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."

Comments

The usual response

[IDontAgreeWithYou]

"But I can put my phone down, I can't stop being drunk." Except that people don't put the phone down, they crash.

Re:The usual response

[Nos.]

FTA:

• Just like many people who have been drinking, the cell phone users did not believe themselves to be affected, the researchers found.
• They studied 40 volunteers who used a driving simulator four times--while undistracted, using a handheld cell phone, using a hands-free cell phone and while intoxicated to a 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level
• Motorists who talked on either handheld or hands-free cell phones drove slightly more slowly, were 9 percent slower to hit the brakes, and varied their speed more than undistracted drivers.
• "Driving while talking on a cell phone is as bad as or maybe worse than driving drunk,"

Everytime this comes up, people always say that they use hands-free. That's not the point. This isn't about having two hands on the wheel. This is about paying attention to what you are doing. Talking on a phone is an added distraction. Its that simple. You can argue to what degree that distraction is, but you cannot deny that it is a distraction.

Then people always talk about how they can drop the phone, or stop the conversation if a situation that requires their complete attention arises. Ever think that situation may not have risen if you hadn't been on the phone in the first place?

Re:The usual response

[homer_ca]

It's different because a passenger is in the car. So either from watching the road or watching for non-verbal cues from the driver, he'll see when the driver needs to pay more attention to something and pause the conversation. Try having a conversation with a passenger who talks on and on with no regard to the driver or the road. It's much more distracting.

Re:The usual response

[ozmanjusri]

I think a salient point would be that those using a cell phone in the experiment were probably not allowed to choose to hang up

The guy who ran into the back of my car last month could have chosen to hang up at any time. He didn't hang up because he was concentrating on his phone call instead of noticing I was turning into a carpark 50 metres in front of him.

By the time he noticed there was an almost stationary car in front of him, he was less than 20m away and travelling too fast to stop. He may have tried to hang up at that point, but even if he didn't, the call would have been terminated when his phone hit the windscreen of his car and shattered.

He may have been more likely to run into a virtual car, but by choosing to be an arsehole and put other people's lives and property at risk, he ran into mine instead.

He'll be prosecuted, and doubtless fined, and his insurance will pay for repairs, but that won't give me back the week of walking around in pain from the bruised hip. It won't return my MGF to pristine condition. It'll always be an accident-damaged car, and will be worth less when I sell it.

I don't care how interesting his phone call was to him, he had no right to involve me in it, and that was the choice he made when he tried to operate a car and a phone at the same time.

Incomplete study...

[gasmonso]

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/

Re:Incomplete study...

[Wdi]

They pay low insurance rates *because* they have less accidents. Insurance companies make no gifts. They do math. Very precise mathon large sample sizes.

What about

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

multi-taskers

[Loconut1389]

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.

Re:multi-taskers

[cain]

...without even thinking about it, my mouth stops and I'm 100% tuned into the road

I call BS. How do you know there were not other times when you were oblivious to danger? You'd be oblivious so you would not even be aware that there was danger.

Well, they don't quite show that.

[Onan]

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_.

Re:Sure... .but

[quokkapox]

how bad is it when we talk to other people in the vehicle while driving?

It's a different thing entirely to converse with a passenger in the same car. There's a lower drain on your cognitive resources, the person next to you responds to the same environmental cues as you do, and will shut up and/or scream if you're heading for trouble.

An alert passenger in your front passenger seat improves your ability to drive safely, even if you're deep in conversation. It's another set of eyes watching the road. A remote voice on the other end of a cellphone has the opposite effect.

We always treat the symptoms not the problem....

[Lodragandraoidh]

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.