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If you text someone while driving, you could be liable.  Do you need a general insurance policy?

If you text someone while driving, you could be liable. Do you need a general insurance policy?

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 partially 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 that the car is moving, how fast and exactly where it is, so if someone crashes your car while you’re 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 endlessly coming into view: too many lawyers, too many rules, too many laws to protect the next Darwin Prize winners, I say. Anyway, now that I have 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, what about privacy? We just went through an overblown media frenzy over the NSA email and phone record metadata lookup problem, so I guess since the technology for texting exists, everyone has it too.

So the police can get it, the lawyers can get it, and you can be held responsible for something that may not have been your fault, but how are you going to actually 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 didn’t kick his dog. Do you see that point too? Ok, that’s your mental thinking exercise for today, please think about it.

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