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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?"
If it is a proven scientific fact that old people drive like they are drunk, why are they allowd to drive?
adventure-today.com
Driving while talking on the cell I almost ran a red light.....
I'm usually a very good driver. On the cell phone though.... Ok... From now on, no more talking and driving.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
... how people can say that handsfree systems don't help. If it's just having a conversation that impairs your driving, are we supposed to not speak with fellow passengers either? Maybe we should make it a law to have soundproof opaque padding between all vehicle compartments.
You're responsible for everything you do behind the wheel. We can't just outlaw everything that could possibly be a distraction while driving. If you smash into someone because you were talking on a cell phone, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE and will be punished accordingly. If you smash into someone because you were eating a burrito, it's the same thing. Can't outlaw burritos (yet).
My point is, reckless driving is an arrestable and punishable offense. If cell phone use is causing someone to drive recklessly, they should and will be punished, whether it's due to cell phone use or anythign else. This war against cell phones is just useless and silly.
Then what is the difference between talking to someone in your car, and talking to someone on a hands free headset
Nothing.
However, there is a big difference for individuals using a handheld phone. They are not capable of operationng the car correctly. Whther they are releasing the wheel to shift or not bothering with turn signals, they are impaired. The trouble comes because it is a sustained distraction too. Using a had to tune the radio take seconds. Phone calls can take minutes. Therein lies the dangers.
Further, the act of dialing a phone while driving is a major distraction. Some phones have voice activation, but many do not. This has led to many accidents. Where I live people drive 120km/h on the highway and the time to react is slim at best. Some dolt dialling a phone is just as bad as an old man with slow reaction times.
..that the use of cell phones while driving should not be outlawed. From TFA:
...elderly drivers using a cell phone aren't any more of a hazard to themselves and others than young drivers... more experience and a tendency to take fewer risks helped negate any additional danger.
when 18- to-25-year-olds were placed in a driving simulator and talked on a cellular phone, they reacted to brake lights from a car in front of them as slowly as 65- to 74-year-olds who were not using a cell phone.
If these elderly people are allowed to drive with these reaction times, then young people using cell phones should be allowed to drive if they have equal reaction times. Also from TFA:
So elderly drivers should be allowed to use cell phones as well.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
I have always maintained that handsfree doesn't do squat... it's the split mental attention and not having both hands on the wheel.
Try this easy test... during the superbowl, call someone up on your phone (with headset or without, doesn't matter). During the conversation, after every play, write down the number of yards gained/lost and the number on the jersey of the player that gained/lost them. You'll probably experience "slave can't serve two masters" syndrome and have to dedicate more attention to one or the other, either by having to say "hold on" or "um, what was that?" to whoever you are talking to or missing play stats to keep up with the conversation. Unfortunately, priority in a car most often goes to the conversation.
When you talk with a live person in the car, you're getting a lot more input from your senses. Our minds (and probably brains and other organs) are evolved to interact with a live person, while doing other things simultaneously (cooperative work). Talking on the phone is an abstract activity, and further occupies many of the higher functions, like imagination, that driving also requires. So it's easier to concentrate on driving, while also talking to a live person, than while talking on the phone.
;). Then we can get some real insights into this problem that daily threatens lives and wellbeing on our roads.
BUT, even talking to a live in-car person in the car is more distracting than driving alone. Driving isn't that hard 99% of the time, but the very hard 1% is usually totally unpredictable. Even while distracted by the passenger, we can usually drive well enough. So we need to get some real data on the driving ability alone, with a person, on a handsfree, holding a phone, and while drunk (and maybe while 70 years old
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make install -not war
0.08 = 8 procent .5 promille = legal limit in Belgium if I recall correctly
:)
0.0005 =
8 procent is quite sufficient to kill a person, so I guess they mean cell phone drivers drive worse than dead people
You know? I've always wondered about that...especially growing up in the highest insurance category (young male, unmarried, 2 seat sports car)...I'd ride with women, and be scared to death by the time I got out of the car...they drove faster and more recklessly than I did...and I drove pretty fast....but, they'd take chances turning sharp and in front of people I'd never try...
That, and I've never figured why they drop your rates if you get married. Frankly, the ones I see are so pissed when they leave they house, they floor it to get away as fast as possible...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
"This supports the suggestion by Storie (1977) that men are more at risk from accidents involving high speed while women are at more likely to be involved in accidents resulting from perceptual judgement errors."
Social Research Centre Study
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Each driver demonstrates differing levels of proficency -- some can function talking on the phone while using their GPS while others can't chew gum at the same time. Why enforce a lowest-common denominator across all drivers? There should be tighter skill tests as there are already too many people who shouldn't be driving at all anyway.
Let it be a meritocracy -- if you can do something, then prove you can and receive an endorsement for it.
The difference between talking to someone in the seat next to you and talking to someone on the cell phone is that when you're talking to someone on the cellphone, you're only partly in the car.
There were two expressions that used to be popular to get across the idea of cyberspace. One was "Cyberspace is where your money is right now." The other was "Cyberspace is where you are when you're on the phone." This latter expression is really true. When you're on the phone, at least for any mildly involving conversation, you aren't fully psychologically present. This is why it seems feels so wrong/rude when people in company talk on cellphones. They are making themselves partially absent. Their mind is on the conversation, not on what their eyes are seeing.
I prefer it if a driver's mind is in the car with their body.
Strayer, D. L., & Johnston, W. A. (2001). Driven to distraction: Dual-task studies of simulated driving and conversing on a cellular telophone. Psychological Science, 12(6), 462-466.
Strayer, D. L., Drews, F. A., & Johnston, W. A. (2003). Cell phone-induced failures of visual attention during simulated driving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 9(1), 23-32.
These papers are generally accepted as showing that talking on a cell phone (hands-free or not) decreases driving ability, and that conversing with an occupant does not have nearly the same impact. I should note that I believe that there are major flaws in both studies.
G
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you get legal advice on the web, you're not fit to drive with or without a cellphone.
.08 BAL.
.10. Very few of the people that were near that level were initially pulled over for the DUI, but instead for other offenses--the intoxication is noted due to attitude, slow response, fumbling for the registration, and the like.
.20 range, suggesting that the officers wouldn't have the cues to pull these folks over in the first place.
The phrasing of the results suggested that the impairment is only slightly more than a
While I was handling DUI cases, the BAL was
The weavers that are pulled over for DUI are in the
hawk, esq.
I remember this study, can't find a link, 4 years ago or so in Europe, that showed that the "mobile phone-talking will lead to death and destruction. TM" idea is very overrated.
Out of several hundred serious car crashes that occured due to distractions (not lack of sleep, drugs, alco, suicide, overall fucked up skills, weather etc.) ~60% were caused by talking to the other passangers, ~25% from car stereo fiddling, and 10-20% from other reasons like trying to find something in the car etc. Only 1% of the distraction-related accident were related to mobile phones. And remember that that distraction-related accidents only caused 20%(? cant remember the exact figure) of the serious (in terms of body damage) traffic accidents.
I wish the government, a well as the public and jounalists, would just stop foucusing on something that casues so few accidents in the first place.
My personal teory is that it's technology fear combined with the recent introduction of mobile phones that creates all these stories about how dangerous this new driving while talking is.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
1. A children, or a group of children misbehaving is many more times distracting than a simple phone conversation. How do you stop the distraction then?
2. True, but I like to ignore people in my car, prefering the sounds of screams and terror as they react to my fast driving.
3. What happens to AM Talk radio shows? Pretty active conversation to concentrate on to keep on topic.
Why can't we say those drivers simply suck? I bet the same drivers would have problem without any distractions. To be thorough, they should run tests with cell phones and race car drivers like Michael Schumacher.
Live forever, or die trying.
Agreed, though, that most people would be long dead.
Actually, the NY subways started out as private companies. The city took them over when they went bankrupt. The state re-organized NYCTA into MTA when the city was unable to fund them by itself.
In addition to fares, the system gets funds from a percentage of certain bridge tolls and some state/city general revenue.
...carrier dead.....
When we began this discussion several years ago, It was supposed that distracted driving caused a significant proportion of deaths on the road, but that the exact proportion of deaths was unknown due perhaps to people being embarassed about the cause. Later on, the AAA listed the causes of distracted driving in an unrelated study. Number 7 on the list was cellphone usage. Number 1 on the list was eating while driving. No correlation of the two lists can really be made since the AAA study did not look at accidents and the accident studies did not go into details about the specific distraction, but some in the media harped on it and got cellphones banned in cars in a number of states.
Interestingly, although food was at the top of the list, no one talked about it. As if the supposed much greater risk of food consumption while driving is actually a necessary and acceptable risk while cellphone use is not. Could this be an example of luddites and safety nazis coming together to cause us all inconvenience? I don't know. I do know that we should look at eliminating or specifically accepting behaviors which account for the greatest proportion of accidents/deaths first and later move on to the lesser causes. (or attack a bunch of causes at once, but never go after the lesser problems first and let the greater problems fester and kill and maim)
This is related to the discussion about banning cellphones in airplanes. Originally, the FAA regulations allowed airlines to ban RF-emitting devices in cabins as anything emitting RF could potentially cause problems with avionics and result in crashed planes. Rather than put thought into what devices could be problematic, the airlines just banned everything and didn't think about it. cut to today: apparantly, and according to the airlines so i have no idea how it works, cell phones have been determined to not really be a problem. They are now looking into allowing cellphone usage during flights. The discussion has evolved into the social question of whether people talking on cellphones durnig flight would be acceptable. Apparantly the extra noise is offensive to people.
People, relax. Cell phones are not cigarettes. There is no evidence that their usage is harmful to persons nearby and scant evidence that their usage might be harmful to users. Just because it's the snobby thing to do to look down your nose at cellphone users doesn't mean we should ban them from every aspect of our lives by legislation. (hmm, maybe they are like cigarettes. That's another rant altogether.)
Availability of family makes a HUGE difference. My mom never got a car because we used to live close to decent shopping, and by the time most of the shops closed, I had a car. I live about 5 minutes from her and drive her where she needs to go. If I wasn't nearby, it would be a lot harder for her to get by without a car.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Dangerous drivers--be they drunk, elderly, or just distracted by their phones--should all be off the streets. I don't see any reason to privilege one group of dangerous drivers over another. The fact that drunk and dangerous elderly drivers still seem to be on the road doesn't support the notion that other dangerous drivers should be ignored.
Simply put...I see tons of people driving on the cell phones - and driving fine. Sometimes a momentary reaction issue...yes. But when I see a drunk driver they are all over 2 or three lanes. They nearly hit everyone. They often run off the road. Somehow it is hard for me to accept that I can see a 100+ cell phone users who are supposedly "more impaired" and they don't perform as poorly as drunk drivers.
As another poster has already asked--how do you know that you didn't pass hundreds of drunk drivers who were staying in their lanes, driving along, but with much slower reaction times? Unless they're actually holding up flasks, you can't measure blood alcohol remotely. As a frequent pedestrian in a large city, I will gladly submit my own (subjective and anecdotal) opinion that drivers on cell phones are less aware of their surroundings.
And I am sorry....a cell phone user is NOT more impaired than a drunk driver. It is political BS. I refuse to buy it and no statistic will prove it to me.
And I am sorry...tobacco use is NOT more likely to kill me than the local nuclear plant. It is political BS. I refuse to buy it and no statistic will prove it to me.
Seriously--people are really bad at assessing risks. This is the type of question that statistics are designed for. Relative risks, odds ratios, confidence intervals. Feel free to provide specific criticism of the study methodology, and note where errors or biases may have been introduced. Don't try to tell me that anecdotal evidence is inherently more reliable for risk assessment than large-scale statistical analysis.
"The numbers....come down to milliseconds"
If you pull the study (it's online here in PDF format) then the total difference is reaction time is on average 130 ms, or about 12 feet at 60 mph (3.5 m at 100 km/h).
The key? is to know if you can multi-task or not. If you can't multi-task than DON'T USE A CELL PHONE AND DRIVE AT THE SAME TIME unless it's an emergency. A little common sense, and a little less stupidity will bring the human race a long way!
The problem is that people tend to be very poor judges of their own abilities. Ask anybody--they will tell you that they are an above average driver, but that there sure are a lot of idiots out on the road. People don't notice their own bad habits, unless and until they actually hit somebody. That's the whole point of a distraction--it means that you don't notice when you're making mistakes. I'm not saying that the parent poster is a bad driver, but that I don't trust people in general to be able to make that assessment.
~Idarubicin
If you're driving along, talking to a person sitting next to you, and get distracted, the passenger has the ability to say "Whoah! Look out, before you hit that guy!"
If you are talking to that person on your cell phone, the other talker has no visual feedback, and therefore no way to help you avoid being road-kill.
IMHO, that is a bigger part of why people on cell phones drive worse. If it was the talking part, than EVERYONE talking in their car would be flying off the road.
Am I fundamentally wrong?
Lets just ban having any passengers in the vehicle too as they also require me to be 'part of a conversation'. Also - we need to ban stereos in cars too, as they are going to take your attention away too.
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aphex
I Steal Music!
I'm a little dubious of this finding because even though cell phone use has increased dramatically, actual accidents and injuries have fallen over the same period.
Since drunk driving is a major driver of accidents, IIRC something like 50%, it would seem that anything that had the same effect as drunk driving would drive up accident rates significantly. Especially, since a far higher percentage of population drives and talks than ever drive drunk.
I think it this study, or at least the summary of it, exaggerates the danger.
carry a flyswatter in the front seat.. so you don't have to reach so far to swat the screaming kids.. trust me you only have to do this once.. (i'm not a kid but i used to be one)
Suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad