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Put your god damn phone down and stop taking pictures with it when you're behind the wheel of a semi when it’s raining.
Sorry. Had to be said. Drive safe friend.
Totally. I don't know if semis are as susceptible to hydroplaning as cars, but I had an awful hydroplaning incident 15 years ago that still scares me. Regained control after what felt like hours of fishtailing.
Semi driver here. No accidents but I have definitely hydroplaned in a fully loaded truck. Load was around 45k putting the total vehicle weight at around 75k.
I felt the hydroplaning start and I clenched hard enough to shit diamonds.
Right after I wrote that I hydroplaned halfway through Wisconsin. Apparently they like to leave a small river in the center of each lane.
I came here to say this, I get the point for the post but OP isn’t making the road safer by doing this.
It's like you heard "don't use your phone when driving" on the news one day and thought "okay, that's because the act of physically holding a phone means you're driving unsafely, understood newsperson!"
This is absolutely nothing like texting or fucking around on instagram. Stop trying conflate doing something that takes literally no braincells and is no more distracting than anything else you do in the car to being completely distracted and non-functional while texting, browsing the web, or watching TikTok videos.
You have to open the camera on the phone and take the photo. That is distracting. That is time your eyes aren't on the road. That might involve actions that are touchscreen use and more difficult since it's not based on feel.
You're too quick to dismiss this.
To play devil's advocate, depending on the phone you can take pictures with only the buttons. On most android phones you can double tap the power button to open the camera and volume down to take pictures.
Op still should not have used their phone while driving a commercial vehicle though
Everyone under 40 can do this with their eyes closed, more so than all the new touch screen bullshit modern cars have these days to put on the heat.
Just because you're physically holding a phone doesn't mean you're even close to being as distracted as texting.
Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Just because you can change the temperature in your car from cold to warmer doesn't mean you should either, but it's a risk we, for some reason, think is reasonable. Not because it's not potentially harmful, but because this one person should get a tiny bit warmer even if that means running over a bunch of school children. Why?
You could make the case that what OP is doing is far more beneficial to society, bringing attention to people not using their headlights in the rain with a very clear example showing its effects. This could be spread to thousands or even millions of people to make them realize how dangerous this is. This could potentially save tons of lives.