail messages I left for myself.
 
Loss Leader said:
That's the thing: airplane mode wasn't on. I fixed the problem by turning airplane mode on and then off.

As to how I know I was receiving calls that weren't going through, I was calling my cell from my house phone to find it. Instead of ringing, it went right to voicemail. I found my phone on my own, tried it again with my cell in my lap and it didn't ring or register any activity. And once I did get it to reconnect to the network, it didn't find my calls or register anything about them or the voicemail messages I left for myself.
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OK, then. I am aware, though I have not made use of it, that my provider allows certain actions independent of the handset. For example, I could set my connection to forward to VM and it matters not a whit what the phone says thereafter.

Could it be one of those obscure settings?
 
Minoosh said:
The one time I've really wanted to ban cell phones has been while working in high schools. Just as with adults they're an addiction. Maybe the solution is to use them as a platform for lessons. But in the meantime they're a distraction. You can have strict policies but the temptation is always there.

A teacher got in trouble for jamming signals - it turned out to be illegal -but I totally got where he was coming from.
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I think that they should ban the whole huge center console display thing in most modern cars. Every time I see someone driving erratically they are always looking at the display to see where they are even though they already know(IMO) because it's sooo coool!
 
That point: In Vermont, it's illegal for anyone under 21 to buy a firearm. Rodgers suggested that the same age restrictions should apply to cellphone use.
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Does he really not understand the difference between "buy" and "use"?

My kids are out of high school and still haven't bought a single cell phone themselves. But use? Oh, they can use.
 
Loss Leader said:
That's the thing: airplane mode wasn't on. I fixed the problem by turning airplane mode on and then off.
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It likely wasn't finding a signal. Sometimes switching it in and out of airplane mode will initiate the phone actually searching for a signal. Happened to us yesterday when we were out in the country and only had "voice-only" service. Once we got closer to the highway I asked my wife to turn on and off Airplane mode and it switched over to LTE with four bars. The signal was there, the phone just wasn't looking for it.

But be careful, if you leave it in Airplane mode the ensuing "stop calling me Shirley" and "bad day to quit sniffing glue" jokes can lead to marital stress.
 
Ranb said:
As far as I know, a person can join the military in the USA while still 17, but can't deploy overseas until they are 18.
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In the US, joining the military at 17 requires parental consent.

I don't believe it is true that the minimum age for overseas deployment is 18 in the US. It is included in the description for New Zealand:

17 years of age for voluntary military service; soldiers cannot be deployed until the age of 18; no conscription (2019)
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US:
18 years of age (17 years of age with parental consent) for male and female voluntary service; no conscription; maximum enlistment age 34 (Army), 39 (Air Force), 39 (Navy), 28 (Marines), 31 (Coast Guard); 8-year service obligation, including 2-5 years active duty (Army), 2 years active (Navy), 4 years active (Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard); all military occupations and positions open to women (2019)
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https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/333.html
 
Venom said:
I'm kind of amused by American standards.

You'd trust a 15 year old with a 2,000 lb heavy machine but get queasy when they buy condoms?
Trust 17 year olds to serve your country overseas but won't let them drink fermented malt barley.

I think this 21+ cell phone nonsense is out of line.
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Agree with you about the condoms, but I think the alcohol (and now tobacco) age is fine where it is. Some days, I think it should be 40. I wouldn't mind them bumping up the age for military enlistment to 21, either. (Which will never happen, of course, I'm just giving my unpopular view.)

The cell phone thing is obviously silly. I'd never support that, even if the idiot proposing it were serious. Cell phones are not directly deadly in the way that war, tobacco, and alcohol are. You have to draw a few connections to make them deadly. They're deadly to people's attention spans, I suppose.
 
abaddon said:
OK, then. I am aware, though I have not made use of it, that my provider allows certain actions independent of the handset. For example, I could set my connection to forward to VM and it matters not a whit what the phone says thereafter.

Could it be one of those obscure settings?
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Who knows? Fixing it by turning airplane mode on and off leads me to believe it was a glitch.
 
erlando said:
How would your phone know if you were driving or just a passenger? Or on a bus or train?
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As far as I know, my phone has no clue whether I'm I'm driving or just a passenger, until I tell it that I'm a passenger.

That's fine. It's annoying, potentially, for people on public transit, but it's far better than people chatting and then crashing their cars. And I say that as a guy that used the subway starting when I was 9.
 
erlando said:
How would your phone know if you were driving or just a passenger? Or on a bus or train?
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The train vs car/bus is easy - if the GPS puts you on train tracks you have more serious problems than driver distraction.

Car or bus driver vs passenger: harder. Not sure how current tech can distinguish.
 
Although this is an interesting discussion I am convinced the Vermont senator was trying to take a swipe at gun-control laws by employing cell phone use as an analogy. Apparently he did it so poorly that people have bought into him truly intending a cell phone control law.
 
Mumbles said:
As far as I know, my phone has no clue whether I'm I'm driving or just a passenger, until I tell it that I'm a passenger.

That's fine. It's annoying, potentially, for people on public transit, but it's far better than people chatting and then crashing their cars. And I say that as a guy that used the subway starting when I was 9.
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You would have to disable the phone almost completely. There are several voip apps out there and countless chat apps. So any kind of signal would have to be disabled. Byebye Google Maps, Uber, Waze etc etc.

It is a pretty draconian measure to take affecting a lot of innocent users so unless people are literally dying left and right due to cell phone usage in cars you might want to dial it down.

This link says 14% of traffic fatalities in 2017 were due to cell phone usage. It also says that double that was due to drunk driving.
 
Giordano said:
Although this is an interesting discussion I am convinced the Vermont senator was trying to take a swipe at gun-control laws by employing cell phone use as an analogy. Apparently he did it so poorly that people have bought into him truly intending a cell phone control law.
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Yes his argument is that guns don't kill people, phones do.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Yes the fact that 17/18 year old can join the military but not buy a beer or a cigar is a goddamn disgrace.
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I think it depends heavily on whether or not there's any empirical justification for age limits, although the existence of seemingly contradictory age limits are by themselves a sign that the limits are arbitrary.

Notionally there's no reason for why someone who is deemed mature enough to apply to join the military, by virtue of their age, should be presumed to be mature enough to drink alcoholic beverages. It doesn't negate the (supposed) greater than tolerable harm that alcohol has on the brains of young adults.

A more reasonable example of how arbitrary these kind of age limits are would be something like, how 17/18 year olds are trained to kill people, and advance in trenches filled blood and guts up to their ankles, but are not allowed to see the most "graphic" and explicit movies.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Via an app? I've searched the Google Play store but I'm not finding anything I could download to turn my phone into a weapon. Unless it's that Kardashian game?
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There was a news story that hit few years back about a hunting reserve that let you (or planned to don't remember if they actually wound up doing it) do "remote hunts" where you could remotely control a gun and webcam and shoot deer through a phone app.
 
JoeMorgue said:
There was a news story that hit few years back about a hunting reserve that let you (or planned to don't remember if they actually wound up doing it) do "remote hunts" where you could remotely control a gun and webcam and shoot deer through a phone app.
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Sounds like such a set up would cost a lot of doe.
 
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