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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.
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!
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
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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.
Guess what. If there's a chance that the US could be behind in something, we'll likely do our damnedest to make sure we're behind. It reminds me of this guy I work with. Whenever something like this (or poor health care, or poor education) comes up, he always responds with "But we're America. It shouldn't be like that here." And then he turns around and consistently votes against the people that try to improve public safety, education, health care. Go figure.
Eggs must be broken to make omelets. What happened to the can-do, damn-the-torpedoes attitude that got us to the moon?
Everyone in the space program that got us to the moon knew the risks and accepted them. By your logic drunk driving should be legal because its a known risk on the roadway. I'm sure that logic will be comforting if one day you "break an egg" (or are broken yourself) because you were distracted responding to an email. This isn't about your right to do whatever the hell you want, its about the right for some degree of safety on a public transit network.
For starters we could enforce the existing laws. Caught talking on your cellphone twice, hand over your license.
All the existing laws are "feel good" laws for sanctimonious pricks. All the studies that have been published show that it isn't the act of holding a phone up to your ear that causes a driver to be distracted, it is simply talking on the phone that matters. But all of the laws give free passes to anyone with a handsfree phone. That's arguably worse than holding the phone to your ear - if you do that, at least the other drivers have a chance of noticing that you are on the phone and giving you a wide berth, handsfree makes you look like all the other drivers even though you are not as engaged with the road as they are.
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.
One difference is that he is talking on the radio ABOUT what he is doing. His brain isn't focused on flirting with the ATC.
Another difference is that the ATC knows when to shut the hell up and let the pilot do his job if something goes wrong, just like someone in the passenger seat would. But someone on the other end of the phone may not even know he is talking to a driver.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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
I think a key difference here is that the people on the radio are communicating with the pilot about flying the plane, not, say, where to eat or how to fix the toilet.
-Dave
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"
For commercial passenger aircraft, there's also a copilot. Both of them have substantially more training requirements than a person who wants to drive a car, and they're ostensibly focusing on the task. (Certainly they're communicating on the radio about the task.) They also have substantial electronic assistance in doing their jobs.
Breaking eggs is called natural selection... well, sure, you got to believe in evolution.
But all of the laws give free passes to anyone with a handsfree phone. That's arguably worse than holding the phone to your ear - if you do that, at least the other drivers have a chance of noticing that you are on the phone and giving you a wide berth
why can't *this* kind of thinking (ie, actual thinking) be present in those who are making our laws?
you have a really good point. at least when you're holding the phone, others can take that into account and 'work around you'. give you more room or just stay out of your way and assume you need more 'buffer' space around you. just in case.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
We can't even teach people to signal turns and lane changes reliably. Teaching cell phone safety to the public is about as likely to happen as someone winning the lottery jackpot 37 times in a row by finding discarded tickets in the street.
Avaiators have a little saying that goes;
Aviate, navigate, communicate.
Meaning, the last priority is to communicate.
It is extrememly doubtful any pilot worth his salt
(I certainly would not)would make radio calls whilst taking off or when about to land. Such calls are made well before critical periods of a flight-as they may be a distraction.
What you advocate is to say the least dumb.
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.
"Maybe some people can handle it. Maybe they can't."
It isn't terribly different from drinking and driving - both affect judgement. Drinking is outlawed for drivers, so cellphones should be too. Saying that "I can handle it" is one of the macho things men said 40 years ago, before they ran a kid over on the way home from the bar.
Anyone who claims that the cell phone doesn't impair their driving is being dishonest with himself, not to mention being dishonest with the rest of us.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I have no problem with you taking risks that effect just you. But as far as I'm concerned, if you make my next drive unsafe, then you're behavior must be modified, either willingly or be force.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Also, while the consequences for mishap in a plane are generally more severe, flying a plane generally takes a helluva lot less attention than driving a car. If you're sitting at 100km/h on the freeway, the wrong control input for 1/10th of a second could easily kill you. If you're in the cockpit of an airliner, you have an exclusive packet of airspace that's literally kilometers wide, and unless you're in final approach you're probably at least a kilometer off the ground. Take your eyes off the controls for a few seconds and there's not going to be any huge consequence since there's nothing to hit.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
The difference is, driving is neither a right nor a liberty. It is a privilege. This privilege comes with some conditions. One of the condition is that you may not use your car on a public road when either your car is not fit for it or yourself aren't. It actually makes your argument about not being at your peak alertness a moot point - yes, it is already illegal, it is just too difficult to prove and no one cares. There also clear rules about turn signals. 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".
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I'm sort of with that, except it means that you don't know what you can and can't do.
Actually, I would be amazed if there isn't such a clause in your laws in whatever country you live in already.
The offence here (UK) seems to be based on something going wrong with the actual driving -- an example given is "someone missing a traffic light turning green because they are singing along to their favourite tune a little too excitedly"; just "singing along to their favourite tune a little too excitedly" doesn't look as if it will do it.
The police and judges can't actually determine how much attention you were paying to what, and the person who is actually the safety driver on the road could end up in court because the authorities can't tell. I think there's a lot to be said for the sharp steel spike from the steering wheel to the driver's chest...
That is the price we pay for "innocent until found guilty--- lots of people gets off the hook until they actually cause some damage. Or learns how to drive with whatever distraction the world offers.
I'm more concerned with people failing to get off the hook when there was really nothing wrong with their driving.
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