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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
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?
You mean I might have a chance with the hot babe at the party whose sober but chatting on her cell phone?
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.
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
If you look at the study methodology, it's quite large enough. They didn't divide it up into several smaller groups, they tested each participant under four different conditions: undistracted, talking on a hand-held phone, talking on a hands-free phone, and drunk.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
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?
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?
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.
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.
That table does only looks at total fatal crashes. There is no data on the total number of automobile accidents. I suspect that more people aren't dying in automobile accidents because automobiles are safer overall. Cell phones started becoming more common in 1994, but so did SUVs. Those bigger vechicles are less likely to cause fatalities to their occupants (although not necessarily their victims).
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