[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Sure, and shooting yourself in the arm is safer than in the head. It's still reckless and dumb.

I have a phone mount and use Siri via CarPlay in both my vehicles, and to be clear, I agree that it's best not to do it at all. But even as someone to whom this doesn't apply, it's this sort of hyperbole that makes your protestations on the subject rather easy to dismiss as pearl-clutching and overstated.

Let's be real: the vast majority of the time and for the vast majority of people, doing this while stopped at a red light has two typical outcomes:
1. The person quickly does whatever they're doing, the light turns green, and they -- along with everyone else -- proceed as normal. All is well.
2. They become incredibly f'cking annoying to drive behind as they've now been sitting at a green light for a full two seconds and are still solidly on the brakes staring at their device because they can't quite find their proper skin tone for the shrug emoji.

Otherwise, you risk needing to apply this to all sorts of scenarios now that modern cars have overwhelmingly (and annoyingly) switched from physical buttons to touch screens, including but not limited to:
- turning on the air conditioning (because it's buried in a menu)
- switching on the window defogger (because it's buried in a menu)
- turning on the heated seat (because it's buried in a menu)
- checking the map on your navigation screen (because you had to change away from it because everything is buried in a f'cking menu)
- dismissing an ad for an extended warranty so you can see your navigation route again (because you're an idiot who bought a Stellantis product)

I won't say radio / song change because there are steering wheel controls for that. But let's not pretend a quick check-and-dismiss sort of action while the vehicle is at a dead stop is even remotely the actual problem we have with people using mobile phones in the car. When someone's driving and using their phone, you can tell from a distance.