Slashdot Mirror
Car Cellphone Bans Driving Bluetooth
jmatheny14 noted that the BBC is running an article about an unexpected side effect of car cellphone bans. It says"Legislation banning the use of mobile phones in cars is spurring car manufactures to look for alternatives such as Bluetooth." and "Because it can be used with a hands-free headset that can connect to a mobile phone even if the device is some distance away, it could be a perfect way to get around the ban."
uh newsflash.
This is one of those laws where most people ignore it. Like Jaywalking, Speeding, and Sodomy!
It's difficult to enforce, due to the lack of similar laws in neighboring cities and townships.
"Sorry, Jim, going into Suffolk county now, gotta hang up cause there's signs everywhere! I'll reach ya via bluetooth!"
fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
Because of people talking on cell phones getting into accidents, some states have full bans some states require hands free devices
Jesus saves, everyone else takes full damage from the fireball.
when I connect w/the driver's face after he hits me b/c he was too busy talking to someone else instead of paying attention to where he was going.
It is not just the fact that cellphone take one hand away from the wheel it is also the dialing, the looking for a phonenumber, the dropping your cell phone and looking for it under your seat, while keeping one eye on the road and the foot on a the pedal. Until, a car product can get rid of these "dangers" that cell phone cause, things will remain the same.
dam(U)
Useless sig.
When did cellphones gain sentience, let alone power to pass laws? And when did they become our masters, telling us where we can use our technology and where -- hang on, lemme get that...
It isn't the actual holding of the cellphones that causes the danger, it just increases it. There was an experiment conducted, where a professional obstacle course driver was asked to count from 1 to 100 while navigating the course, and wasn't able to do it. His driving ability decreased by as much as 90% from simply counting. Bluetooth advancing is good and well, but not at the price of another increase in car accidents. As if drunk teens weren't enough....
I bought an Ericsson T68i phone because of iSync and its connection to the phone via Bluetooth -- lets you also send SMS from the computer. Nothing sucks more about a cell phone than trying to use the keypad to enter phone book items. Plus the Ericsson T68 is pretty much a Palm killer with its Calendar and voice recorder.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
Gives a whole new meaning to war driving.
Pull up beside someone with a BlueTooth enabled phone and make a call.
I know in New York State, cell phones are banned while driving, however you ARE allowed to use a cell phone while driving if you have a hands free kit. Now, by their standards, anything with a headset is hands free, so the people who were already making bluetooth headsets get an added bonus, and no one is breaking any laws.
People try to do way too many things while driving. I have a bad habit of talking on the phone, as well as switching CDs. Driving is difficult b/c it can be so unpredictable, and people lose sight of that fact. Here's some articles on use of telematics while driving:
My company recently did a study on telematics use and driver/user attention, and it was pretty freaky how poorly people were able to attend to their main task while performing the secondary telematics task.
Todd
-- !todd erases a red dot! I steal music on the internet.
and now this! Anus holes.
it should just be a crime to drive inattentively or to create diversions for yourself.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The issue of cell phones in cars is somewhat serious. I know a couple people who have been involved in accidents because they were talking on their cell phones and didn't have time to react. A person who is holding their phone up to their ear is more occupied and so is less likely to be able to respond in a timely fashon.
Some form of headsets are a good idea. They require less attention to the phone and allow the driver to simply talk without worrying about holding the phone up. However, even those cheap $20 ones work just fine for this purpose.
Using bluetooth for this makes bluetooth seem like an answer searching for a question. Using bluetooth would just be using hype to sell super-expensive headsets. I think those cheap one will suffice.
Of course... I don't need any sort of headset. I am an excellent driver and I can concentrate on the road without a headset...
neurostarHow many of you have your kids quiet in the car while driving? How many of you don't like driving with passengers because... they are a distraction? ANYTHING that distracts you from the most immediate and important task - DRIVING - should, pardon the pun, take an immediate and complete back seat to anything but driving when you are on the road. Hundreds upon hundreds of accidents each year should drill that concept into you. It's no wonder I see more and more luxury-class vehicle accidents than I do even drunk driving incidents anymore. High speed and cellphones are the new alcohol intoxication of today's highways.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
has nobody heard of hands free headsets?
When a fellow talks on the phone while driving, even with a headset, the conversation still reduces his concentration to the level of a driver at the legal limit for alcohol intoxication.
Will I retire or break 10K?
We should note studies such as this one that show hands free cell phones also cause dangerous distractions while driving.
http://www.nsc.org/library/shelf/inincell.htm
"In sum, we found that conversing on either a hand-held or hands-free cell phone led to significant decrements in simulated driving performance. We suggest that the cellular phone use disrupts performance by diverting attention to an engaging cognitive context other than the one immediately associated with driving.
Our data suggest that legislative initiatives that restrict hand-held devices but permit hands-free devices are not likely to reduce interference from the phone conversation, because the interference is, in this case, due to central attentional processes."
I'm not exactly sure what options you have to have, or even if its out yet, etc (I think it is; should I be posting this? I'm sure its announced somewhere), but they have voice recognition for both dialing numbers and names. You have to program the names in and associate it with one of your memory slots. You activate by holding a button the steering wheel, which then prompts you, "Number please." It works pretty well, and with very little distraction from the road. All the hands-free stuff is built into the car.
They're investigating bluetooth mostly for the convienance that you don't even have to plug the phone into the car when you get in. Its in your briefcase? Thats fine! Of course, you still have to plug it in if you want your phone to charge (or, not discharge) while you drive. Not sure if it has the power to turn the phone on if its off.
(FYI -- the BMW systems relies on a specific Motorola phone (one of the StarNet varieties) which has support for their telephony functions. You can take the phone with you, but it needs to be plugged into the car system for it to integrate with the telephony functions. Also FYI, I have first hand experience with the system, and not by using some prototype at a car show, although I'm not sure if it was a final retail car, either. If it isnt release yet, I'm sure they'll have it out really soon. No idea when to expect bluetooth.)
The space unintentionally left unblank.
The risk from cell phones comes from the fact that you are talking: your mind is on the conversation, not the road. To really solve the problem, one would have to ban talking in cars. That could be... impractical.
Perhaps education would make a difference. There's a lot of seat-belt propaganda, but I haven't seen any "god damn it, pay attention!" propaganda. Too bad, really.
I swear I should go out with a video cam sometime. Would be fun to show around...
When you do that, Please have someone else do the driving.
Research indicates the problem with using a cell phone while driving is the distraction of conducting a phone conversation while also controlling a car, not the hands off the steering wheel. Drivers using a head-set experience the same increase in accident rate (to a level similar to driving drunk) as drivers using a cell-phone. See this legal discussion.
I haven't seen any "god damn it, pay attention!" propaganda.
There was this sort of, a while back. It was aimed at teenagers though, not cell phone users. It would start out like a typical commercial marketing to teenagers, a bunch of kids driving in a car goofing around, and then wham something would slam into them or they would slam into something. Really pretty unnerving because it was so unexpected.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Legislation banning the use of mobile phones in cars is spurring car manufactures to look for alternatives such as Bluetooth.
Gee...it's too bad their vision is sp clouded by dollar signs that they can't see what the customer *really* wants.
Why do people talk on cellphones? Because they want to be more productive...whether it's just chatting with a friend about whatever, or talking to the spouse about what to pick up at the store, or getting your ass chewed by the boss for missing a deadline...Cellphones are useful because they allow us to be productive during time when life is otherwise wasted.
Hold your screams for a minute.
I attend college around five hours from my hometown. Whenever me and my girlfriend decide we want to go home for the weekend, that 48 hour weekend is chopped down to 38 hours, since we lose 10 hours in travel time. That's time that I can't do anything useful with...study, read, play a game, nothing.
Perhaps automobile manufacturers should get past the marketing hype and actually market a feature that customers want and have been sociologically clamoring for the last decade - Self-driving cars. I would easily pay double the price of a current car model to get a car that drives without my assistance or attention. Think about how much time you lose in a year to driving. You could be working in the car on the way to the office and counting it as your work time. You could be spending time with your family while you're on the way to see the parents. You could be watching a movie while you're in the middle of a boring ten-hour drive to San Antonio or whatever.
This is a really stupid move on the part of car manufacturers, as it shows them trying to solve customer needs on the path of least resistance. I think they're approaching the problem from the wrong end, though. We have the technology to solve the problem...and with economies 'round the world in the crapper, this would be an *ideal* way to jumpstart the manufacturing sector. Self-driving cars would reduce insurance premiums, make roadways safer, and increase quality of life. How many people do you know that would instantly go out and buy a new car to get this wasted time back? I know I would...
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
While riding my bike I've been nearly hit twice by drivers talking on their cell phones and not concentrating on the road. But now if people use Bluetooth technology to transmit their voice to their cellphones instead of talking directly on the cellphone, I'll be perfectly safe!
What other loopholes will people try to get away with next?
Sorry officer, I didn't mean to go through that intersection and run over that biker, but according to my color sensor that street light had an RGB value of (253, 0, 0) so it wasn't fully red.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
The trouble with cell phone safety is not in the nature of the handset (or hands free set) it is in the conditioned response to phone calls. All this article seems to be pushing is another hands free approach to cell phones. This article http://http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1885775.stm reports that, "hands-free kits were almost as dangerous as hand-held phones."
n ews/2001/01/25/Consumers/cellphones_study010125 provides this quote on the issue
The point of this article is that, "Reaction and stopping times were much slower Talking on a mobile phone while driving is more dangerous than being over the legal alcohol limit, according to research."
This article http://http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/
"The bandwidth of the brain is actually quite limited," says Dr. John Vavrick, the research psychologist in charge of the study.
"Time sharing and multi-tasking does not come easily to the human brain."
The study used 41 drivers and gave each a series of tests to perform while answering questions through a speaker in the car.
Researchers found the driver's mental state was equally affected whether he or she was using a hands-free phone or not.
This is just a small sampling of the articles of the danger presented by using a cellphone while driving. The risk just isn't worth it, hang up and drive!.
For instance, in most places there are signs (and often laws) forbidding the use of radio transmitters near explosives. If there aren't, it's just common sense. But when a local high school had a bomb threat, all the teachers and reporters were running around the scene talking on their cellphones. A local cop tried to remind them that cellphones *are* radio transmitters, but for the most part the citizenry didn't understand why the rule should apply, because (after all) it's a phone, not a transmitter!
ok this is a U.K. law
what the law bans is holding onto a phone and driveing
you CAN use a HANDS FREE kit and drive
now tell me bluetooth does that connect hands free kit to your phone ?
misinformation is what makes the web useless
regards
John jones
ok basically you cant drive while holding onto your phone
simple
you can use handsfree kits to drive and talk and most handsfree kits will start useing bluetooth so this story is totally bogus
the nice thing about bluetooth is that you can have the handfree kit built into the car and all you have to do is carry the phone in the car and it attachs without any wires in a standard way
bogus stroy headline or what
regards
John jones
...when someone is successfully sued for a lot of money for causing an accident while yammering on the g.d. thing.
Using a cell phone while driving is akin to driving shit-faced drunk: there have been several experiments that have shown this.
You drive drunk and cause an accident, your ass is toast.
It won't be long 'til you drive chatting on the phone and cause an accident, your ass is toast.
And IMO, the sooner the better. Endanger yourself if you wish, but leave me out of it!
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
This seems like overkill when traditional, cheap, analog wireless would accomplish the same thing.
I have been through no less than 4 wired headsets on my StarTAC in the last year. The wire always wears out near the plug. No wires = no wires to wear out.
Intelligent Life on Earth
...try this.
Crank up your fave FPS or driving simulator. Get really into it. Mark down how soon you crash/get killed out.
Now call someone and try to have a meaningful talk on the hone with them while playing the same game. Now see how fast you get killed out.
Behind the wheel of your car, there is no "reset".
Is a direct performance comparison between
Drinking & Driving,
Talking & Driving, and
Elderly Driving.
I have no reason to believe that a person headed home after 2-3 beers at the bar is any more dangerous on the road than a guy blabbing on the phone. The main difference is that the drinker gets his face smeared in the dirt when he gets caught. Our society just learns to treat the drinker as the criminal more-so than the equally challenged Elderly driver or cell-phone user. Be honest with yourself. Who's really more dangerous behind the wheel?
In my opinion, what is really needed is some sort of GPS (or simliar) based autopilot feature. This is probably at least 10+ years away, but if used widely, I'd predict to see a 95+ % decrease in Fatalities, lower insurance rates, Reduced Commuting times, less maintainance costs (less stop & go driving), improved fuel economy/costs,
and less stress while traveling. There wouldn't be any reason to prevent people from using Cell phones, watching movies, surfing the web, or even cracking open a beer while traveling.
If everybody had a guidance system (one that communicates with other vehicles), there would no longer be a need for Stop signs, traffic lights, or maybe even street lights. Heck, it might even eliminate the need to own a vehicle - maybe you could "page" a nearby transporter to come pick you up right by the front door - not at the far side of the parking lot.
Somebody work on this. You've got at least one eager customer waiting.
Perhaps this will mean that I will be able to buy a cell phone that can talk to my PDA without needing all the conversion kit wires. That alone would be enough to get me to upgrade my phone itself.
it should just be a crime to drive inattentively or to create diversions for yourself.
It is in the UK at least. The offence is called 'Driving without due care and attention'. The laws against cellphones were necessary because it had become common practice before anyone had chance to object, and so the law was necessary to send people a clear message that this wasn't on.
As for the talking to passengers/hands free headsets issue, it's quite possible to hold a conversation when conditions are quiet. Then you would be driving with due care and attention, as long as you stop doing so when driving conditions change. It's all about balance and matching your behaviour to the situation. But fiddling about with a telephone handset is always going to be too great a distraction to be safe.
Some people are empty-headed buffoons (or bimbos) who will just say anything that comes into their head. Most of them can probably carry on a conversation while driving without any lessening of their already minimal driving skills, because they're not really thinking about what they're saying. The rest of us should make driving our first priority. Sure, all of us should, but those people will be bad drivers no matter what, and it'll look better in court if they were talking on the phone and you were just driving and minding your own business. If I'm going to get in an accident, I'd rather it's with a well-insured idiot than anything else.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is done at a lot of fraternities (with alcohol rather than cell phones) to remind the guys to give their brothers a call at the end of the night.
Or pull over slowly/at the next exit and call them back. Really, how many cell phones don't come with caller ID? No caller ID/blocked number, use voice mail. Like screening your calls at home, if they don't leave a message, was it really all that important to answer the phone in the first place? Probably not.
I agree entirely. You can probably safely pull over within 5 minutes - and how many calls are so urgent that they can't wait 5 minutes? Or what about this? Some button you can press on the phone which says "hold on, I'm driving at the moment and looking for somewhere to pull over safely..." Perhaps that could be a button on the steering wheel or something. You could even provide some feedback on how quickly you might do that. As in "pulling over now" or "this is going to be really tricky, why don't you leave a message and i'll call you back". My point is, some way you could make those responses without having to enter a conversation.
I'm reminded of the signs posted at the front of buses, "Do not speak to the driver while the bus is in motion."
Are laws against cell-phones in cars really so poorly worded that they can easily be gotten around by changing the method by which the signals are transmitted? Somebody needs to get bitchslapped.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I'm going to play devils advocate here. First off, millions of people use phones on the road without a problem. Second, it's become so engrained, no amount of policing action is going to make much of a difference. I do it, my mom does it, everyone does it. There's a difference between using a phone in 5pm rush hour traffic and at 10pm on a empty freeway. I see cops driving with phones on all the time here.
Given the above, it makes since to find ways to make this a little safer. Yes, you can't navigate a cone course and talk on the phone. I autoslalom and I doubt you could listen to the radio and do that. It makes sense that you might NOT use the phone in those situations, or tell the other party you have to stop talking for a second (or just stop).
Lawmakers can do what they want, it's not going to stop anyone. It would be impossible to tell someone is talking on the phone if they're on handsfree anyhow.
Laws and phones do not make up the primary problem: Lack of driver skill and attention to the road, and bad driving habits. Most people have no idea how to do basic emergency avoidance maneuvers, or drive vehicles which make those maneuvers life threatening or impossible.
..don't panic
Playing video games takes more concentration than driving
That mindset is why 40,000+ people die every year in the US from car crashes.
Believe it or not, there are still real communities in the US, it's not all suburbian wasteland. Of course, even the Chicago suburbs are served by Pace buses and the Metra (commuter rail). Fewer than half of my suburbian friends drive into town, most take the Metra, which is both faster than driving during rush hour and less stressful.
When I go back to my hometown (Springfield IL) to visit my family, which I do about six or seven times a year, I take Amtrak. Yeah, Amtrak is a pain sometimes, they are frequently late (mostly because of freight interference), but it's still a hell of alot better than driving. I usually spend the first hour of the three hour trip sleeping (Amtrak seats are quite comfortable, with alot of leg room), then get out my laptop and do whatever I feel like, maby just play nethack, but usually programming or tweaking the system, or I read or get something to eat in the dining car.
My point is that the whole "The US needs cars" thing is a bunch of bullshit. If this country would properly fund its public transit systems (and quit subsidizing those suburbian SUV drivers), we could have systems every bit as good as those in Europe. If we'd quit zoning to enforce sprawl (minimum setbacks and parking around stores, not allowing stores into residential areas (as an aside, the store from which I buy milk is a two minute walk from my apartment), minimum street width, etc) we could have real, living communities such as which now exist in a few isolated areas of cities like Chicago, New York, and San Francisco.
There's nothing intrisic about this country that says that it has to be an auto-suburbian wasteland, just people like the people in this thread who are too close-minded to think that there might be a better way to live.
Jordan Bettis
``Wherever you go, there's another stupid sigfile quote.''You've seen lots of deaths. Well, bully for you. But what's that got to do with the point that I was making?
Do you think that all dangerous siuations end up with death? Well, I don't. There are often moments during your average drive when you need to concentrate more than usual (busy traffic island, someone slamming on brakes in front of you etc), and a passenger in the car will often also be aware that this situation is occurring. They will quite possibly decide that this is not the best time to continue the conversation and will stop talking for a couple of seconds, helping you to concentrate, whereas a person on the other end of a phone will be far less likely to be aware of this situation, and will therefore probably continue talking, thus distracting you at a crucial point. What is flawed or skewed about that?