You can harrumph if you want, but last Friday night I was running up the interstate on a 400 mile trip through Illinois with storms in the area. I had my iphone mounted on a Ram mount with the "Radar Scope" weather radar app running and it was nothing short of awesome. As I started to ride into the "red" area on radar I decided to pull into a motel for the night while it was still dry, but it started raining by the time I went to unload the bike.

Having said that, include me in the "I don't have a clue what the original post means" club.

 

I guess I don't, either.

 

You DON'T ?

You're the one that started it !

 

Very droll......

 

No need to do that. My wife still has plenty of refills on her card, and the doctor says I can't be hit on the head again for awhile.

I got hit on my Road Glide over a month ago. Not only have I not ridden a bike (or driven a car) since then, I STILL don't have a final estimate, but I still have the headaches.

I've been run off the road often enough by someone with a cell-phone in their ear that I'm kinda wondering if the person who hit me and left me for dead was talking on the phone and didn't see me. Or, perhaps the driver of truck that was stopped at the green light that I slowed down for was on the phone and didn't notice the light had turned green. I'm thinking that the chances are pretty good that at least one of those two drivers wasn't paying enough attention to the road in front of them. And I'm sure that they thought they were perfectly capable of multi-tasking, too. And since they didn't get hurt, they probably STILL think that their distractions didn't distract them. But they BOTH screwed up, and I'm the one still suffering. Concussions are not fun. And everybody who causes an accident by driving while distracted probably figure that they could handle it. There was little traffic, late at night, on a wide 4-lane highway. What harm could a little phone call cause ?

The guy who hit me is probably mad I interrupted his phone call. But I don't know- everybody left. Thank goodness someone saw me laying on the ground and stopped to see what was up. And thank goodnes he had a cell-phone to use to call 911.

Yeah, I get it. The devices are handy. Making them too handy may be dangerous.

 

No, individual people being irresponsible while driving is whats dangerous. No need to start a crusade against cell phones as a whole.

 

I carry one while riding only because the job requires it. But I never use it while riding except the radar if bad weather is around. It stays on the mount or in the holder till I am stopped and off of the bike.
Too many idiots out there talking and driving. Dont want to be one of them

 

Motorcycling is the only activity where the cell stays outta reach....

 

I only use the Iphone Ipod function for music into my aux jack on the Street Glide. Works well and plays forever on the battery charge. I have two apps that have been helpful although not while riding. One is the MosoShopHD which tells me where the closest HD Dealerships are and the other is called Greatest Road which I've been dissapointed in. It counts on subscribers to list their favorite rides and not many have done so. Great to check the radar although the wife does it for me when we're riding 2 up. With the Ipod function you do know when someone calls or texts but I always pull over to check it out. Good Luck.

 

You are absolutely correct. And it sucks that the irresponsible people have ruined it for everybody else. Again.

It's not the phone that's dangerous. But there are people who believe they are capable of multi-tasking while driving who clearly are not that talented.

Years ago, a friend had called me on her cell phone. She left me a voice-mail message, but didn't hang up when she was done. I listened to about a half-minute of road-noise, along with some fumbling around noise (I assumed she'd dropped her phone), followed by a brief screeching sound ( like tires skidding ), and then a door-chime that Fords give out when the door is opened with the key in the ignition, and then the message ended. The next day, at work she was really mad at a lady who she had rear-ended who was claiming outrageous damage to her car. She swore up-and-down that she hadn't been on the phone just before the accident, until I re-played the voice-mail message. She stomped off to work on her new story, but she STILL swears she can handle a phone and drive at the same time.

I'm no saint. I've talked on a cell-phone and driven at the same time. But there are definitely people who can't handle both, and many of them believe they can. I don't have a problem with a guy having a GPS and weather-radar handy and visible, either. But I don't know who can handle the distractions and who can't, and I don't want to be around the ones who can't handle the distractions while they're trying to select a movie to play on their iphone, and the easier we make it for them to watch movies, the more people are going to be doing it.

I never saw the person who hit me (I firmly believe I should have, and am still pissed off at myself that I let someone get close enough to hit me without me noticing). I also admit that I have no clue if the a55hole was on the phone, on drugs, or just totally incompetent. I will be more diligent at watching my '6' in the future. I also believe that people on bikes need things like handy phone-mounts more than automobile drivers do, and that generally speaking I'd trust a biker to safely deal with distractions more than I'd trust some of the idiots I've encountered in automobiles. But, honestly, who hasn't seen someone drifting over a lane line, impeding traffic, or hitting objects in the road while talking on the phone while having NO clue how poorly they're driving because they're so distracted that they are unaware that they're screwing up their driving and endangering others.

But, I gotta say, honestly, when I consider the possibility that the last month of headaches, dizziness, pain, inability to sleep, nausea, and intermittant confusion might be because someone else's phone call was more important than my well-being, I get a little pissed off. And I get a little offended when I sense that someone thinks that their right to enjoy technology while driving is more important than my right to go to work and live without the pain I've been going through.

To all those people who ARE capable of handling a little extra information while driving or riding, I'm sorry. I don't notice those people. I notice the people who hit me more than I notice the competent drivers.