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25% of Car Accidents Linked to Gadget Use
BogenDorpher writes "In a recent study by the Governors Highway Safety Association (PDF), driving distractions such as cell phones and other electronic devices cause as much as 25% of all US car accidents. It is common knowledge that driving while distracted is not a safe thing to do, but now we have some scientific data that goes in-depth on the topic. From the article: '"Despite all that has been written about driver distraction, there is still a lot that we do not know. Much of the research is incomplete or contradictory. Clearly, more studies need to be done addressing both the scope of the problem and how to effectively address it," said GHSA Executive Director Barbara Harsha.'"
No, you're NOT special.
News Flash: Less than 75% of US car accidents involve electronic devices!
Just 25%?? I would've thought quite a bit more given the number of morons that I see blathering on their cell phones.
Does this mean that the number of car accidents has increased by 25? If not, what improvements have cancelled out the increase in accidents caused by cellphones and other gadgets? Are there fewer accidents caused by people fiddling for CDs in the glove compartment or trying to find a good AM channel? Are there fewer accidents caused by frustrated people trying to find their way on a fold-out map?
it skyrockets to 100%
Seriously, why do people do that? Talk to the person using your phone rather than texting.
I have hands free bluetooth built into my car with voice command. It's soo much easier than using a headset.
Although I'm all for natural selection....
Previewing comments are for sissies!
Does that mean I shouldn't be reading Slashdot while driving then?
Sounds really cut and dried.
What about the 75% of accidents which were not correlated with gadgetry? And what about the gadgetry in use while driving which did not create an accident? I have seen enough weaving on the road that I don't wish to blindly defend people using GPS while driving. But what percentage of people who had an accident had brown eyes? Or is this based on the claim of the driver, which would discount a) liars (drinkers?) who have been in accidents, and b) fatal accidents.
I think we need to figure out what is going on. When car blinkers and car radios were first introduced, people had accidents because they didn't know how to use them, and people driving stick who learned to drive automatic may be a risk element too.
Gently reply
I almost hit the car in front of me when I read this.
How the highway safety folks....
A) Always lead with the high side number. 15-25% so its either this number, or as low as half that. Yes, clearly the high number is the one to report, alone.
B) do not even an attempt is made to distinguish which class of accidents these are. Does it cause more little heavy traffic bumps and scratches? Or does it account for many major accidents? Plan to tell us? not today clearly.
C) Mention that banning cell phones or texting doesn't change this, and fail to connect the dots to ask the question as to whether this has been true since the freaking radio was installed
Course, if they did any of that, it may not make their jobs sound very relevant.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
... and how to effectively address it
Uh, stop using gadgets while driving?
If it's so bad and causes so many accidents, why are police allowed to use their personal cellphone while driving?
Don't tell me it's their driver training, plenty of civilians can attend those classes and that doesn't exempt them.
Absolutely! Gotta keep that money flowing to study the clearly obvious..
What is needed is an autopilot for cars.. Driving is the distraction
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
As far as I'm concerned the danger posed by someone texting/chatting on a cell while driving is exactly the same as the danger posed by a drunk / high driver, and the penalties should be equivalent. Needless to day this would be a very politically unpopular ruling, despite that fact that the dangers are equivalent
This isn't a popular comment but think about it... Look at all the money that is spent going after DUIs, but hardly any is spent going after distracted drivers. Look at how much money someone spends after being convicted of a DUI. Not think about how much someone spends after being convicted after driving while distracted. DUIs grab headlines, but someone playing with the GPS, talking on the phone, etc does not. Are we looking in the wrong places? Organizations such as MADD have a powerful lobby. There isn't a version of MADD - Mothers Against Distracted Drivers
following the defective directions of a GPS?
"TURN LEFT NOW! " (off the road and into a lake).
If anyone in the car has been drinking, or there's a 3 week old empty beer can in the bed of the truck -- It's an alcohol related accident; Even if the driver is sober/designated, and/or those open cans are in-route to the recyclers.
I was once made to perform a field sobriety check at a DUI checkpoint because a passenger, my brother, was intoxicated (I was assumed drunk by relation, I suppose) -- I noted the officer's mention of my Sansa Media player to another, apparently this was a Gadget related 4th amendment violation.
--
Mrs. Doubtfire: He was quite fond of the drink. It was the drink that killed him.
Miranda: How awful, he was an alcoholic?
Mrs. Doubtfire: No, he was hit by a Guinness truck, so it was quite literally "the drink that killed him".
And gadgets have been around forever. How many accidents are caused by people messing with their radio? Touch screens are really, really a bad idea, and I'm always disappointed when there are so few, good head units that have physical knobs for adjusting playback and volume.
The article seems to be more focused on the even more general "distractions":
...distractions affect our driving performance and how drivers are typically distracted most of time. One thing that stood out of the report was the claim that being distracted was the cause of 15 to 25% of all accidents
Duh. Passengers talking, kids doing practically everything kids do, Billboards, airports (I fear for my life when my former Air Force father-in-law passes a military airport), food, parcels shifting around, or just plain daydreaming. It doesn't have to be modern electronics causing the issues, they just add to the cacophony of distractions that exist.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
That even though I live in a 'hands free driving' state, that whenever I pass a police officer, they have a cell phone up to their ear. So there is a law in place and I don't think I've seen it enforced. Does talking on the cell phone or texting while driving affect the driver? For most folks, hell yes. I can't count the times that I've come up on a driver who's going too slow in the far left lane, or going outside their lane, and passing them only to see them talking on their phone.
But the true 'root' cause of these accidents is stupidity, not the device itself. They were not paying attention. Be it a cell phone, reading a paper, putting on make up, or looking for their lighter. Looking away from the road for anything can cause an accident.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
...you'll find it. I don't think the issue is the availability of gadgets that drivers will distract themselves with, I think it's drivers who look for something better to do while they're driving. It's easy to pin it on gadgets now because everyone has one and it's the go-to distraction, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who's witnessed the occasional morning driver with one hand holding a coffee and the wheel while the other holds the newspaper to the steering wheel. Now, as for how to address the issue, I'm at a loss. Without having a police officer in every passenger seat, I don't see any way to enforce any laws against distracted driving in general.
It is not dangerous at all to text while driving. I am driving right now and am not at all distr
I read somewhere that approx. 50% of auto accidents involve someone who was smoking. So, will they ban smoking? Oh wait a minute, they're trying that already. And then of course there's CB Radio. Nobody has ever tried banning that, have they?
Have the auto manufacturer's build most cars with ( and some cars without, I guess ) the wire mesh used to make a faraday cage. This will keep wireless signals out of the car. No phone calls, no texting, no twittering or facebooking when in the car, period.
The linked report from the Governor's Highway Safety Association does not present a details of the methodology and results of a study, but rather refers to one- or two-sentence summaries ("20 pct of injury crashes in 2009 involved at least one distracted driver") from several studies conducted by NHTSA and others. The term "distracted driver" seems to be defined as a driver looking away from the forward highway, so that can encompass all kinds of activities in addition to electronic gadgetry: eating, talking or reacting to passengers, applying makeup, staring at someone or something on the sidewalk or roadside, etc.
But from this the press will likely seize on "25 pct of accidents involve drivers distracted by electronic gadgets."
The following, mostly non-overlapping groups were also discovered. 20% were people driving drunk / high, 15% (yes, 15% of all accidents) were caused by a driver from New Jersey or New York just driving as they do normally on roads outside their states, another 15% were simply inexperienced teenagers (hey, it does take practice), and the remaining 25% were women checking their makeup in the mirror while reading the newspaper and sipping on a Starbucks coffee in an SUV (which, if I hadn’t seen near-accidents caused by this several times, I would think this was some kind of stereotype).
The study talks about the fact that distracted driving involves more than just cellphones, then most of their recomendations involve restricting the use of cellphones while driving. When they talk about the only objective basis they have for analyzing the impact of distracted driving (the actual accident reports) they lump all distracted driving into one category and do not give you any idea of what percentage of those involve cellphone use and what percentage involve other things (like changing the radio station). This is the problem I see with all attempts to push laws increasing restrictions on cellphone use in cars, they either do not point out all the other things that people do routinely while driving that are just as big of a distraction as cellphones, or if they do, they use the impact of those things on the incidence of accidents to support restrictions on cellphone use while driving.
The thing is, driving is dangerous. People need to be reminded on a regular basis that they need to pay attention to what is going on around them when they are driving. New laws are not needed.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Note: I've not read the pdf as it isn't loading for me.
I hate when studies like this consider accidents due to "cell phone use". That is far too general. You need to split it up into talking and texting. As much as I'm sure that talking on a phone does increase your risk of having an accident, that effect would be trivial when compared to the risk increase due to texting. However, people text with their phones in their lap, so it can't be seen from a passing police car so they have a blanket ban on phone use and fine people for talking on their phones when that isn't really the problem.
FTA: "Distracted driving definitions. Distracted driving immediately brings to
mind cell phones and texting, and perhaps use of other electronic devices.
But there are many more driving distractions: activities like eating, changing
a CD, or talking to other passengers; billboards or other objects outside the
car; even planning the day’s work, rehashing an emotional moment from the
previous night, or just daydreaming. It is useful to begin by defining what
distracted driving means. "
Glad to see this study acknowledges that there are an awful lot of distractions other than cellphones, most of which can't reasonably be banned. It also mentions that there's no evidence that cellphone or texting bans have any effect on accident rate. So focussing all attention on banning cellphone usage is not the solution, or at least not the only solution. Personally thing most likely to distract me is incompetent drivers who don't know which lane they're supposed to be in, when to signal, or when to join a roundabout. Learn to drive, people.
Oh no... it's the future.
A few days ago I over took another car on a high way and the driver had a kindel on his stearing wheel.
Obvioulsy he was driving and reading same time ...
Scary!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Despite all that has been written about driver distraction, there is still a lot that we do not know, Much of the research is incomplete or contradictory. Clearly, more studies need to be done addressing both the scope of the problem and how to effectively address it
This is somewhat surprising, given that governments around the world have taken steps to ban gadget use (especially talking on the phone) while driving. You would think they would do this based on evidence that it actually posed a significant safety risk, but if that were the case, you would also expect that research would clearly show this. Clearly, something is fishy here.
Personally, I like to focus on driving when I'm at the wheel, because I can't bear the thought of getting into (not necessarily even causing) an accident because I wasn't paying attention. Clearly, other people are not so worried. And, apparently, it's difficult to clearly established if they should be.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
The replies to articles like this one always confuse me. It might be because I'm a gauche European, but I wonder what's wrong with Americans: a quick calculation shows that per billion km travelled, 3 Dutch (I used that for comparison 'cause that's where I'm from) people die on average each year. 7 Americans do. If you can't see that texting while driving interferes with your ability to drive, and think that prohibiting you from doing so is depriving you of your 'freedoms', I sincerely hope you hit a tree, and not some oncoming motorist...
This is not so dangerous, I'm driving right now and I can say there aren't any acc.. Ahhhgggggggggggggggggg !!!!!!!%&/($&)$dhfg%456gt
Just remember:
People in cars cause accidents.
Accidents in cars cause people.
Time to offend someone
Translation: "As far as I'm concerned, the danger posed by a drunk/high driver are the same as any other driver, and the penalties should be equivalent. Needless to say, this would be a very unpopular ruling despite the fact that the dangers are equivalent."
It would be unpopular because they aren't comparable. When you are distracted while driving, you're distracted for a few seconds. An accident only occurs if something happens to occur during those few seconds. When you are drunk, you are incapacitated for the entire duration of your trip. This makes drunk driving much worse than distracted driving.
Also, everyone gets distracted once in a while by something, whether it's texting on a cell phone or shouting at the person you disagree with on talk radio. So in effect, you're arguing that one particular distraction should be singled out, when there's no evidence that it won't simply be replaced by other distractions.
Put another way, 25% of car accidents are linked to gadget use. Better than one in ten drivers are using cell phones at any given moment. This means that this is only a mere 2.5x more likely than you'd expect by purely random chance, and probably less than that if you take into account that teen drivers are much more likely to use cell phones, and are much more likely to have accidents. In short, it is quite likely that this correlation can be explained away completely as mere chance. Probably not completely, but most of it—so much so that passing laws on the subject is unlikely to have a significant impact on accidents.
This is borne out by California's passage of an anti-texting law. Although traffic fatalities went down, they went down by roughly the average amount that they have been dropping each year for the decade prior, suggesting that such laws have minimal impact.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Accidents will go down by 25%.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Drivers are the cause of the accidents.
Drivers were getting into accidents long before there were any gadgets in the cars, even radios. Drivers let themselves get distracted by a lot of different things. They can even get distracted by nothing at all. Driving along in your mundane commute, it's easy to start daydreaming and not pay attention to what goes on around you.
But it's not just distracted driving that causes accidents. Overconfidence and impatience are both big factors. People who think they can drive so much faster with a cell phone in one hand and a latte in the other, just because they haven't crashed lately, cause a lot of accidents. People in too much of a hurry to drive safely cause a number of accidents as well. Let's not forget intoxication though. That too contributes significantly.
The thing is, though, that none of this is really new. These problems have existed since the invention of automobiles. And they all have a common source. The driver. Drivers cause accidents. Aside from the occasional mechanical failure allowing a car to roll down a hill on its own, cars don't get in accidents by themselves. There's (almost) always a driver behind the wheel when the car is in an accident.
I don't think it makes sense to blame the gadget for the accident. The idiot using the gadget would be distracted for some other reason if they weren't using the gadget.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I am very anti-cellphone driver. I just can't stand wild misinterpretations of study results:
Read the study, which *links* cell phones and electronic devices to distracted driving (no-brainer). Some drivers get in accidents. Some drivers use cell phones. Therefore, drivers that get in accidents are using cellphones. Therefore, 25% of all accidents are caused by cellphones! Completely, wildly incorrect.
This is directly from the study. Conclusions:
"How does distraction affect crash risk? The limited research suggests that:
1. Cell phone use increases crash risk to some extent but there is no consensus on the size of the increase.
2. There is no conclusive evidence on whether hands-free cell phone use is less risky than hand-held use.
3. Texting probably increases crash risk more than cell phone use.
4. The effects of other distractions on crash risk cannot be estimated with any confidence"
Take clinical studies more seriously, be suspect of observational studies and recognize the limitations because strong (true) conclusions usually aren't possible.
Even if it's on the front page of your favourite website, where you assume thousands of talented brains massage each post with analytical tendrils to ensure validity, spend a minute to see if the study actually reflects any of what the linking article asserts.
The flaw of observational studies is highlighted in this paragraph:
Texting: In recent surveys, about one-eighth of all drivers
reported texting while driving. In observational studies
during daylight hours in 2009, fewer than 1% of all drivers
were observed to be texting.
This is why they need to ban barrel shrouds on guns and assault clips!
Seems to me that 75% of car accidents are linked to NOT using devices while driving. So you are more likely to get into a car accident if you don't text while driving.
Hey.... the numbers don't lie.
On the bus, train, or streetcar, or an airplane if you're going between cities, you can use any device you want except a music player without headphones (which is against the rules on probably most systems). I take the Chicago Transit Authority's buses and trains all the time, plus Metra trains on occasion, and loads of people are always using newspapers, books, Kindles, smartphones, iPods, iPads, you name it. They had to crack down on the drivers using phones a while back, but for everyone else it's not a problem.
The actual study says that 25% of accidents are caused by distracted driving, not by gadgets per-se. Their list of distractions include (among other things):
1) Vehicle controls/displays.
2) Food.
3) Scenery / roadside features.
4) Daydreaming.
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
When you listen to the stereo, or talk to a passenger, you keep your eyes on the road. Now, perhaps your responses are slightly diminished, but not by much.
When you look down at a smart phone and text somebody, looking up periodically for a moment is nearly useless. When you've broken the continuous processing of deltas in a scene, and you try to reestablish that understanding by looking up, the first few seconds are used by your brain to figure out what everything is and where it is... not "what's evolving in my surroundings".
Devices that completely divert viisual attention are much more dangerous than those that can be handled "blind".
The fact is there were already laws on the books against distracted driving. The problem is that it isn't an "exciting" infraction to enforce.
Cops have a really thick book of possible tickets to write but if the infraction isn't exciting or "sexy". the cops aren't writing tickets. Far and away the most common root cause of accidents works out to failure to yield right-of-way. This can be from obliviousness (cells and whatnot), aggression, stupidity, ignorance, etc. When this driving behavior is witnessed a police officer is more likely to just give a warning. And this is what is killing people.
If it is a "sexy" infraction the cops are all over it. Speeding which is a root cause in accidents in very low rates (I have seen figures listed on the high side at 4% and on the low side at about 1%). Why is this the vast majority of tickets written? Because it is exciting. Cell phones have been given such a big public blitz (for good reason) and it is easy to see so it is now a big enforcement item. Seatbelts became a huge item in most places even though that doesn't cause accidents because of intense media/public pressure (making sure you don't have the freedom to do something to injure yourself is very important...)
Very simply: To do some good we need to be getting police traffic enforcement focused on the core issue of failure to yield right-of-way with people that can't seem to realize they are driving a 2-ton kinetic energy weapon. And the supposed idea that, "Driving is a privilege not a right"... If people demonstrate that they can't consistently follow the rules of right-of-way then it criminal negligence on the government's part to continue to let them drive.
The headline is "25% of Car Accidents Linked to Gadget Use", but that is a high figure from another study (from the National Safety Council). The study quoted here also mentions another study (Flanagan and Sayer) that says it is more like 3-4%. Most of the studies that I have seen seems to be approaching the situation "knowing" that cell phones are the problem. Other distractions are downplayed and/or ignored. Changes in society that impact individual's approach to driving and the amount of time spent in the car are ignored. It looks like more politics than science to me.
1.) What exactly does "linked" mean? If it's not causal, who gives a shit? 2.) What was their data set, how did they calculate 25%? I RTFA - and by the way, it reads a whole lot like and ad. Bonus points, skimming through the citations at the bottom you will find a comprehensive list of insurance companies' shell "safety" organizations (you know, the kind that tell you about Officer McNab on the radio or how about cops are "cracking down")
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
This is Darwinism at work. Let the expired drive-by tweeters and texters be declared, en masse, the next Darwin Awards winners.
There is a great work in progress in collecting real data about drivers. Very intrusive but if you're interested in being part of the database check out "http://www.trb.org/StrategicHighwayResearchProgram2SHRP2/Pages/The_SHRP_2_Naturalistic_Driving_Study_472.aspx"
All I say is by way of discourse, nothing by way of advice
Now we know the REAL reason kids have to wear seat belts:
It's not to save THEM from being hurt IN a crash.
It's to cut down on driver distraction when Jenny yells "Jimmy's on MY side again!" ... again.
So yes, buckling up kids does save lives.
--
Seriously, when properly used with a good booster seat or child-adapters on the shoulder belts, seat belts do reduce overall death and serious injury in car crashes. Buckle those kids up EVEN if they are little angels who will not distract you.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
And now car manufactures want to give you more electronic conveniences in your car .. even if you dont take eyes off road, you can *still* be distracted by thoughts.. zoning out during a phone conversation (handsfree) or listening to messages.. to a degree, it may never be as safe on the road as it was before there were cellphones (maybe even before pagers too)
Course their were bag phones and satellite phones.. but the ratio of people having those was way less than ration of drivers to cell phones now.
If a restaurant goes out of business do we say that the ultimate reason it went out of business was because it was dirty, the food was lousy, it was poorly located and the staff was rude? No, we say it went out of business because the management was incompetent. Likewise, when 40,000 Americans die on our roads each year, all these reasons, driver distractions, drunk driving, etc are just proximate causes. The ultimate cause is the management i.e. the government. They have no incentive to improve road serice because they don't lose money directly when people die. Sure there's a reduced GDP from a few deaths, some people might lose a few votes but none of these people are hurting directly. The losses aren't felt directly. Privatize the roads and let the businesses start losing money then see how fast this problem is reduced to a minimum.
"Do you guys tend to fiddle with the in-dash GPS, read or send a text message while driving, or play around with your iPod in the car while driving?"
Why yes, yes I do.
Look out of the window at the cars passing by. One in ten will be fidgeting with their smartphones with one or no hands on the wheel. Not only does this behavior increase accidents, it contributes to slowing flow and causes jams. And then we shift the onus of safety from us onto the vehicle and go buy a big SUV to be 'safe'.
These problems are never going to go away. There are more cars and more gadgets on the road and technology is ever evolving. Even pre-cell phone days other distractions clearly existed (eating, shaving, reading etc) instead of watching the road. The difference between then and now is theres likely 50x more cars on the road now than 25 years ago. The only real solution is going to be more pressure for self-driving cars and to hell with the assholes that whine about it taking away their driving pleasure. Theyre just as guilty of driving distracted as anyone. Its obvious people are not going to give up their distraction and if the other thing is more interesting than driving they shouldnt be the ones complaining about a self-driving vehicle in the first place. The only people that are going to lose out on this deal are CAB drivers. But one subset industry should not be justification to avoid a technology that potentially could save thousands of avoidable deaths every year.
The hands-free issue is moot:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2008/10/17/cellphone-handsfree.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2012393/Distracting-hands-free-devices-dangerous-mobile.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-features/57097-hands-free-calls-could-be-just-as-dangerous-on-the-roads
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/jun/30/mobilephones.uknews
http://socialtimes.com/distracted-driving-dangerous-but-no-evidence-hands-free-laws-help_b69790
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/hands-free-cell-phone-usage-equally-dangerous-while-driving/
http://news.yahoo.com/hands-free-cell-phone-usage-equally-dangerous-while-170124007.html
http://www.infoniac.com/offbeat-news/hands-free-phones-more-dangerous-for-drivers-than-alcoholic-drinks.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2012393/Distracting-hands-free-devices-dangerous-mobile.html
http://www.iol.co.za/motoring/industry-news/hands-free-phoning-just-as-dangerous-1.1096622
Seems it was published everywhere except mainstream US media, which strongly indicates that it's true but contrary to corporate interests. I guess more accidents translates to more car sales. Ideally cars should be as safe as possible for the driver and passengers, but difficult to drive (i.e. small windows, confusing/distracting features, controls, and meters), and most importantly more likely to be written off from even minor collisions. Sounds about right. Too bad about the bad wrecks that kill people, but hey, business is business.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
It prevents texts from being sent and received while moving over 10 miles per hour.
There. Somebody had to state that, but in this case there is actual evidence behind it..
I've been reading about this correlation for years. But the fact is that nobody has shown a causative effect. In fact some studies have very strongly suggested otherwise.
For example, where bans on cell phone use have gone into effect, studies have shown that the accidents rates did not go down. Further, in those areas where the laws were later repealed, accident rates did not then go up. (Notice also that with all this news of 25% of accidents being caused by cell phones, nobody is reporting that total accident rates are up by 25% since cell phones have become popular.)
So, the actual explanation is likely to be a separate primary cause, something like this: people who already tend to be distracted drivers, tend to be talking on their cell phones when they get into accidents. But if they weren't talking on their cell phones, they'd be doing something else to distract themselves and still get into accidents. (We know that because the studies show that they do... accident rates do not go down.)
Further yet, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that holding a cell phone up to your ear is no worse than using hands-free devices, when it comes to distracted driving. So all these laws against holding a phone to your ear but allowing hands-free devices are completely worthless, and therefore bad laws.
Yet another study showed that laws banning texting can actually increase accidents because people continue to text, but put the phones in their laps to do it so they don't get caught.
Accept risk at the same levels as you accept it in general. Being safer means not driing at all. That's not an option. A certain amount of risk is acceptable. Especially because being distracted by one device displaces being distracted by some other scenario. So removing one distraction doesn't necessarily help.
So how about this. Since every racecar driver uses, in addition to a radio (i.e. phone), a few dozen gadgets; and every fighter jet pilot also uses plenty of distraction-consistent devices, how about we solve this problem the same way we solve those problems. Training.
If using a phone is so typical these days, why not make it a part of the drivers' test? And just like the eye test, maybe your licence says you need glasses, and maybe your licence sense you can't use a phone. Or maybe it says that you can.
You know, if a person can't do something, you teach them how to do it -- a novel concept.
It's expensive. But it's well worth it.
That distracted driver is going to have to be going pretty fast to do any damage to a train.
That said, distracted train operators and bus drivers is also a real problem. About a year ago, the DC area had a spate of videos showing up on YouTube giving proof positive that bus drivers send texts, talk, and even read newspapers while driving.
It would help greatly if Hollywood and the TV studios didn't keep showing stars using cellphones etc. while driving... Seriously folks... it's JUST PLAIN STUPID... people see it done in the movies and TV and don't realise just how dangerous it is... if they are going to show it being done, then they should script in the true consequences, as a public message...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
It doesn't take as much as you might think to derail a train. Especially a commuter train that's going at a pretty good clip.
--edfardos
That distracted driver is going to have to be going pretty fast to do any damage to a train.
That said, distracted train operators and bus drivers is also a real problem. About a year ago, the DC area had a spate of videos showing up on YouTube giving proof positive that bus drivers send texts, talk, and even read newspapers while driving.
Almost forgot. To deal with inattentive train operators, the government mandated Positive Train Control a few years back. The practical upshot of it is that there is coordination between the central office and all locomotives on a track. If it looks like they're going too fast or going to hit, the system sends a warning to the engineer. If there's no response, the system kicks in and stops the train automatically. It won't help with idiots who park their cars on the track or other problems like that but it will help prevent most, if not all train/train collisions.
If you've never ridden a motorcycle, then you really don't appreciate how distracted you are while driving a car. No phone calls, texting, talking to a passenger, no radio to adjust, no AC to adjust, no seat position to adjust. Nothing. Nothing but the road and traffic. It literally amazed me every time I rode just how different it was from the car environment.
It wasn't all that long ago that the train I normally take to and from class crashed catastrophically despite having one of those federally mandated positive train control systems. Google for DC redline collision. So far as the resulting investigation can tell, operator distraction wasn't a factor in that collision. The "operators" on the Metro rarely actually operate the train save for opening and closing the doors.
That said, the train usually is far safer than travel by automobile.
How much might I think it takes to derail a train?
As a regular rider of the DC metro and Maryland commuter rail (MARC), I'm well aware of the frequency at which derailments and collisions occur.
The best defense is a good offense.
1. Heres a DIY kit that smartens' your existing cruise control.
http://goo.gl/LSsg7
2. Heres some App's that beep if you speed.
http://goo.gl/DO1jb
3. Heres an app that beeps if you fall asleep.
http://goo.gl/tLoMf
Jim Pruett, Founder
wikiSPEEDia.org
While I understand there are times when you have to slam the brakes, I wonder how many times an accident is caused by someone hitting the brakes hard when there are no traffic lights or pedestrian crossing. I've been rear-ended twice when someone slammed the brakes, then the next cars slams the brakes, I barely stop in time, then the person behind me doesn't stop in time.
Maybe it would be easier to blink if some drivers didn't test our reflexes so much.
1- Don't drink.
2- Turn off your gadgets.
I couldn't help notice, you were going 20 in a 35 zone and straddling both lanes. I'm not saying you're a bad driver, no; just a really stupid and dangerous one. It's our road too.
Most accidents are caused by human error. Dont just blame the gadgets (which do not make things better) for this problem. I have passed someone eating a donut while reading the daily paper on the stearing wheel while driving 75mph on the belt way. People are the issue not gadgets.
The report would have been published sooner, but a number of the researchers were involved in accidents while writing the report on their netbooks.