Ohio state senator caught driving during video Zoom meeting (and using a fake background)

Originally published at: Ohio state senator caught driving during video Zoom meeting (and using a fake background) | Boing Boing

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Wow, I wonder how they figured out he was actually driving a car.

Prediction - The senator will to rail against his detractors, insisting that it’s his Constitutional right to drive when attending a videoconference.

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-sigh- Of course this is a Republican.

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Once again I must ask: What the fuck is wrong with people?

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If we could work that out, we’d be able to do something about it. :thinking:

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I would be very happy if there were a bluetooth contraption that would suppress traffic sounds and my foot running sounds enough that I could take business calls while out on a jog without someone going “Are you exercising?”. I can run slow enough to not be breathing heavily but the traffic and feet always give it away. I would be perfectly happy to continue the meeting anyway but people are always uncomfortable with it.

Obviously, I don’t put on video for this and it only happens if someone calls me while I am running. I don’t schedule meetings during my runs (or my runs during scheduled meetings).

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Republicanism… makes you dumb

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If, as seems likely, the video part of the meeting was just the faces of people one doesn’t really want to look at anyway, his assertion that this was no worse than a hands-free phone call doesn’t sound wrong. What am I missing?

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Check your rear view. I think your biscuits are burning.

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Or…does dumb make Republicanism?

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Doesn’t the zoom phone app actually have a “Car mode” so it is just reduced to a button to mute/unmute? The insistence on having the video on is what is making this whole thing problematic.

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6 of those, half a dozen of the other…

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I hope that when the Buckeye State enacts this stupid distracted driving law (using 20 pages to say “don’t text and drive,” instead of just making a one-page law that says as much), it doesn’t make my use of phone-based navigation and podcasts a crime as I drive across its gently rolling plains.

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This is exactly what I was thinking. Zoom has a driving mode, which is basically a push to talk button. They shouldn’t even have that. They should have either the thing on all the time, or maybe have it turn on when the volume reaches a certain level. And that’s assuming they should have anything at all.

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I chuckled when he was “sitting in his kitchen” and looking both ways before driving forward.

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According to the linked Columbus Dispatch article, there are exceptions for hands-free use. Also, I think there are exceptions for GPS, as well as radio and things that mimic what you have in the car anyway.

The constant fiddling with his phone while driving, turning on and off the video, changing back grounds, reorienting the position and framing of his image, he was doing all that while trying to drive.

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Yeah, if its in some sort of “car mode”, its the same as using a hands-free cellphone while driving.

It seemed like the fiddling was before he put his seatbelt on, before he was actually driving(?)

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I love how he thinks the fake background covers up his seat belt.

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What, you never seen a guy driving his house before?

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