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Periscope screengrabLive video broadcasting the latest in driver distraction - and it could be happening on a road near you (+ video)
A free app from Twitter that allows users to livestream video is being used by drivers to interact with followers while at the wheel, including in the UK, as the footage below shows.
The practice has led a US lawyer to warn that footage could be used in court against a motorist as evidence in the event of a collision caused by the driver being distracted.
The Periscope app, which is available for both iOS and Android devices, enables people to broadcast a live video stream to followers on the network, who can interact with them by posting messages which appear on the user’s device in real time, making it fully interactive.
UK Periscope users who use the app while at the wheel include a driver from delivery firm TNT, who broadcasts his thoughts on a range of issues to his followers.
On Tuesday, during an 18-minute broadcast on the social network, he was asked by one person watching whether he was using it while driving.
He assures his audience that he is able to concentrate on the road while using the app, and also gives his views on cycle safety, although as the following excerpts from the video we captured before it expired on Periscope show, he does not appear fully focused on the road.
We alerted TNT to the usage of the app by an employee while driving one of its vans, and a spokesman for the company told road.cc: “TNT takes the issue of road safety very seriously and have strict policies in place regarding driver behaviour and the use of mobile devices.
“Thank you for bringing this incident to our attention and we will be investigating further."
Periscope is used by media organisations including the BBC, and Sky journalist Kay Burley used it to broadcast behind-the-scenes footage from the party leaders’ debates before last month’s general election.
Less serious uses, according to this article from the Guardian, include people sharing livestreams of the content of their fridges or their pets, with cats and pugs proving most popular.
But it’s users who stream video of themselves driving that is attracting concern, with a blog post from California law firm Appel & Co earlier this month highlighting the dangers.
“Our initial research reveals that too many people are using this app while driving,” says the post’s author, Thomas G Appel.
“Just a simple search on twitter for “driving periscope” demonstrates the huge number of users who are using this new app while behind the wheel.
“Many users who use the app while driving are without any passengers and often respond to written comments, indicating that the driver may just be looking for company or someone to talk to while driving. While this might seem like a cool idea at first, it is actually a very unsafe practice.
“The truth is that drivers who use the Periscope app are constantly distracted. They fiddle with their cell phone to initiate the live stream, adjust the stream, chat with viewers and pinpoint the perfect filming position.”
Appel notes that many of the app’s features “encourage the videographer to interact with his audience,” and says “while Periscope has the potential to revolutionise the manner in which people communicate through social media and video journalism, it should never be used by someone who is behind the wheel.”
He adds: “It won’t be long before a Periscope live feed will provide us with live footage of an automobile accident as it occurs in real time. It remains to be seen whether the video captured from these accidents could be used in personal injury lawsuit against a careless driver.
“Would the Periscope users who viewed the driver’s Periscope feed serve as witnesses in the trial? Would this type of behavior call for punitive damages in a California lawsuit? How can Periscope engineers and designers discourage this type of behaviour?”
Since use of smartphones became widespread, road safety campaigners have highlighted the danger of motorists texting while at the wheel or surfing social media sites, with research indicating that it is more dangerous than driving while under the influence of drink or drugs.
Even those devices that are legally allowed to be used – hands-free mobile phones – need to be used in such a way that the driver is not distracted, otherwise they may face a charge of careless driving.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
Latest Comments
- mark1a 2 hours 18 min ago
I'll put you down as a no then.
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I find it deeply jarring and disappointing that Sir David agrees with these people not wanting a cycle lane. Whenever I watch one of his excellent...
- chrisonabike 4 hours 39 min ago
May need insurance, tax and a licence. No problem with the lights though.
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Yes, they look just like the Lezyne Zecto model. My club bought a couple of sets from the LBS for our midweek TTs so if someone turns up without...
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If you can't see a %^$&ing large tractor what ^%$£"!*ing hope is there that you will see a cyclist ?...
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Live: Car plunges over wall and lands on beach rocks...
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Looks like yet another bike share service that's going to fold because of selfish idiots.
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109 comments
I could extend your simile and say the Amity town council encouraged visitors and even put up signs saying "come on in, the water's lovely".
He's seriously deluded. He will find out how deluded he is when he kills someone.
It always amazed me how motoring programmes like Top Gear did so may broadcasts with presenters talking to camera.
*Why am I getting the emails, but not seeing the posts?
IIRC filtering is only legal if it is safe. And filtering on the left generally isn't.
Who's to say what safe is? Obviously this guy is saying it isn't safe as he doesn't give a shit and obvioulsy he's right because he's a professional driver.
I've only had one problem when filtering on the left where a back seat passenger opened a door on me. The poor kid got a bollocking from his parents and I gave the driver a bollocking for not looking out for other road users.
Filtering on the inside is perfectly fine if done carefully.
The guy that came barrelling up my inside last week clearly hadn't seen my left indicator flashing its little heart out. It could have ended badly.
Just because there are twatty drivers out there doesn't make it right.
As for the ST Peter comment that's floating around out there.... Get real, eh?
If you think that's true show me the statute.
There is a difference between undertaking (dangerous) and filtering. Filtering is done in queueing traffic, i.e., stationary or very slow moving. One of the biggest risks in queueing traffic is opening car doors, which happens on both sides of the vehicle. I don't particularly like filtering on the left, but that's where the cycle lane is, and often the only place where there's space to do so.
Anyone who follows my work will know that there is no tolerance for any distraction that does not enhance the drive and safety.
Knowing exactly where you're going, how far before a turn and what lane etc, makes for safer driving so Sat Navs save lives and reduce accidents. But setting the Sat Nav, changing it whilst driving and fiddling with it isn't. Calming radio and traffic info is fine, fiddling with it isn't and so on.
Phones and texting, hand held or not, do not mix with driving at all.
Basically, if you wouldn't do it on your test and expect to fail if you did, is taboo and that includes smoking and unwrapping a chocolate bar. That test was a contract with the community that you signed up to.
So watching any sort of video is a distraction that is not compatible with driving.
I don't think he should lose his job on first offence but a deduction of pay should be offered to him as an alternative to the sack.
It is clearly a nonsense to increase the phone use fine or introduce one for this. There is already a potential 14 years inside for doing this and if that isn't deterring people already, I don't know what sort of fine would.
The problem is that driving is soon treated as old hat after passing the test. How difficult it really is to drive is soon forgotten and becomes as instinctive as breathing, eating and drinking by people, most of whom, are of no great intelligence or aptitude for it either. An onerous responsibility being vested in and being treated casually by the lowest order. What law ever enters their tiny minds until it's too late?
Narcissism overides common sense yet again. Reminds me of the bloke who posted a video of himself with his bags of cocaine on Face Book recently and was surprised to be visited sharpish by the Police.
If only the Great train Robbers had had Twitter. They would have been caught when one posted his trip to Millets to buy a balaclava. And we would have been spared Phil Collins starring in a film about them...
i saw a woman in her car the other day who had her phone fixed with a contraption on the inside of the steering wheel, and she was texting on the motoway. her field of vision whilst she was doing so, was at the level of the speed dial on her dash board. It is mind boggling, if it even legal to sell phone holders like that.
I imagine it's something you can get from China on eBay.
Why would it be illegal? Would you legislate everything?
if it means some idiot distracted by this does not have the potential to kill, then yes.
It's all ok peeps. This professional driver recommends that cyclists pass him on the offside and that passing on the inside could result in being killed to death. In spite of it not being illegal
I recommend that this gentleman learns to drive properly.
What he says it bang on though, DON'T try and sneak up the inside of a big lorry, pass on the outside. It is only common sense, if you look at most people who get killed by lorries in towns and cities, they will have gone up the inside to the junction, sat in the drivers blind spot and not given enough room, should the lorry be turning left.
Just because he doesn't follow what is a legal manouvre, and doesn't respect cyclists, doesn't make it right. The cyclist has the right to filter on the inside, it's the driver who isn't paying attention who is in the wrong. ALWAYS.
.[/quote]
Just because he doesn't follow what is a legal manouvre, and doesn't respect cyclists, doesn't make it right. The cyclist has the right to filter on the inside, it's the driver who isn't paying attention who is in the wrong. ALWAYS.[/quote]
'Doesn't respect cyclists' ? What utter nonsense. It's a massive leap from being pee'd off with cyclists and killing them deliberately as you are implying. It's that kind of rationale that undermines the cycle lobby and shows that any 'war' is being fomented by cyclists.
So you have no responsibility whatsoever for your own safety? You know this manouvre results in cyclist death, but you place your life in your right to do it? Great. You're dead but in the right. What kind of logic is that? And if you're a driver, your logic would be just as dangerous behind the wheel too. The percentage of daft illogical cyclists would mirror that of 32 million drivers.
good advice, but what happens when the cycle lane goes up the inside of a big lorry? Like the ones that are put there specifically to get you to an ASL box?
Oh right. So the logic is as you enter heaven St Peter says: 'Come in my son. what you did was perfectly legal so you maybe dead but what you did wasn't against the law'. It's not against the law to run across a live firing range either.
What an idiot.
"The practice has led a US lawyer to warn that footage could be used in court against a motorist as evidence in the event of a collision caused by the driver being distracted".
I'm sure motorists in this country will be trembling in their boots at the thought of this, given the levels of punishment doled out for motoring offences.........
'I'm a very good driver' says man driving large van around town centre whilst staring at his phone rather than the road - bit like those 'very good drivers' who think drink drive laws and speed limits are also only for lesser mortals then them
My van doesn't have steering wheel controls, but I do have a 32gb USB stick with all my music on. My head unit is also a TV, but it has a great feature built in, which I only found out because I hadn't closed down the TV before loading the Sat Nav. Try and drive with the TV on and all you get is really high pitched screeching above the TV volume, about 20 seconds of that and you have to stop it.
All that needs to happen is for the Periscope authors to proactively add a trigger for movement or GPS movement and car driver use which automatically exits the program when it detects use in a moving road vehicle or be sued to do so by a victim(s).
But that would severely limit the use of the app for other purposes. I first became aware of Periscope when Rory McIlroy used it from a private jet after winning the Wells Fargo tournament for example. He wasn't flying the plane;
http://www.golfdigest.com/blogs/the-loop/2015/05/rory-mcilroy-periscope-...
The prize twat should be sacked and banned from driving and made to sit a driver safety test before ever getting back on the road, it is clearly visible when his eye is on the road and when he is staring into his phone, beggars f***ing belief!
My company had just rolled out a motor on.mobile off policy.
No using it even if you're hands free.
If you ring someone and they're driving then you're to tell them to call back when out of the car.
It's an excellent idea - it must be very distracting trying to have a work conversation and driving at the same time. I'm office based and it's hard enough.
Yeah, I can see it would be distracting, but no more than looking over to change the radio station or cd.
My phone bluetooth's to my stereo head unit and I have a mic behind the steering wheel, so if I do get a call, I just speak to the steering wheel and the voice comes through the whole stereo system.
same with mine but I still turn off my phone ....
As for changing station hand controls on the steering wheel surely ? CD's ??? come on USB connection to your phone
Would you fiddle with your radio whilst driving on your driving test?
Kill someone while doing it is 14 years inside but then you wouldn't admit it would you?
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