Slashdot Mirror
Driving While Distracted More Dangerous Than Supposed
Science News reports on recent research indicating that any kind of multitasking while driving is dangerous. Not just the obvious distraction of juggling a cell phone, but even talking to a passenger or listening to a book on tape. The researchers used a driving simulator inside an MRI machine to measure brain activations. "Attending to what someone says galvanizes language-related brain areas while simultaneously reducing activity in spatial regions that coordinate driving behavior. This finding suggests that people who combine relatively automatic tasks, such as speech comprehension and car driving, exceed a biological limit on the amount of systematic brain activity they can accommodate at one time, the researchers propose. As a result, the less-ingrained skill — in this case, driving, which is learned long after a person grasps a native language — takes a neural hit."
Ya know, if I had my stupid "drives itself" car already, this would NOT be a problem. Lives would probably be saved. Cmon DARPA, you've figured out more complicated things than this!!
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
"There is a massive difference between a sensible alert driver and someone driving with one hand."
Yes. It's like the difference between apples and night.
I call them a hypocrite because I have yet to meet one single person who complains about cell phones, but does not do things like fiddle with the stereo, carry on conversations with passengers, or day dream about the rest of their day. Heck, even your example of people driving stick shifts shows hypocrisy. Trying to turn corners with one hand while fiddling with the gear shifter is easily as dangerous as a phone. Of course, we don't hear an outcry about manual transmissions, do we?
I've come to the conclusion that you're not a pilot, you're a horses arse.
I said:
Why then do they teach stall recovery and unusual attitudes in a specialized aerobatic course?
You countered with paragraphs about how they teach stall recovery as part of the PPL training. I never said that basic stall recovery wasn't taught as part of the PPL you jackass. You state that I said this though I never did. I said that stall recovery and unusual attitudes were taught in a specialized course. You know perfectly well that there are such specialized courses, and that they go way beyond PPL theory or prac takes you.
Lets see what I actually said vs what you say I said:
- Stall recovery is only taught in specialized aerobatic courses
- Unusual attitude recovery is only taught in specialized aerobatic courses
No I said stall recovery and unsual attitudes is taught in specialized aerobatic courses. This is true. Those courses go much further than PPL training.
- Light aircraft land at the same speed as the maximum speed limit on a typical highway
I distinctly remember using the word comparable, and this is true for the most common aircraft. It is more usual for an aircraft to land around 60KIAS than it is around 30KIAS, yet you insist on bringing the less common aircraft into it.
- Typical takeoff angle of attack causes the nose of the aircraft to completely obscure the flight path
No I said that it can obstruct the aircraft's flight path and this is true. I made no mention of the word 'completely'.
- Avoiding terrain, avoiding restricted airspace, and maintaining altitude requires constant, twitchy attention similar to avoiding maniac drivers on a highway
No, that's your own little straw man you're creating. I said no such thing. What I did say is that there is terrain to clear and that your implying that there's nothing to avoid most of the time while flying is not true.
Then you have the gaul to lecture me about reading a comprehension and mock me about not being up to it. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. I'm not wasting my time arguing with an arrogant idiot who thinks twisting other people's words and shooting down straw men amounts to proving them wrong. Go fly a kite.
If the very basic statement that I'm wrong about is that driving requires more raw physical reaction and short-term attention than flying, well I'm sorry but it's simply true. If you still don't believe me, maybe you'll remember this famous quote:
Maybe the way you fucking fly. You're suppose to be maintaining a scan of your primary instruments and you're suppose to be watching out for other traffic. If you don't do that, that makes you a lousy pilot because problems can occur at any time, not just on takeoff and landing.
"Flying is hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror." -- Pappy Boyington
No, flying with you would be sheer terror all the way because your attitude stinks.
I never said that you're not qualified to comment on flight because you're not a pilot. The reason you're not qualified to comment is because you don't know what you're talking about.
What a bunch of bullshit. Do I need to quote back your repeated challenges to me to produce my qualifications? You may or may not be a pilot but you've established you're a dishonest troll that goes back on what you've said.
Bah, enough of this. I'm talking to an infant.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Why not? Plenty of "normal" aircraft, such as most models of the Cessna 172, are fully certified for spins. It's not a particularly difficult or stressful maneuver. It was taught as part of the basic private pilot cirriculum for decades until the FAA decided to switch to "spin awareness" instead of real spins as part of a misguided attempt at safety.
Of course, now you not only know better than me, you know better than the FAA.
I'd really like to know what you've read or done which causes you to have this opinion, because it doesn't square with reality at all.
Mostly documentation about spin recovery no longer being done as part of the PPL for safety reasons. Exactly what you've dismissed above.
We were talking about visibility problems caused by the nose of the airplane, remember? You don't get hazy, foggy, or partially transparent aircraft noses. All this business about weather is totally off the subject and you're once again distorting my words.
We were talking about visibility. Your words were that you either can see something or you can't. You didn't qualify it in any way. Perhaps you had limited the discussion in order to exaggerate and attack what I was saying. I had not. I certainly didn't distort your words. You're the one adding words like 'completely' when I said that the nose could limit visibility. You didn't even bother trying to understand what I was saying. You were too busy attacking what you thought I'd said.
"Obstacles"? As in fixed objects that sit on the ground? If you're constantly on the lookout for those while flying at altitude then you're just silly. A constant lookout for other traffic is of course necessary, and if you're flying nap-of-the-earth then watching for radio towers and such is e very good idea, but a distraction of a few seconds is extremely unlikely to make any difference on this.
That seems to be how you operate. Reductio ad absurdum. Is it too hard to actually counter what I'm saying instead of purposefully misinterpretting and then trying to make me sound ridiculous.
Now you're making your argument for me. Distractions are part of the environment and you should learn to deal with them instead of completely eliminating them.
Thanks for the lesson. Now in the middle of this, close your eyes for three seconds. What happens? Approximately nothing. Now do the same thing on the highway. Decent odds you'll come out of it with at least a wrecked vehicle.
Is that why I've seen my cabbies holding a clipboard and flipping through it -not that I'm happy about it, but they've gone through a list of things or written down phone numbers while talking on the mobile or cab radio and while doing 100km/hr down the freeway. All without hitting a damn thing.
Whether you're in a car or a plane it depends entirely on the conditions at the time. Of course closing your eyes for 3 seconds with the autopilot on won't kill you in a plane at 6000ft with no traffic about. Try doing it on short final and you'll become a statistic. Same with driving on a freeway. Open road, little traffic, not as safe as at altitude but it can be done. If you're doing it for kicks or in peak hour you're an idiot. Close your eyes in dense traffic over an airport and likewise I'd call you an idiot, even with the greater separation.
Talking to ATC is very different from talking on the phone, though. It tends to be pretty intermittent, with single roundtrips interspersed with lots of downtime. It's very unemotional, which makes it much less distracting. It's also fully expected that a pilot will completely ignore ATC at any time that something more urgent is required.
Yes, it's called being trained to deal with distractions and prioritise what's important.
In my experience drivers aren't trained on distractions at all. Maybe things are different where you are.
You KNOW I meant AREN'T rather than ARE. That's been my whole fucking point all along. TRAIN drivers to deal with distractions while driving. Don't try to eliminate them all, and don't come up with stupid rules that drivers will ignore anyway.
You're just being a fucking troll.
Good day.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
And you end your post with an enormous attack all based around the idea that I was unable to read your mind
Your attempts at sarcastic humour are wasted. No mind reading is necessary. In the context of me advocating that drivers be trained to deal with distractions, rather than trying to remove all distractions (futile!),it should have been clear that this was a typo. This is the same arugment I've made time and again through our discourse. No mind reading is required, you immature troll.
You repeatedly accuse me of attacks and of failing to have basic comprehension skills. Yet your behavior clearly shows you have either missed my entire basic argument, or are just looking for a way to troll and attack. Not to mention stating that you don't consider me qualified to have an opinion because I'm not a pilot, while simultaneously arguing that you're entitled to have an opinion above those at the FAA that are more qualified than you.
In fact every step of the way you've demonstrated the exact behavior you belittle me for. The irony is wonderful. You've failed to present a logically consistent argument. I suspect I'd have better luck having a rational argument with a psychotic. In fact I don't think you'd recognize a logically consistent argument if it bit you. Forget pilot training. Try some schooling.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer