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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
how about the idiots trying to use wireless email behind the wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Get your torrents...
Just like many people who have been drinking, the cell phone users did not believe themselves to be affected, the researchers found.
... I wasn't really talking on the phone ... I just hold it by my head to keep warm.
Honestly officer
What about drunk dialing someone from your cell phone?
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
This was already on MythBusters...
Ryan - http://www.thecosmotron.com/
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 drunk drivers who are also on their cellphones?
Hmm..
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
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?
not nearly as bad as this dude tho.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
You mean I might have a chance with the hot babe at the party whose sober but chatting on her cell phone?
Mythbusters all READY did the study, only they didn't get a grant to waste doing it...
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
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.
Are you implying that wardriving from the driver's seat is unsafe?
Im not going to say that cell phones dont cause distractions while driving. But where is the line of concern drawn? I need to take my eyes of the road in order to change my CDs or the radio station. Or how about the nice people with stereo systems so loud it shakes the windows of your house. There is a small noise ordinance rule for that, but nothing major. Girls putting on make up, combing hair, getting ready, etc. Its unfair to just point out cell phone users and accidents. A line needs to be drawn somewhere if you are going to make that argument.
One night years ago when I lived south of Houston, I was driving over to a fast food place to get something to take home for supper.
There was a van in front of me that was driving all over the road. It almost went into the ditch on each side of the road at least once.
When we go to a four lane highway, the van spent part of the time taking up both lanes going our direction and some of the time in the oncoming lanes.
I was surprised to see the van turn in ahead of me at the fast food joint and pull up to the drive through.
Being the nice guy/asshole that I am, I thought I'd do a good deed and suggest that the driver wait for someone sober to drive him home. I stood about 5 feet from the window when I made my suggestion.
It turned out to be a woman who had the foulest mouth of any woman I ever met. She was screaming unbelievably loud that she wasn't drunk, that she was only using her cell phone, and that how she drove was her business and noone elses.
So I got back in my car.
When I finally got around front, everyone inside was laughing. I guess everyone in the place, employee and customer alike, heard her tirade over the speaker system.
I told a local cop about it later. He wasn't amused at all about it.
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_.
you are really asking for trouble!
"Yeah, babe, I've been thinking about you"
"Noooo, I haven't been drinking! I'm close to your place, can I come over? I miss you..."
Never ends well.
Ignore anything I said above, I actually agree with everything you believe - mod accordingly.
Bliss.
Aside from the quiet (and, oh say, not driving like a drunk), you're able to keep your job from interfering from your life (boss can't call you anytime, anywhere), and keep your life from interfering with your work (yeah, honey, it's terrible that that dog yukked up all over the new carpet, but I'm under a deadline here!). You can walk down the road and -even if you do suddenly remember something "important" (in quotes because it usually isn't), there's nothing you can do about it until you get home. So you relax and put aside your worries for a bit.
There are some advantages to being connected all the time, but I think the disadvantages outweigh them tremendously.
Drop the phone. Live your life on your own time.
I think I've heard about a similar report where driving with and without handsfree was compared. The conclusion was that it's not the fact that your holding a phone thats the biggest issue. It's the fact that you're concentrating on something else than driving that causes reactions to take longer.
Zere vere zwei peanuts valking down der Straße, and von vas assaulted...peanut
I'm hoping they do a study of this next, so they will have scientific data to back up law against wives nagging their husbands while driving. On the other hand, I know I would make a lot more road trips if such a law existed, so it might not be good for traffic and the environment. :)
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
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?
1. Find rich person driving expensive car talking on cellphone.
2. Pull in front, slow down, encourage tailgating, then brake suddenly.
3. ????
4. Profit!
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Talking on the phone while driving is bad driving.
There's been research round for a few years now that talking to someone on the phone to take their eyes and attention off the road as they think and respond to the person talking. It's worse than talking to someone in the passenger seat or listening to the radio because you are required to respond to someone who has no idea what situation you're in.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1885775.stm
Deleted
So the researchers at the University of Utah determined that using your phone is worse than having a BAC of 0.08, the equivalent of one drink, not the equivalent of being drunk. How does the rubric stand up to two drinks? Four? As it is, the data don't suggest much. And don't be fooled by the "alcohol is involved in 40 percent of the 42,000 annual traffic fatalities" statistic, either. Most states derive that number from whenever any party, regardless of fault, has a BAC of 0.01 or more. In other words, you could eat a cherry cordial and a sober person could plow right through you and the state would consider your death an alcohol-related traffic fatality.
US fatalities, per 100 million vehicle miles, have fallen steadily ever since cell phones started becoming common. According to this table, the rate has fallen from 1.73 in 1994 to 1.44 in 2004, and the rate either fell or stayed the same every year (despite economic variations, etc.).
If cell phones are such a menace, why aren't more people dying in auto accidents?
Have you read my blog lately?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(season_2 )#Cell_Phones_vs._Drunk_Driving
Adam and Kari drove normally, then while talking on a cell phone and also while drunk. They had officers taking breathalyzer tests to get their BAC. In the show they determined that they where equally bad at driving using a cell phone as they where while drunk. Scores where done by a driving instructor in the car with them during all the tests.
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)
The only thing that this study "proves" is that the test they used doesn't appear to be a valid measure of accident avoidance.
Over the past fifteen years, cellphone use while driving has increased from nonexistent to ubiquitous. During the same period, the fatality rates and accident rates per passenger mile have fallen to historic lows. Road design, increased use of seat belts, and an apparent reduction in drunk driving have all contributed. (see NHTSA statistics for details)
If cellphone use made any significant difference, you would see the effect in the numbers. There are just too many cellphone users for it to be hidden. If cellphone users really were as bad as drunk drivers, there would be blood in the gutters.
This is not to say that cellphone users are good drivers, or that you're not a better driver if you're not talking on the phone. I'm just pointing out the obvious, which is that driving is a low-risk activity with a large margin for error, and talking on a cellphone, or talking to your passenger, or yelling at your kids, or the million other distractions that drivers endure every day, aren't by themselves enough to use up all that margin.
They probably do statistically increase the chance of an accident, but by the clear and obvious real-world numbers, the degree of increase (or even the fact of increase) is small and quite hard to measure.
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.
One day a few years ago I was crusing down I-70 outside of Denver going eastbound in the left most lane, I was doing around 70MPH early in the morning. A guy in a Geo Metro, or some other ultra-small, car *passes me* in the middle lane, playing no less than a goddamned recorder! You know, the flute like thing with holes that you cover with your finger--the plastic thing they let 2nd graders blow on and make a cacophony? Bingo. He was playing the recorder and driving with his knees. He even had a piece of sheet music propped up on the steering column. No shit.
We could take all of the stories about women doing their makeup, guys shaving, and all that sort of stuff, and combine them... But it'll still never be as good as my story. Seriously, the only thing that can beat it is if someone spots a musical driver playing an oboe, a sax, a chello, a trumpet, a tuba or a trombone, snare drum or some other instrument that is larger than a stupid recorder...
I'd be most impressed if someone spotted a tympani player, like on a bus or something.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
"vodka and orange juice," indeed! that's the control group for using a ham radio in contact with borneo while driving.
;)
cell phone drivers' control group should be beer drinkers.
I sorta got to prefer mai tais a year ago, I hate to think what study that would put me into
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
There was a successful AHS demonstration I believe in the 1930's, and most recently a successful demonstration in 1998. (another report)
Congress thought the successful experiment was kind of neat, but shut it down, basically saying: "Nobody's really asking for this. People seem to be pretty excited about driving, actually." (paraphrasing.)
Businesses have wanted AHS for a very long time- for many decades, they've been working on the technology, and trying to get it sorted out. (Think: highway trucking.)
What's this have to do with Cell Phones?
People are starting to value their time more. In particular, they're starting to view that car trip as useable time. Whether people really do have access to that time or not, people are taking that time, by force, with their cell phone. And the result is: crashes, accidents.
So this may be a data point towards AHS.
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*...
I know I do! I've got two dents in my front license plates from one!
><));>
A couple of years ago I read some medical research stating the part of the brain used to speak is the exactly the *same* part of the brain we use to think. Unfortunately, that part of the brain does not do both at the same time. In short, thinking and talking are mutually exclusive temporally.
When speaking, you pause sometimes. Why? To think. Ever do any *good* dictation? It is hard (impossible?). Multiple teenagers in a car at the same time is not always a good idea and you can see why. Also, hands-off equipment is a Feel Good solution, but effective? No.
I saw this study 3-5 years ago and failed to keep a copy. If anyone knows of it and can provide a reference, it would be appreciated. Thanks.
You can have fun with this too. Whenever you see a person in continuous talk mode, you *know* they are not thinking. ...and that includes Politicians. ;-)
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I disagree. It's not so much the equipment and training, but the content and length of the discussion.
If you exchange only military-style, short informational messages by cell phone the impact on your driving would probably not that big. However, listening to your friend complaining about his boss for like 30 minutes is going to be a problem. Not only will you encounter some situations that require undiverted attention to the situation on the road, but simple 'X, where are you now? Over' - 'I'm in Y. Over' conversations do not require as much attention.
I am a professional criminologist, and I can tell you that the decision to make 0.08 the legal limit was not determined by any scientific research, it was determined by politicians seeking reelection by seeing who could better protect the public from the dangers of crime. In the instance of drunken driving, they rely on unsound measures, such as lowering the blood alcohol levels to absurdly low points rather than actually since it is a test that is easy to administer and hard to contest in court rather than trying to actually determine whether a person is actually to drunk to drive a vehicle. 0.08 is usually not even two beers for the average person.
Some people's bodies can withstand a very high blood alcohol level before anyone would guess they are drunk, while a single beer would cause others to passout. The idea that some breathalyzer test can determine drunkeness is more a convience than a fact.
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.