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Study Confirms Mobile Phones Distract Drivers
An anonymous reader notes a Reuters report of a study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, confirming that Mobile phone calls distract drivers far more than even the chattiest passenger, causing drivers to follow too closely and miss exits. California's ban on using a handheld cell phone while driving, which went into effect last summer, is looking less than fully effective. A handful of other states have instituted similar bans, but none has forbidden driving while talking on a cell phone at all. "Using a hands-free device does not make things better and the researchers believe they know why — passengers act as a second set of eyes, shutting up or sometimes even helping when they see the driver needs to make a maneuver."
Actually, Adam's conclusion is the most important. The phone is not as dangerous as the intoxication -- because you can put down the phone.
So maybe drivers need to be taught how to refocus their attention when necessary. You know, instead of being told that tehy should expect everything to be perfect all the time with no distractions.
To make matters worse here in CA, only talking on the phone is illegal. Texting is perfectly ok - what were they thinking?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
When driving on an interstate in good weather, using a headset, my talking on a phone is barely any distraction at all. However, when driving in bad weather or in city traffic, my using a phone in most situations is distracting to my driving, more so than most other things, which is why I won't use or answer it. The key is that I am aware of my *OWN* limitations.
But for SOME people, using a phone is overly distracting under any circumstances. People are different, conditions are different there is no one golden "rule" that is going to make any sense or be fairly applied to everyone or even most everyone. People need to be trained to NOT distract themselves and pay attention to their attention spans.
You can't legislate stupidity away. After phone use is made illegal in cars- what's next? GPS? Music? Food? Kids? Cold medication? Pets? Enforce laws about the RESULTS of poor behaviours, not the supposed causes. It doesn't matter why someone is weaving, following too closely, drifting, not using turn signals, not checking blind spots, etc... they should be ticketed just the same. Combined with education and public service messages, perhaps not everyone has to suffer for the lowest common denominator.
All of that drama could be avoided if you just said "hold on a sec, I'm merging" and then ignore anything that come safter that until your done then come back and say, "Sorry, I was merging"
If people were that good at quickly shifting their attention to and from the phone as the need arises, cell phones wouldn't be that big a deal to begin with. An accident can happen while you're saying those six words.
Anyway, the correct response, the one I use in those rare times that I would pick up the phone at all, is "I'm driving, I'll call you back."
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