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If you text someone while driving, you could be liable – is a general insurance policy needed?

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There was a rather concerning case in New Jersey where a person was texting another person who was driving a car. The person who sent the text message knew he was driving, but he sent the message anyway; the person who received the text message was looking at that message when he accidentally ran over a pedestrian. There was a lawsuit and the person who sent the text message was found to be at least in part at fault and ordered to pay damages. Now we have new jurisprudence on the books. But let me discuss this philosophically for a moment if I can.

What about a GPS signal that is 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 looking at that device, the satellite is responsible, or artificial intelligent software? What about the satellite builder that built it for the purpose of navigating or what about the satellite launch company, software code writer, and automaker that puts it in the car as a standard feature? Do we really need to sue everyone under the sun or satellite?

The ramifications of these silly lawsuits and bad jurisprudence never come without an 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 have your mind thinking, let me ask you another question here. If lawyers are going to subpoena text message records for every accident in the future, then someone has to keep those records, and if they do, then what about privacy? We just got over an over-the-top media frenzy on the NSA’s topic of searching for email metadata and phone records, so I guess since the technology for text messaging exists, everyone has it too.

So the police can get it, the lawyers can get it, and you may be liable for something that may not have been your fault, but how are you really going to show that you didn’t know the other person was operating a train, plane? or car at that time, you can’t. No one to this day has been able to prove to a jury that their dog was not kicked. Do you see that point too? Okay, that’s your mental thinking exercise today, please think about it.

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