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Cellphone Drivers Drive Like Drunks
TDavid writes "A University of Utah study claims that drivers who use a cell phone will be 'more impaired than drunken drivers with blood alcohol levels exceeding 0.08.' The study also says that use will turn a driver who is age 20 into age 70. Hands-free systems apparently don't help much either as they still require a driver to 'actively be part of a conversation.' What about in vehicle systems like OnStar?"
Clicky.
The folks at El Reg had a question:
"Which means that a 70-year-old yakking away on his cellphone has the reaction times of a 120-year-old, or have we misunderstood this rather poor analogy?"
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Actually, OnStar provides outbound celphone like service, for an additional fee. It has the advantage of working damn near everywhere, even in cel dead spots. It has the disadvantage of being expensive.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Does this 0.08 "blood alcohol level" have any units?
Actually, most metropolitan bus systems have special handicapped busses with curbside pickup which the elderly can use.
The insurance companies base their rates off a statistical analysis which, frankly, trumps your anecdote.
Basically, the expected value of any person's insurance claims can be determined based on past results of others in the same group. This applies to people as a whole as well as different age groups and social group (e.g. many insurance companies offer discounts for proof of high grades). Note the grouping can't simply be arbitrary, as they need some characteristic to link you to that group in order for the analysis to have any meaning whatsoever.
The reson the insurance companiess offer lower prices is that people in those groups, tend to rack up fewer claims, based on the histories of other drivers in the same group. In the case of married types, it just happens that people who are married are less likely to file a claim and cost the insurance company money. Whether the driver is safer because of their greater responsibilty, or thery were responsible in the first place and that won them a mate, we can not say.
Actually, that's exactly what OnStar is -- a cell fone with a speakerfone. It just happens to be hooked into some sensors that tell it to fone home in "emergency" mode if certain sensors are triggered. But it has the capability to act as a normal cell fone, too. The minutes/service are just fantastically expensive, so you never hear about it.
(FWIW, Verizon is now offering OnStar coverage piggybacked onto a regular Verizon plan for an extra $10/month.)
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
I'm afraid he has the science behind him, not you. Go read the studies. Conversations over the phone degrade driving ability more than conversations with someone in the same car.
He made the assertion; it is his responsibility to provide data to support his assertion. He did not do so, and neither did you. I could tell you to go read the studies that confirm that humans descended from parakeets and it would carry as much weight as what you said.
This is a basic critical thinking concept: if you make an assertion, it is your job to provide evidence to back that assertion. Otherwise you are just expressing your opinion.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
But we've still got this handy section in the books:
Out here, all you need to do is hold up people behind you and you're fair game. I knew a guy that got cited for that when he was (stupidly) doing 50 on a 65 freeway.
I believe that is .08% which would be .0008
.0003 higher level than Belgium allows. But us Americans tend to hold out liquer better than you Belgiums.... ;)
Or
As far as having elderly people drive... my Grandmother is already at the point where I consider her a hazard to public safety, even though she's convinced that she's a good driver. My Aunts and Uncles are afraid to pressure her into quitting driving (they might make her MAD or something! the horror!). I told them that I would talk to her about it, because her independance is not worth the lives of the family that she might kill because she got distracted at the wrong time or couldn't react quickly enough in an emergency.
I've already told my own mother that I'm taking the keys away when she gets too old. If her reaction is any indication as to how it will go when I actually try, then I'm sure to be in for a fight on that one...
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
Download them for yourself,
http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/
and follow the references...
David Strayer has been kind enough to provide an index of papers and articles he's authored or co-authored on this subject (no few - while I would never suggest any kind of bias, he really seems to have it out for cellphones.):
_ 2001.pdf
http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/
From that index may I point out an item that appears to suggest that merely carry on a conversation even absent the mechanical problems associated with a cell phone/earbud etc. will cause impairment:
http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/ViV
This would seem to support the use of HOV lanes not as a reward for environmental sensitivity but as a safety measure for the rest of us singletons just trying to get to work in one piece; HOV need to be partitioned from the rest of traffic to protect us, heh. And what if the passenger is wearing a skimpy dress(!)while yaking about the absolute DEAL they got at Nordstroms.
Never mind the distraction factor from changing the radio station/CD, eating, makeup, picking nose, etc. Surely tasks that involve the motor regions would be even more troublesome than simply speaking...
In another item from the DoT, all autos will now be refitted with passenger gags.
I have done a little bit of reading into acoustics as it relates to various codecs and the mental processing involved in listening to audio that has been mangled in certain ways. It simply comes down to the fact that you must concentrate very hard to interpret a voice that has had all freqencies above 4kHz cut off, a notch cut out around 1.8kHz, and then had the resultant audio compressed down to something in the 5 to 13 kbps range (depending on the technology your phone uses).
Not only does it sound bad, but it taxes your brain much more than listening to a person sitting next to you. Based on earlier studies on handsfree mobile phone use, I've often joked that the codecs used in modern telephones are lethally bad.
They can if they don't need to pay to maintain a car, cover insurance, pay for gas... To be honest, I have no idea how much it would cost the canonical "old person" in the US to have essential supplies delivered. However, we ran the numbers for my granny when she hit seventy (in the UK, so petrol and insurance might be more expensive) and it worked out to be cheaper for her to pay for a taxi to and from the local supermarket once a week than to keep a car. More of a concern would be the psychological impact of increased isolation, unless they attend some kind of seniors' centre.
Wrong.
It has wider coverage because OnStar is AMPS-based, and the AMPS analog network is more widespread than the CDMA/GSM digital networks are.
However, OnStar will become CDMA based over the next couple years, wiping out that AMPS advantage.
(And yes, I know this for a fact, considering that the PCB layouts for OnStar MY06 are printed out in a folder next to my desk.)
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
I had an old guy slam the brakes to a FULL STOP in the MIDDLE lane of an Interstate (I-15 to be exact) because he missed his exit. This was 65-0 with tires locked up. I damn near rear-ended him and I had about 5 seconds between us. They car behined me almost hit me, etc.. It was damn near a chain-reaction accident. As it was, we had about 1/4 mile worth of cars backed up while he made a hard right to get on the off-ramp. I just about got out of my car to kick his ass for that one. Could have killed any number of people if everyone else on the road hadn't been paying attention.
Competency testing should be REQUIRED for ALL ages. I don't care if you're 16 or 90, if you can't drive safely, get the hell off the road! If we had cops watching more for this kind of shit and less sitting around eating donuts with thier radar on, perhaps the roads would get a little safer.
I don't know how serious you were being, but it's trivial to poke holes in that- what fraction of drivers are drunk? Far, far less than 35%, so they are massively overrepresented in accidents.
On the time scales involved in car accidents, the time spent hanging up or dropping your phone could easily make the difference between stopping a few inches short and a destroyed car/passengers. Someone who is being a menace to other drivers should be stopped before something bad happens, the same way that someone waving around a loaded gun in a populated area should be subdued and arrested even though he's "just" exercising his second amendment rights.