A new law that bans using hand-held devices to talk, email, or send text messages while behind the wheel has been passed by the Ontario legislature.
The new rules, which don’t come into effect immediately, include a fine of up to $500 as the province joins other jurisdictions in cracking down on drivers using the devices.
via the CBC website.
About damned time. See my previous rant on the topic.
This one isn’t quite law related or quite technology rated, though it sort of touches on both. Just wanted to share something quite remarkable I saw this evening.
I was riding home in a cab with my wife and young son, going down Bay St. at about 8 pm this evening. While stopped at the lights, I casually noticed a gentleman, sitting in the car beside us, obviously very preoccupied with something, looking at his Blackberry with some degree of concentration and furiously typing away with his thumbs It was quite easy to see given the backlight of his BB was very bright.
After a few seconds the light changed, he sped onwards, and so did we. And he continued to type, with some degree of vigour, apparently fully preoccupied with his urgent e-mail.
So, you ask, what is so remarkable about this, you ask? Surely this isn’t the first time I’ve seen someone tapping away on a BB in a cab, right? And the answer to that would be no. Definitely see it all the time. In fact, do it myself sometime. Great time saver.
So what’s the big deal? He was the one driving! Certainly understand perhaps taking a quick peek at your BB when stopped at the lights. But amazingly, this fellow that I saw simply continued to tap away busily while pressing the accelerator and speeding away. Neither of his hands were on the wheel, and it was quite clear to me that his vision was focused on his BB and not the road (though admittedly he did see the light turn green). I couldn’t tell if he perhaps was guiding the wheel with his elbows.
The stretch of Bay St. we were on is fairly straight, so I imagine someone could just take their hands off the wheel for a stretch and continue relatively unscathed. But do so, and at the same time also try to write an e-mail to someone? What sort of e-mail could possibly be so important to worth risking your life (and the lives of those around you)? Moreover, what kind of person would be so pressed for time that the could not let the e-mail wait a few minutes until they pulled over somewhere to compose it? I can’t imagine that he did a very good job at either.
While nothing much happened this time (he managed to make his left a bit later – too out of range to see what happened to his BB (but obviously with at least one hand off of it) I do wish him the best that karma may have in store for him.
Most of you are probably already aware of the legislative change affecting daylight savings in North America. In any event, the nub from an internal note:
The U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed by the U.S. Congress July, 2005, extended Daylight Saving Time (DST) in the U.S. by approximately four weeks. This change was similarly adopted by the Government of Canada in order to harmonize time zones across North America. As a result, beginning in 2007, DST will start three weeks earlier on March 11, 2007, and end one week later on November 4, 2007, resulting in a new DST period that is four weeks longer than previously observed.
(slight correction by the way – time is governed by the provinces in Canada – see for example the relevant Ontario regulation).
Apart from changing your clocks, you should make a note of whether any patches or updates to your computer systems are required. I know I’ve already seem some traffic on how MS Outlook and Blackberry stuff might need patches as a result of the change. You might also want to highlight this when making appointments during the changed period.
In addition to that, there are also some articles, such as the one in Technology Review, that warn of other potential glitches:
Cameron Haight, a Gartner Inc. analyst who has studied the potential effects of the daylight-saving bug, said it might force transactions occurring within one hour of midnight to be recorded on the wrong day. Computers might serve up erroneous information about multinational teleconference times and physical-world appointments.
”Organizations could face significant losses if they are not prepared,” the Information Technology Association of America cautioned this week.
Dave Thewlis, who directs CalConnect, a consortium that develops technology standards for calendar and scheduling software, said it is hard to know how widespread the problem will be.
That’s because the world is full of computer systems that have particular methods for accounting for time of day. In many, changing the rules around daylight saving is a snap, but in others, it may be more complex.
”There’s no rule that says you have to represent time in a certain way if you write a program,” Thewlis said. ”How complicated it is to implement the change has to do with the original design, where code is located.”
…and don’t forget international stuff:
Also, the change originated in the United States and is being followed in Canada, but not most other nations. That could befuddle conferencing systems and other applications that run in multiple countries at once.
Update: A great and concise article on slaw with more details and better links on the changes in DST.
