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NTSB Recommends Cell Phone Ban For Drivers
ducomputergeek writes "According to this AP report, the National Transportation Safety Board says 'States should ban all driver use of cell phones and other portable electronic devices, except in emergencies.' 'The recommendation, unanimously agreed to by the five-member board, applies to both hands-free and hand-held phones and significantly exceeds any existing state laws restricting texting and cellphone use behind the wheel.' So what about all the cars today that come with built-in computers, navigation, internet capabilities, and cell phones?"
Talking on the phone and talking to a passenger do not have the same impact on driver attention.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
According to CNN here: http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/13/us/ntsb-cell-phone-ban/index.html?hpt=hp_t1 the proposal would NOT ban the use of hand-free devices, or passenger cell phone usage.
Some funny old FCC thing baring them.
Actually, that funny old law is essentially why the FRC (Federal Radio Commission) was formed in 1912, which eventually became the FCC.
See, for you to receive radio transmissions from a tower far away, you need cooperation from all your neighbors. They have to silence any machinery that would cause interference on channels designated for radio.
Cell phone jammers are illegal because they interfere with designated channels for radio transmission. If they were legal, then you would have no way to deal with a neighbor that runs one near your house. That neighbor would legally be able to interfere with your radio, television, wi-fi, cell phone, etc.
I'm not completely sure whether you were being sarcastic or not, but this regulation, honestly, is very important. Without it, we'd pretty much have to rely on wired communication.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
OK, I'm going to insert this here, since it's always disappointing to see the delusions in threads like this one and it's about time we had some actual data.
Here's a report (PDF) from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) in the UK, published a few years ago around the time we started banning handheld mobile phone use while driving. It cites numerous formal studies. Not all of them reported statistically significant results in all scenarios, but many did and the overall picture is clear. Below are some choice quotations.
Firstly, the bottom line:
Many studies, using a variety of different research techniques, have reached the same conclusions. Using a mobile phone while driving adversely affects driver performance in a number of different ways. It impairs:
Much of the research has assessed using hands-free phones and demonstrates that these still distract drivers and impair safe driving ability, even when driving automatic cars, which are arguably easier to drive than the manual transmission cars predominantly used in the UK.
There is also evidence that using a mobile phone while driving causes greater problems for those drivers who already have a higher accident risk, namely young, novice drivers and elderly drivers.
Next, an example on the subject of denial:
Interviews with nine people who regularly used a hands-free mobile phone for work-related calls while driving revealed that they did not believe that using the phone affected their driving performance because they could adapt their speed or end the call if necessary. However, when they participated in simulated driving tasks of varying complexity on a computer (not a driving simulator) and had to respond to mobile phone calls, their performance was significantly worse during both simple and more complex phone conversations. So, although they did not believe using the phone affected their driving, in reality it did.
It turns out that not all calls are equally distracting, but the difference is not huge:
In another study, 150 subjects observed a video of driving sequences containing situations to which drivers would be expected to respond. Each situation occurred when the subjects were placing a mobile phone call, conducting a simple conversation on a mobile phone, conducting a complex conversation, tuning a radio, and with no distraction. All the distractions led to significant increases in both the number of situations to which the subjects failed to respond and the time it took to respond to them. Complex phone conversations created the greatest distraction and simple conversations the least. The likelihood of a driver failing to notice and respond to a highway-traffic situation ranged from 20% when placing a call or holding a simple phone conversation to 29% for holding a complex phone conversation. Subjects over 50 years old were significantly more likely to fail to respond than younger (17-25 years) subjects.
So how bad is performance while distracted by using a mobile phone? Almost twice as bad as being on the legal drink-drive limit, it seems:
Before the drives, the subjects consumed either an alcoholic drink to take them up to the UK legal drink drive limit of 80 mg/100 ml or a similar looking and tasting placebo drink. During each drive the drivers answered a standard set of questions and conversed over a mobile phone.
On average, drivers’ reaction times were 50% slower when using a hand-held mobile phone than under normal driving conditions, and 30% slower than when under the in
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
You (and the folks responding with "yeah, and...") haven't glanced at the data, have you? Talking on a cell phone is NOT like talking to a passenger or listening to the radio or thinking about food. When you're on the phone you're less aware of your surroundings than if you were shitfaced drunk (again, look at the studies).
If you get poor cell phone reception in your office building you've seen the mindless dolts with phones to their ears walking into you, completely oblivious to everything around them. Well, they're affected even more badly when driving.
If you're on the interstate and there's no traffic, yeah, answer your phone, say "I'm driving, what do you want?" and make it short. In town and in traffic? That call will wait; when you park, just call whoever wanted to talk back. There's no excuse for you to threaten my life because you're too god damned impatient to wait five minutes for a phone call.
Odd how an anti-science comment like yours gets a "1, insightful" at a nerd site. The studies say you're not only wrong, but stupidly wrong.
Free Martian Whores!
Since 1994:
Common cars handle (as in: stop and turn, in that order) far better: Brakes are generally much bigger, drum brakes are far less common, OEM tire compounds have improved, and the FWD layout has grown from the pile of mush that it was into something commonly capable of going 'round a corner (or a person, or an out-of-place vehicle, or...) properly and without undue drama.
ABS has become a normal function instead of an extra-cost item.
Stability control systems have become very common, along with traction control.
Airbag systems have shifted from being somewhat optional to overbearingly-complete during that time.
Crumple zones have improved with advances in applied finite element analysis, CAD, and (I dare say) metallurgy.
Side impact beams have become required equipment.
So, there's lots of things that correlate well with the reduction in fatalities in the timeframe you specified. The obvious rise in cell phone usage over that same period is another data point, to be sure, but I feel that it is pretty weak compared to all that I've listed.
Kid-proof tablet..