> The majority of drivers have their phones in their hands while waiting at the light and always take an extra second or two to get going when the light turns green.
> People don't realize the gravity of operating two-ton deathmachines and would prefer to do anything but pay attention to the road and their surroundings.
I agree with your latter statement but I don't think that overdramatizing helps. Someone looking at their phone while the car is stopped at a light is not creating much of a hazard, even if it does take them an extra second or two to get going.
The sibling posters have covered it, but the stop-and-go phone driver already has greatly reduced situational awareness because they missed out on the 3-5 seconds of events before the light turns green.
When I'm stopped at a light, I will check my rear view and side mirrors just for any cyclists, motorcyclists splitting lanes, or even for distracted drivers who might rear end me. I may pull forward a few extra inches to let the occasional car behind me make their right turn. Drivers focused on their phones can't extend this courtesy.
Distracted driving is absolutely not an over-dramatization. We're not talking about a "second or two" as you so blithely put it; sure the action might only take a few seconds (let's be reasonable and say it takes 5 seconds to reach out, grab your phone, rotate it to the correct orientation, open it, read the notification, parse the information, return your phone to its holder, return your hands to the wheel, return your eyes to the road), but the context rebuilding _after_ the distraction is brutal.
We're taking 10 to 20 seconds of complete context loss. Your mind is no longer on "I'm driving" it's on "I guess I can swing by Cub and grab some milk, wait, did I already pass the Cub? Maybe Rainbow is open.."
You will have outdated information on the location of every object around you. Is the old lady still waiting to cross on the other side of the intersection? Is the cyclist still blitzing the red or did he make it? Is that SUV that was coming up still behind me, or has it merged into the turn lane? That batch of 3 cars crossing in front is gone, what was behind them?
To rebuild this context you need to do quite a lot. Basically you need a full cycle of the attentive, aware "I'm driving" brain loop we all use when driving to get caught back up. When you put your phone back are you doing a full 360 degree update? Check left, right, left? Lean out and see what the oncoming traffic looks like? Check all your mirrors, glance over your left and right shoulders to check the blind spots? Lean your head forward and back to glance around your A-pillar support blind spots?
Check your phone quick, put it down and take the right-hand turn you were waiting for? Bet you just checked traffic on the left and then gunned it, good chance to run over the pedestrian on your right who just determined that you were yielding, and stepped into the intersection.
Glance at your phone right as the lights turn green, pull ahead into the intersection and take your protected left-hand turn? Whoops you got T-Boned, turns out the green light didn't come with a green arrow as well, and you were supposed to yield to oncoming traffic. You lost that context when you glanced at the phone and all your brain remembers was Green means Go.
Distracted Driving is multiple times more dangerous than Drunk Driving. "I was at an intersection and stopped" doesn't mean distraction won't happen.
Yes, agreed, we should not exaggerate. But guaranteed that more problems are caused by drivers who are looking at their phones while stopped than those that continue to pay attention to traffic. Because some amount of the distracted ones will suddenly start moving again when something has happened in the meantime to make that dangerous or inappropriate.
They're still active participants in traffic. Someone who is waiting for the signal without the distraction of a smartphone will have seen the flows of traffic commence and stop in the other lanes and the roads that meet at the crossing, and will go into the crossing more relaxed and with better situational awareness than the person who just got jarred from chatting with someone about whether to get take out, and “oh, could you drive past the supermarket to get some wine?” into moving because of the honking behind them. They are also much more likely to notice irregular or otherwise unsafe behaviour by others around them (like a kid on a BMX dashing across at the pedestrian crossing too late to beat the lights).
Collectively, these moments of reduced attention cause way more harm than they should, all because so many people can't leave their damn phone alone while operating a vehicle in traffic.
> People don't realize the gravity of operating two-ton deathmachines and would prefer to do anything but pay attention to the road and their surroundings.
I agree with your latter statement but I don't think that overdramatizing helps. Someone looking at their phone while the car is stopped at a light is not creating much of a hazard, even if it does take them an extra second or two to get going.