There was a rather concerning case in NJ where a person was texting another person who was driving a car. The person who sent the text knew she was driving, but she sent it anyway: The person who received the text was looking at that text when she hit a pedestrian, oops! There was a lawsuit and the person who sent the text was found to be at least partly at fault and ordered to pay damages. We now have new case law on the books. But let me discuss this philosophically for a moment if I may.
What about a GPS signal being transmitted to a device in a car, the system knows the car is moving, how fast, and exactly where it is, so if someone crashes your car while looking at that device it’s the satellite levy, or artificial intelligence software? What about the satellite manufacturer that built it for the purpose of navigation or what about the satellite launch company, the software code writer, what about the car manufacturer that includes it in the car as a feature standard? Do we really need to sue everyone under the sun or satellite?
The ramifications of those silly lawsuits and bad jurisprudence are coming with no end in sight: too many lawyers, too many rules, too many laws to protect the next Darwin Prize winners, I say. Anyway, now that I’ve got your mind thinking, let me ask you another question here. If lawyers are going to subpoena text message logs for every accident in the future, then someone has to keep those logs, and if they are kept, what about privacy? We just went through an over-the-top media frenzy over the NSA’s problem searching for metadata in emails and phone records, so I’m guessing since the technology exists to send text messages, everyone does too.
So the police can get it, the lawyers can get it, and you can be responsible for something that may not have been your fault, but how are you really going to prove that you didn’t know the other person was operating a train, a plane, or car at that time – you can not. No one to this day has been able to prove to a jury that he did not kick his dog. Do you see that point too? Well, that’s your mental thought exercise for today, please think about it.