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US Agency Blocked Cellphone / Driving Safety Study
By now you've probably seen the NY Times's long piece on distracted driving — about how most drivers and most legislators willfully ignore the evidence of the dangers of talking on a cellphone, texting, and other electronic distractions while behind the wheel. According to this article, cellphone use while driving causes over 1,000 fatalities a year in the US. Another shoe has now dropped: it seems that the US National Highway Safety Administration blocked a proposed definitive study of the risks. The NHSA now cites concerns about angering Congress. Two consumer safety groups had filed a FOIA request for documents about the aborted study, and the Times has now made the documents public — including the research behind the request for a study of 10,000 drivers.
Here's a CNN news report about the dangers of cellphones while driving.
*SCREEEECH* *KABOOM*
The highway safety researchers estimated that cellphone use by drivers caused around 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents over all in 2002.
The scary thing about this is that those numbers were from 2002. Think about how many more cellphones there are out there today than there were in 2002.
This guy's the limit!
meh whatever...
the number of near-misses, or is it near-hits, that go unreported each year? Where a driver almost causes an accident, but doesn't?
I don't get it. Why do some people think it's okay to multitask while driving? Maybe some people can handle it. Maybe they can't. But, if it's a social call, it's going to be a distraction. I can understand legit uses of a cell while driving, like if someone calls another person to pick them up at such and such location. That kind of call is going to last, what, 20 seconds, not the same as a 5-10 minute in-depth conversation. Just my thoughts.
How can we expect to remain the most powerful country in the world if we turn into a bunch of big pussies, trying to stop anyone from taking any type of risk? I am much more productive if I can talk on my cellphone and respond to e-mails during my commute. Sometimes there is an accident; such is life. Eggs must be broken to make omelets. What happened to the can-do, damn-the-torpedoes attitude that got us to the moon?
Meanwhile, every public pool has a policy of emptying everyone if thunder is heard. "Oh, you might get struck by lightening!" Yeah, well, you know what the chances of that are? A hell of a lot less than the risk that one of these brats is going to run out into the street and get run over by a car (perhaps while the driver is calling to see if the pool is open).
It's like people take all these precautions against the least likely dangers, while the more likely risks are ignored.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Two words for most of congress. "FUCK YOU"
Just cause that's what they do to America everyday.
Who cares if we "anger congress" , we should have more things that anger congress. A government should be afraid of it's people and not the other way around. Fuck why can't I live like a normal free person in antarctica.... less booze for me...out
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
I am honestly completely stunned by this article. I had thought the majority of countries had passed laws about the use of cell phones while driving, I did not know the US was so far behind. Many studies in other countries have shown use of cell phone (even hands free) is the equivalent to driving with a mid range blood alcohol level or worse and has been banned in most western countries with hefty fines for using your cell phone while driving.
Lets say you block cell phone usage. Does your technology exclude calls to emergency services? If not that's going to lead to deaths. Does your technology differentiate between the driver and a passenger? (I don't know how you'd even try to do that).
For starters we could enforce the existing laws. Caught talking on your cellphone twice, hand over your license.
Better would be to teach drivers to better cope with distractions including cell phone usage. If a pilot be required to be communicating on a radio while they land and take off - in a fast moving vehicle that falls out of the sky if not kept within parameters, at the edge of those parameters - I think drivers can be taught to drive safely on a cell phone. Not just left to their own devices to work out how, but taught. Where are the studies on how effective it is to teach drivers to drive while distracted by cell phones and other modern devices?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Well? We now have proof positive that congre$$ cirtters (or the oil-men-in-the-white house administration) will block the obvious right thing to do. What about RF studies that focus on immediate impacts - e.g. brain function, DNA change, etc - not cancer?
Sorry I was texting instead of paying attention, what did that article say?
Ban cell phone conversations in cars? That'd be the only way - the "hands free" laws are as good as no laws at all, its the division of attention that causes the accidents, not the holding of the phone. The only thing the hands free law is good for is for keeping the other drivers from knowing that the reason that a person is driving like a drunk is that they're blabbing on the phone. And banning phones in cars will cause some people to turn in their phones and cancel the service, because the car is about the only place they use and need them (like me.) So, I want to see the study that pits the consequences of fewer cell phones in society vs. the death rate, since it may take longer to get an accident called in to 911, or for help for a lot of other things to be summoned, etc. It's always a 2-edged sword if you ban something, since you have to consider the effects of its absence as well as the effects of its presence.
Ordinary cell phones do NOT have associated danger when using handsfree/head set. Completely safe. Although poor people may not afford to install it in their old cars, but why should they be allowed to endanger other people anyway?
Having fighting children in the back seat IS a clear and present danger.
Why can't congress ban shouting children in the back seat? That would save much more lives.
The NYT article is pretty specific that the study of 10,000 drivers was needed because all of the current estimates of the impact of cel use on driver accidents are based on unproven assumptions and (one might suggest) speculation.
The problem as always is that so much traffic safety "data" is founded on police reports of the "speed was a factor" variety. These are subjective guesswork, not scientific evidence
Certainly any distraction raises the likelihood of driver error, but that includes a multitude of things including loud music, scantily clad women on street corners, animated electronic billboards, and kids fighting in the backseat
You can't eliminate all distractions, so how can we teach drivers to filter out non-essential stimulation, or create auto technology that will protect drivers in moments of distraction?
Three Squirrels
People who get into accidents due to cell phone use are idiots, period. Now, I can't fully say this is Darwin at work, because they will probably wind up injuring or killing an innocent person. But truly, you have to be a moron to get into a car accident that's actually your fault. Use your brain, eyes, and ears, and you'll be fine. I've been accident-free for over fifteen years.
I talk on my cell phone while driving, but I keep my eyes on the road so it's not an issue. ONCE in a while I text while driving, but I make sure of a few things first: #1, that it's not stop-and-go traffic, in which case you're asking for a rear-ending; #2, there are NO pedestrians anywhere nearby; #3, I keep jumping my eyes from my cell to the road every couple seconds to do a quick scan to make sure everything looks OK; #4, put down the phone during situations that really require my attention (road workers, upcoming traffic jam, or anything else out of the ordinary). Is my method foolproof? Of course not, nothing is 100% foolproof. But I'm a hell of a lot safer than the average cell phone user, and a lot safer than the guy going through his briefcase or the woman doing her make-up.
How about tin foil hats?
Look: I've heard the statistics, and I don't drive while on the cell phone anymore simply because it's illegal... but, I don't see how talking to someone causes this kind of distraction. Texting? Sure, I'm on board with that one. When you have to take your eyes away from the road, that's fine. But calling someone and talking to them? How is that any worse than talking to someone next to you? I'm all for making laws that make everyone safer, and I don't think the current law in my state (CA) is particularly unjust, but I do think that pursuing this further is a waste of time and money.
Actually I sort of discovered I didn't need it anymore and, once my renewal period is up plan to ditch all of 'em: Mine, wife and sons. The son doesn't live here anymore so he can buy his own. My wife doesn't work and I work kind of close. No phone, no worries. No $160 bill from Verizon Wireless. If we move I plan on looking for antennas at Radio Shack for the roof. That another $50 I don't need to spend. It all adds up very quickly.
You're quite wrong in comparing what a pilot is doing with what a car is doing.
Is the pilot constantly surrounded by other planes? No. There's almost no risk of a "bumper" collision.
You cannot concentrate on more than one thing at once unless you have more than 1 brain. How can you concentrate on your phone call (or dialing) and concentrate on driving? One or the other is going to suffer.
Also, consider that a pilot's conversation with a tower is about what the pilot is doing, it's not about the date he's got waiting for him when he lands or what he's going to have for dinner.
Please think about what it is a pilot talks about when using the radio and then consider if it would be likely that a driver would be talking about the same. A closer but still distant comparison would be truckies using CB radios (they need to update each other on where the police are hiding, traffic jams, etc) Maybe a more accurate comparison would be the conversation held between pit crews and racing drivers. Conversation is strictly limited to what's going on around the driver. There's no idle chatter going on about girlfriends, etc. Where professional people are communicating with others whilst driving/flying, they're talking about matters that relate to what they're doing and what they're focused on and concentrating on. Nothing that requires them to be distracted from the task at hand.
Driving while distracted is (and always has been) dangerous, there's no questioning that. But my question is if cell phone usage is as huge a deal as everyone makes it out to be. There hasn't been a huge increase in car crashes since cell phone came into common usage. In fact, the number of deaths from auto accidents has actually gone down as a percentage of the population according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year). So the number of deaths from car accidents hasn't increased with the introduction of this huge danger.
I think the issue is that cell phones are something easy and visible for people to blame. Where before an accident was caused by someone playing with the radio, or changing the CD, or eating or whatever, that was easily ignored or missed, now everyone sees that the person was on their cell phone and they KNOW that was the cause. Even when someone cuts them off in traffic, it must be the cell phone, when it is probably the person is either just an asshole or a bad driver. But because they were on the phone, it must be the phone.
If they want to do studies, why not do them on cell phones as well as other common things people do while driving? What effect does playing the radio, changing the CD, programming and following your GPS, eating and drinking, or anything else have on your driving?
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
in the year 2009 the majority of earths then human population began the struggle to implement true multithreading.
Quack, quack.
I was shocked and dismayed as I read this article on my iPhone while headed into work on the turnpike this morning.
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
This is the work of Obvious Man!
What about those drivers using lighters and smoking in the car? Ban that as well.
Driving while arguing with a woman is also dangerous. I ran 2 stop-signs because of such. Are they going to ban that too?
Table-ized A.I.
I have not heard any comments about whether this is a matter of limiting the public's freedom in their own car which is a little disturbing. There is a real difference between regulating safety and controlling what a driver is thinking about while driving. Numerous distractions exist while driving and no amount of regulations will alleviate the driver's distractions until we have at least semi-autonomous operation or full on mind control.
Maybe the NHSA realizes that the study would be fruitless as it would only be repeating results of previous studies that came to the same conclusion.
They are only trying to save taxpayers money ;)
It called Maintaining Control of Your Vehicle.
Good drivers don't really need any other law in order to comply with the above.
They observe what's going on around them, and adapt accordingly - whether it's slowing down, stopping for a nap, adding following distance, or refraining from phone use.
What we actually need is enforcement of the above.
Involved in an accident?
The burden is on you to prove you did everything a reasonable person would to prevent it.
Currently, I can pull out from an intersection and deliberately t-bone someone and suffer no serious repercussions, unless I'm proven impaired, or some other gross act.
"Oops - I didn't seem him" gets people out of what should have been criminal charges all the time.
I blame mandatory insurance for some of this.
Everyone looks at accidents like "you were insured? no harm - no foul.
I see people every day who should be locked up for the lack of common care they put into their driving.
It seems every day now I end up stopped behind some idiot who's too busy texting on the phone to realize he's sitting at a damn green light. Or I watch some soccer mom weaving around in her SUV with the telltale hand to the head posture.
It used to be that here in the south that when you saw a car weaving around it was from good old fashioned drunk driving! WTF happened?!
PM
The insurance companies have the whip hand here. If they refused road accident claims for drivers on the phone/texting at the moment of an accident the problem would instantly go away. . . . . . . . If you also added large fines for bosses who demand that their employees answer when driving, then that would also go a long way to help reduce accidents.
It's a bit of a side-issue, but take a look at that photo that accompanies the article. The one captioned: "At 60 miles an hour on a Missouri highway, a 16-year-old driver texts with a friend as a 17-year-old takes the wheel."
There is *no way* that photo isn't staged. The Times runs staged photos on a semi-regular basis, even though it's really a violation of journalistic ethics, but it's rarely quite so blatant.
It's a great inconsistency and hypocrisy (not that that's surprising) that we crack down so hard on "drunk driving" yet allow cell phone use while driving.
Drivers showing a detectable amount of BAC are guilty regardless of their ability to drive or coordination relative to other drivers who may be sober.
Studies show that cell phones impair ability at least as much as mild drunkenness
Cell phone use isn't otherwise restricted among under-21 year olds.
Basically, all arguments against drunk driving apply equally to cell phone use while driving, except "alcohol use is optional (unlike cell phone use~) and is inherently evil and thus garners no sympathy".
problem with cellphones - splitting attention to switch context between your surroundings and conversation. Listening carefully to less than stellar audio quality, understanding it and actually responding uses much brain power needed elsewhere. Talking to a passengers is not as absorbing because they share the context with the driver and can react when something dangerous is going to happen.
Someone mod him up, for crying out loud.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
... to outlaw passengers that can talk while the car is moving. I have no doubt that the conclusion is correct, that both hands and hands-free phone conversations pose equal risks to focus and ability, but given that fact means that ALL OTHER forms of conversation also pose an equal risk, including having a chatty passenger. Are we ready to take that step, after a century of tolerance? Can you hear the mutiny that would result? How would we enforce it, without resorting to something indistinguishable from Big Brother?
I think we now have to accept the fact that people will try to multitask, even though research has proven that the human brain isn't truly capable of doing it well; that multitasking will include the process of driving. That ship sailed a century ago and it's too late to call it back to port for a refit. The person too stupid and unobservant to "recognize his limitations", as Dirty Harry put it, are simply going to die more often on the road, and sometimes take a few of the rest of us with them in the process. The best and truly observant drivers will spot these rolling risks and avoid them and survive, so hopefully some genetic trait for better awareness will get carried forward with the survivors?
The general conclusion on page 3 says it all. No difference between hands-free and non-hands-free from a "cognitive distraction" standpoint. It says nothing about visual distraction of having to look at the phone. It just points out the obvious conclusion that talking on a phone is a "cognitive distraction". Well duh! Read a little further "it is not possible to make a direct connection to crash risk". Okay, so we have the same old problem of correlation doesn't equal causation.
This paper only cites old, semi-questionable, existing research. No quality new data was collected or presented. This was supposed to be a fresh study. Instead this thing looks like a grade-C high-school student spent a few hours on the internet digging up some previous papers, and then summarizing the conflicting data.
Another very valid reason for trashing this crappy study (aside from shoddy research) is that the "independent research paper" was written as though it were intended to put forth suggested policies and laws. Really, go read the freaking thing. The bit about pissing off Congress, is because Congress knows full well that the Fed Govt (much less the lowly NHSTA) can not dictate how the States or Corporations write their laws. Of course nothing saying they can't bribe the states with highway funds like they did with the 55mph thing.
In a plane when you land or take off, other people for which it is the job to survey the sky made sure no plane come right and left. So the amount of attention you have to give to your 3D environment is far lower, actually you mostly have to pay attention to your instrument and what they read. In a car you have far less instrument , but you have a whole 3D environment to pay attention, with car coming left, right, ahead and behind, people on foot crossing streets left and right, bikes, motorbikes, speed limit and other signs and NOBODY to steer that traffic for you. I was only in simulator for plane, but comparing the amount of attention car win hand down on how much is needed to drive as opposed to fly. I seriously doubt you can train people to be "distracted", especially that a lot of people won't be trainable at all. Far far easier and far far safer is just to enforce a "no cell phone" policy in car.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
What we need are portable MRIs for driving, to determine if people are paying attention. Once a baseline for people is established, it should be easy to determine if they're drunk, too tired, zoned out, or otherwise impaired.
If this was already in use, I know some people who would never be given a license. Some people suck at driving, even without distractions.
On the plus side, some people are going to be better at driving with impairments than others. So, if somebody can truely handle smoking, drinking, eating or talking while driving, then they could go right ahead.
everything up. Whose business is it if I talk on the phone (or to the passenger) while I'm driving? It's mine, thank you. If you want to hold someone accountable for these deaths, then those who own the streets should be held accountable. If streets and highways were completely privatized, then you would hold the owners accountable. See where I'm going with this?
This isn't who it would be if it wasn't who it is...
is capable of distracting herself without any external factors at all. My wife tells me how embarrassing and frustrating it was going to school with her mother, who would, without reason or warning, drift down to 30 in a 50-area simple because she had a brain fart of some kind. Dozens of vehcles backed up behind her unable to pass on a solid line. Countless other irate drivers literally driven to dangerous behaviour by an absent-minded middle-aged mother. How are you going to legislate against her? Distractions are part of life, driving a car on a public highway is a privilege, not a right, and your cellphones are tantamount to murderous negligence - just turn it off, already.
Oh, and get off my lawn.
See where I'm going with this?
No
This legislation would interfere with the god-given right of Corporations to make money. If some poor schmoe has to be wounded or die, then that is a fair price for them to pay.
However what's interesting is that I recall a study (don't remember credibility or source) showing that a hands-free cellphone was just as dangerous as a regular cell phone. This implies that the distraction is not from the cell phone itself, but processing a conversation while you are driving (which divides your attention). If this hypothesis is true, then talking to a passenger in the car is just as dangerous as using a cell phone. Imagine if you were driving one day and a passenger, your wife, said "I want a divorce," or your boss said "you're fired." So perhaps because of this great risk to other drivers and pedestrians everywhere we should ban all talking in cars. Of course, that will be hard to enforce, so we should ban passengers in cars instead.
Where does it end? Doesn't this become kind of draconian at some point?
While we're playing the "prescribe a cure for society's ills" game, I'll throw out a suggestion: federal legislation reducing speed limits across the board by 20-30mph and mandating that all cars sold in the U.S. are electric and meet certain crash safety parameters. That would save more lives and money than any of this "no talking in cars" business.
There was just published a big study that says speed-limit significantly affects accident rates (no big surprise). But most people have no idea regarding the numbers involved.
There are nearly 42,000 fatalities in the U.S. each year from auto accidents. There are almost NO fatalities in accidents involving both vehicles traveling less than 35 miles per hour. Want to save something like 40,000 lives a year? Just enact a Federal speed limit for all vehicles everywhere of 35 mph.
But guess what? That'll never happen. Too much impact on commerce, schedules, convenience, etc.It's the same thing with cell phones. They have such a perceived value to so many people driving around out there, that unless fatalities tied directly to phones were to take an order of magnitude uptick, we won't give them up.
There is one other possibility - get one big lawsuit in favor of some dimwit who successfully sues the cell phone manufacturer or the wireless provider, and suddenly you'll have the whole ugly industry rallying to enforce federal & state codes, buying billboards and running TV ads with "talk responsibly" and so forth. The whole thing makes me grind my teeth because in a world where every 1/3 person wasn't below average, common sense would be enough to keep people from driving into the FedEx truck in front of them because they're on the phone with Ralph from accounting...
Why bother conducting your own study when you could use one of the many already done in other countries?
I was heading home from work and this dingbat was yakking on the cell in the passing lane... and not doing any passing. I waited and waited and waited some more. The nice think about being on a bike is that it's fast and can squeeze between cars, which I'm sure is safer than talking on the phone. Well, after I passed I swing around, flipped the bird and mouthed fuck you. The next day I was in a meeting when I learned who was behind the wheel. She said she was talking to my boss and her kids saw it all. I blasted back, unappolegetically, and told her to pay attention to driving and that it's illegal to talk while driving in this state. Her plan backfired in her face, she turned red and shut up. That was the best meeting ever and it was great to go toe to toe with somone who's usually nameless, faceless and safely incased in steel. I don't work there anymore though.
In New York there already is a law about driving while talking on a cell phone which isn't enforced. Just yesterday I had two encounters on my brief drive with ladies who were more interested in their cell phone conversation that the road in front of them. What good is making a law if no one follows it and it's not enforced?
I was wondering who the US National Highway Safety Administration was, but when I RTFA, I realized that the agency the did the work was the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, better known as NHTSA. I'd actually heard of them :-)
Your "fair share" is NOT in my wallet.
Enough of this nonsense!
While we're in the business of banning cell phones while driving, why don't we remove car sound systems? People are constantly fiddling with them. Has anyone studied how many accidents are due to that? How about passengers? How many accidents have been caused by a pair of kids fighting in the back seat or a heated argument with a spouse? How about drinking coffee while driving? How about trying to read directions while driving? How about being tired while driving?
All these things amount to one thing: Personal Responsibility . We can't legislate everything. What's the point? Keep track of a person's driving record and when they've had too many accidents due to inattention of some sort, restrict their license, or confiscate it!
The notion that by making a law we can improve people's behavior is stupid. Awareness is more important than the law. If people haven't already figured out that driving while texting is dangerous, then it's time for some chlorine for the gene pool.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
In most European countries it already IS illegal to drive and use the cell phone at the same time.
The cellphone lobby must be really strong in the United States.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
If they blocked the study for fear of angering congress, boy are the mythbusters in trouble! They've proven that distracted cell phone driving is as driving hampering as drunk driving years ago.
Seems that was the way of the previous administration, climate change, cellphone use and who knows what else. Corporations 1 public 0. There is a related post at http://iamsoannoyed.com/?page_id=588
Rather like professional getaway drivers for criminals.
But most police car drivers do not do anything more than a few hours at speed on motorways and at whatever your local equivalent of "TRL" (Berkshire, UK) getting a feel of when the car goes squiffy.
You can do as much with one of those action holiday things.
People need to get over things like this. 1,000 deaths per year is really not even a drop in the bucket. People try so hard to find things to make laws about it is just ridiculous. Cue thought police in 3.....2.....
The one thing that is always amazing to me is how few people seem to be using any built-in hands-free kits in their cars. And I'm not talking about the over-the-ear kind of stuff.
I mean, if you're driving a car that you paid $30k and upwards, how hard can it be to fork over another couple hundred bucks and get a nice and relatively stylish kit like the one from parrot.com? And not to even mention, that a lot of the cars have these things now built in by default.
The only thing you have to do is pair your phone, make sure the contacts get transferred to the kit (takes you about 5 minutes max) and then every time you get in the car you can talk on car speakers with great sound quality and see who calls you easily before you pick up the call. And all of this without having to fumble after your phone in your pants when attempting to answer the call.
I've got the kit about 5 years ago and it was probably the best car-related investment I made.
Society lets people do what they, and business, _really_ want to do -- particularly in the area of driving. Observed it during 25 years of walking/jogging/running to work and back and dodging cars. Whenever somebody runs over a pedestrian in the U.S. the news reports "whether alcohol was involved." Apparently, and paradoxically, if alcohol was _not_ involved it was a clean kill, and there will be no legal consequences.
The way I see it, society has decided that a few people have to die. If everybody had to sit in their driveway every morning and contemplate that today could be the day they get charged with murder or manslaughter because they fucked up, how many would leave their houses? But it _does_ mean people die.
How did you set the threshold? Your argument seems to be that because "drivers conversing with fellow passengers do not present the same danger" it should be exempt from regulation similar to cellphones. So, how did you come to this conclusion that cellphones = bad, passengers = okay? Is there a danger metric you used? Where do other driving distractions fall on your list?
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Buridan's principle describes a type of race condition intrinsic to all decision-making systems. Lamport's paper is on the short list of documents that everybody in the slashdot community should read.
In a nutshell, macroscopic real world systems are continuous. Thus the mean value theorem applies. For every go/no-go decision, there is one threshold before which decision A is clearly valid and another threshold after which decision B is valid. By the MVT, somewhere between those two thresholds is a point where the decision crosses the axis between A and B.
Driving requires a sequence of decisions. It isn't too much to say that driving is a sequence of life-and-death decisions. Anything that distracts us moves the decision-making thresholds - e.g., the 3 second rule for following cars should lengthen for distracted drivers. Buridan, for instance, is a likely culprit in railroad crossing accidents. The driver could stop and be safe. The driver could cross expeditiously and be safe. The driver vacillates. Kaboom!
Cell phones aren't just a distraction - cars and roads are full of distractions. Cell phones are an unnecessary distraction.
I think the people most likely to cause an accident are the ones most likely to talk on their mobile phones whilst driving. These people would be more likely to cause an accident even whilst not on their mobiles because they don't take driving seriously.
You're right about item #1, but the car stereo has always been a cause of accidents when people looked down at it to change a station or otherwise manipulate it, and crashed into someone else. I don't know if anyone bothered to study it, but I'll bet if they did, they'd find the aftermarket stereos are statistically even more likely to cause accidents than the original factory ones, since they almost always have smaller buttons, more options, and more complex displays.
Still, we seem to generally agree that having some music or talk radio to listen to in the background while driving relaxes us and makes a trip much more tolerable -- so we accept it as a "good" thing, regardless of the statistics.
As for item #2, it's a good theory -- but I don't think many passengers really do any of this as often as you give them credit for. In my experience, a passenger in the middle of some discussion they think is important will keep on talking, without paying any attention to the situation around them, assuming "the driver has that under control". Passengers only tend to interrupt their speech when a driver actually scares them (by running a red light, for example, or missing an exit). When passengers DO take a cue to pause their speech for a few seconds, it's more often because the driver is making some sort of verbal noise (perhaps an "Ummm...." as they try to read a road sign, or they actually say "Uhh.... do you see a sign for around here?" They're likely to utter similar statements while talking on the phone. (Might not ask the person if they SEE a particular item, but they're likely to mutter something about trying to find it.)
I think the issue is a lot more complex. True, if you hold a phone to your ear, other drivers can see you're on the phone and take that into account. But there are additional "risks" involved with people holding phones to their ear while driving. For example, what about people who accidentally drop the phone while driving? Not only will they feel strongly compelled to reach around for it to pick it back up as quickly as possible (creating a very high risk of having an accident in the process), but what about those "freak accident" cases where said phone goes right under the brake or accelerator pedal and blocks it? I've actually had something similar happen once. It's no fun when you try to ignore something you just dropped, only to realize it's preventing you from operating the vehicle properly so you HAVE to try to reach down or kick it out of the way.....
What a bunch of BS...
How productive will you be if you die due to an accident you caused by using a cellphone while driving!
Forty times more frequent 2000 comes from thsi informal study.
It seems as if you would be willing to make that trade, but I'm not willing. I suspect that you would not be willing too if you knew for certain that you would be one of the 1000.
With my previous phone, I could just feel the buttons
Careful throwing around all that "logic" and "sensibility" or you might rouse the ire of an Apple fanboi or two.
'Cause, like, buttons are soooo 20th century, dude.
That's it? It's good that they killed the study. There is no reason to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars to save 1000 people from THEMSELVES!
Get people to focus on paying attention to the road and their driving, and the cellphone distraction issue will take care of itself.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
The killing of this 2002 study was part of the quid pro quo (in addition to the monetary fees for tapping) that brought forth the warrentless wiretapping program in (oddly enough) 2002. Appeal to patriotism, my ass...
That is all.
For example from the German traffic law: "whoever wishes to turn must make their intention clearly and in a timely manner, using the vehicle indicators".
In Southern California it's more like "whoever wishes to turn must do so without warning and in a surprising manner. Vehicle indicators may be on or off throughout the duration of the trip, depending on the driver's mood. Using turn signals before turning indicates a non-LA driver or a non-hip, uncool one. Pussy!"
Well, distractions are clearly a problem. People have problems filtering out distractions. People have problems obeying basic safety concerns. People in general misbehave. So the really source of the problem in this situation isn't cell phones. It's people. So remove the people. No I'm not joking. I'm talking about robot cars. I'll take the risk of a software glitch sending me into a pole over the risk of some asshat on a cell phone (or drunk, or just being a stupid teenager, etc.) plowing into me.
o god wont some one think of the children
talk and driven and texting and driving is funding terrorists, kiddy porn
texting also leads to smoking
and every other bad thing in the world
no one in congrass or any wheres else is going to do shit till it concerns them
when there loved one die's at the hands of a text crazy teen/(female added to fuel the flames :) ) lol that just could not wait till they got that tweet out for every one to have a read
I watched a woman in slow-moving traffic talk on her cell as she ran into the SUV in front of her, then continue her cell phone conversation. Talk about misplaced priorities...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The highway safety researchers estimated that cellphone use by drivers caused around 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents over all in 2002. That's less than 0.5% of all the accidents. Why is so much attention being given to cell phone usage when there are bigger issues like DUI? It appears to me that either banning or limiting cell phone usage leads to no tangible benefits.
are they going to ban driving and eating a hamburger too? Where does the madness stop?
This is definitely not slashdot material, and imho is not legislative material either.
Everyone should start driving stick shifts again - contrary to what you may think, the extra pedal for your foot and the extra task for your hand force you to concentrate on the road and think about what's happening in front of you. I tried it once and was so terrified and felt so out of control that I swore I'd never use the phone again while driving. It has worked like a charm so far.
Too bad it'll never happen, especially with the advent of electric vehicles.
I'm man enough to admit that I'm a horrible driver. Hell, in the morning I'm not really awake enough to have any business on the road, and during the day I'm usually thinking about anything but driving. I mitigate this by arranging my life so I don't have to drive very much, and when i do have to drive its mostly clean driving on fairly empty highways. I frequently use my cell when I drive, (typically on the aforementioned highways), and actually it probably makes me safer . . . I will call someone if I think I'm too tired to stay awake properly and have a fairly inane conversation Killing the study? Others have posted plenty of studies that are, honestly more than sufficient to demonstrate the risks. I don't actually think cell phones are necessarily more dangerous than many other things (such as eating in the car, fixing one's hair etc.) There's really only one solution: Where possible, let the damned cars drive themselves. Its scary and dangerous people say, but is it really more dangerous than what we've got now, or just scarier? (And, of course, a much bigger liability problem for those involved in the technology)
I ran across your comment while metamoderating, and had to just say this:
[rhetorical question]
How did your post not get modded +5 insightful, interesting, or something positive??!?!?
WTF?!?!?!?
Moderators on crack, racing down the road texting their dealer to meet up for another $20-rock?[/rhetorical question]
I like, approve, and endorse your suggestions, good sir!
I give your post 'two thumbs up!' in lieu of mod points, sadly. :-)
A 'tip of the hat' and a hearty 'Well Done' is also in order.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti