Re:Why are cars killing more pedestrians?
by mandelbrotwurst on Sunday October 06, 2019 @04:35PM
(#21174929)
A somewhat cynical, hopefully wrong hypothesis: People in the US text more because we're further down the road of optimizing all human activity to maximize its monetary output, and the asynchronous and more impersonal nature of text messages allows us to transfer data to one another with less interruption to our productivity.
Re:Why are cars killing more pedestrians?
by TeMPOraL on Monday October 07, 2019 @08:47AM
(#21180105)
It's interesting to the extent that I always thought it was the opposite - that Europe was the one preferring texting, whereas the US didn't even have (or use much) the SMS service, using phones for just calls until mobile Internet came.
Also in Europe people text less; I never understood the US preference for texting, in Europe we simply talk (many countries have affordable or unlimited voice plans). When I drive a car (10-20% of the time) I have a headset in my ear, when I ride the motorcycle I have a helmet headset turned on on auto-answer. I don't talk too often while driving, but it is less distracting than texting, I never have to touch the phone while driving (on the bike it is not even possible).