Slashdot Mirror
Cell Users As Bad As Drunk Drivers
An anonymous reader writes "News.com reports on a cell-phone use study which confirms that talking on your cell is as bad as being drunk, when it comes to driving skill. The researchers studied 40 volunteers in a driving simulator." From the article: "[The subjects were observed] while undistracted, using a handheld cell phone, using a hands-free cell phone and while intoxicated to a 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level--the average legal level of impairment in the United States--after drinking vodka and orange juice. Three study participants rear-ended the simulated car in front of them. All were talking on cell phones and none was drunk, the researchers said."
"But I can put my phone down, I can't stop being drunk." Except that people don't put the phone down, they crash.
Finding other idiots on
I would like to see a few more test groups added to this. How about the average pot smoking teenager, the girl putting makeup on, and my personal favorite that I saw recently... a woman brushing her teeth!
http://religiousfreaks.com/What about just having a passenger to talk to? what about screaming kids in the back seat? What about trying to fish that CD out from behind the seat so you can change your music? How drunk does doing these things make you drive?
talking on your cell is as bad as being drunk So lets propse another study... how bad is it when we talk to other people in the vehicle while driving? Is it same as talking on cellphone or not?
40 people? thats not that many.
its just as likely that they got the really good drivers drunk and all the shiat drivers were handed cell phones.
not that i doubt the conclusion, or anything. i hate cellphone-talking drivers. i'm just saying that 40 is kind of a small sample size for something being touted so much by the anti-cellphone-while-driving peoples.
some people are naturally adept multi-taskers- professional drivers (especially school bus drivers) are trained and in the regular practice of having extremely distracting activities going on and still being good drivers.
Personally, whenever I've been on the phone (not too often, I avoid it if possible) and something has gone on, without even thinking about it, my mouth stops and I'm 100% tuned into the road, I don't even notice I was talking to someone until things settle down. I'm used to having a bus full of drunk adults (bachelor parties) and rowdy kids.
I think they should test the subjects general multi-tasking ability and come up with a statistic that correlates multi-taskability (or inability) to accident+phone rates.
According to TFA, they compared phone users to drivers who were at the legal blood-alcohol limit, not those above it. So they have, at most, demonstrated that driving while using a phone is more dangerous than other driving that we consider legal. Obviously there's some level of drunkenness that would be more impairing than phone use; finding out where that point is would be considerably more interesting than what this study actually did examine.
I'd also love to hear more detail about the "hand-free" devices that they used for the test. Were these earpieces, or something more speakerphoneish? I seem to recall another study finding that the problem with driving while using a phone is not having your hands occupied, it's the mental isolation that happens as your brain divides resources between your conversational world and your driving world. And that earpieces did not change this, but that speakerphones _did_.
FTFA in your link
... you're an NBA player making millions of dollars a year ... buy a girlfriend!
he was watching pornography in a DVD player mounted on the dashboard of his Cadillac
he was masturbating himself going down that street.
Dude
Funny, in one sentence it says it will prevent you from calling anyone if you're drunk and in the next says you should call a cab if you're drunk. How does that work again?
and Taxi drivers...) and Pilots, for goodness sake...
On Radios?
There is a long history of mobile radio use; Is a cell phone different ?
If so Why?
Catch ya on the Flip-flop Good Buddy!
73
{dit dit}
SK
If three out of every 40 people who talked on cell phones were going to get in an accident, the highways would be a blood bath. A one in 14 chance of an accident? Come now. Nobody that spends a minute thinking about it is going to believe that.
Of course if they do, then they have to also look at the fact that 0. That's right 0 drunk drivers had an accident in the study. That means that the study proves drunk driving is perfectly safe right?
The problem is not cell phone use in and of itself causing crashes. That is just a symptom of a bigger problem: people are not trained to use cell phones properly while driving and usually don't have the correct equipment to do so.
When I was in the military I drove tracked vehicles while communicating on a radio net, and also talking on an internal intercom system with a TC and squad leader. Getting in an accident would have been far more catastrophic given the weight and size of the equipment I was operating.
Similarly, Pilots also have to communicate while controlling an expensive piece of equipment - and I've also done that.
In both cases I never had an accident. I can't imagine the military or aviation systems working without radio communications. Similarly the efficiency of using the Cell phone has provided amazing and equally important impacts to the civilian world.
The number one key is to have the right equipment for 'hands free' operation. For cell phones this means buying and using the voice-dial features available on most phones now, and getting a headset for hands free operation in your vehicle.
Secondly you must learn to modify your driving habits so that if the conversation moves to a point of needing to take your eyes off the road (e.g. to search for or record information), that you then pull off the road and carry on the conversation without impacting your driving ability. You should never manually dial a number into your phone while driving, and never attempt to write something down, or search for some item in your briefcase or purse, for that matter.
Banning the use of Cellphones in cars is not the solution; proper training and equipment is the right answer.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
After driving through a red light once and another time wondering wether I had even been looking at the traffic lights, I decided to throw out my handsfree set. It's just too dangerous.
-- Cheers!
...between talking on a cell phone versus talking to another passenger/eating/changing the radio station/etc. is that the cell phone mentally takes you somewhere outside of the car.
At clemson there is a driving simulator. I don't know the results, but we've done the same studies with the same results. Guess what: Don't drive with your cell phone. Hands free is just as bad. Don't do it. It's stupid. I do it anyway (erm..that is, when I don't think my advisor, who runs the simulator, will find out), but I try not to, and if things get even slightly dicey on the road I hang up immediately, unlike some people.
Don't do it, it isn't smart. It could cost you your life, and unlike driving drunk, where you tend to be unhurt due to being relaxed, you are actually more likely to be hurt.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
You obviously missed the point of the MythBusters episode. On the particular episode of MythBusters in question, they had the participants of the study perform complex mathematical, logic, and assorted other "brain work-out" type excersizes. They weren't just talking about how the weather was, or what mood they were in. The point I am trying to make here, it has nothing to do with whether or not you are using a hands free speakerphone, or a headset. Its whats going on in your brain. You aren't focussing on driving, you are focussing on the conversation. This is where things become dangerous. Driving a car requires constant vigilance to make sure you don't run into anything. Atleast when people drive drunk they attempt to pay attention to the road, which is more than can be said for the 1/2 dozen people that almost run into me each day, chatting on their stupid cellphones.
Oh I don't disagree, it is just that most "scientific studies" should apear right after the Mythbusters (in the next time slot) and be labeled "comedy".
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
They concluded that it didn't matter if you used a hands-free phone, or a hand-held phone, that it was simply the distraction that was causing the problems. As has been noted in this forum there are lots of other potential distractions: putting on make-up or shaving in the rear view mirror (I've seen both); fooling with the radio or CD player; looking at a map or reading your Google, MapQuest, Yahoo, Rand McNally, driving directions; talking to someone else in the car; turning around to see the status of your child in the back seat; looking at other stuff outside your vehicle; lots of other stuff.
Before we go outlawing cell phone use while driving, some real studies should be done to see if we should outlaw our wives (or husbands) talking to us while we are driving, or to see if CD players should be outlawed, or ... you get the idea.
Oh yeah, I'm sure that the conclusions of this study only apply to everyone else, but not *you*...
remember this?
might be a bit before some current Slashdotters time...
given how much more common people yapping on their cell phones appears even than drunk driving, I'd say we do have a problem here. I am not anxiously awaiting a teenager drilling into me because they were too busy on their cell phone to pay attention to the road. I fear what they may do when I'm on my bicycle. But that's part of the challenge, and the thrill when you survive it.
-- haaz.
I think you're correct, to a point. Hands-free is good. Yes, I think one should have it. And, yes, you should pull off the road if the conversation moves to that off-topic point.
May I suggest that the reason pilots and heavy-equipment movers such as yourself have little-to-no trouble is because a lot of the conversation is about the trip? Granted, not all of the conversation is about the trip, but much of it is. Pilots communicate airspeed and altitude, for instance. Also, in many of those cases, there is a passenger who keeps a second-set of eyes on the road. In the air, some of the conversation between pilot and co-pilot are directly related to the aircraft and trip. Indeed, as I'm sure you know, there are strict regulations regarding the type of conversation that can happen during the critical phases of a flight.
Nothing really stops a professional from having a cellphone conversation with their friend about what Barbara really meant when she said, "just friends," but most professionals just don't. They know it's a bad idea. That's training, as you say, but it would have to come down to teaching regular drivers about cellphone responsibility and enforcing that responsibility and then there's also that point of personal accountability.
As a professional, you know the real danger that awaits you if you lose the shipment or crash the airplane. You are directly responsible to someone in a very real and personally-damaging way if you screw up. Regular folks? They just don't feel that accountable, it seems to me. And when they tap someone's bumper hard -- which happens often, and a cop WOULD stop both parties had he seen the bump, even though there is no physical damage -- they both shrug and move along.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.