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Why the NTSB Is Wrong About Cellphones
YIAAL writes "After a multi-car pileup involving two school buses, the NTSB is urging states to ban all cellphones and personal electronic devices in cars, even hands-free phones. But on looking at the NTSB report, it appears that the big problem was a school bus driver who was following too closely, and another school bus driver who wasn't watching the road. Why is the NTSB targeting gadgets instead of bad drivers?"
When you are distracted while driving you are not using your full attention to focus on the task at hand, which is guiding about a ton or so at high speed where merely the errant twitch can kill or permanently injure someone.
There are many, many studies in cognitive science that have shown that any distraction while driving reduces your ability to react, your reaction time, and the quality of your judgement. Your brain has a finite amount of resources and you are expending them on paying attention to the phone. In any case, cell phones are currently one of the most avoidable distractions out there. It stands to reason they'd be the first targeted for "banning."
Turn your phone off while driving. It could save a life.
About 1% of the population is capable of multitasking. Only they can focus on their gadget and the road. The rest should stay as far away from that as possible.
According to published studies, those who are actually good at multitasking generally consider themselves bad at it, and tend to avoid it. On the other hand, those who consider themselves good at multitasking are rather bad at it. Yet another manifestation of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
This is exactly what I thought when I saw pictures. The buses ran over the kid who was texting. Not one but two of them. How did he cause that?
Well from the article:
A 19-year-old pickup driver rear-ended a truck, and then was rear-ended by two school buses. Two people, including the pickup driver, were killed, and 38 were injured. Although there’s no evidence as to whether the pickup driver was texting at the moment of the crash, he had sent or received 11 texts in the previous 11 minutes.
You conveniently neglected to mention that the 19-year old 'kid' (he should be treated as an adult in my book) was irresponsible and caused the initial accident which then caused the pile up. Was it the bus drivers' fault for following too closely? You bet. But if that initial accident from the cell phone hadn't happened, that whole pile up probably wouldn't have happened either. People follow closely in rush hour traffic and it's bad driving. But maybe if that 'kid' had even put his break lights on, the buses would have also and the collision would have been just a rear ending. You concentrate on the car in front of you and if you are too close, you depend on them to give you some warning. If there's no warning, you both fail.
My work here is dung.
FWIW, Mythbusters tested it.
Episode 33: Killer Brace Position and Cellphones vs Drunk Driving
The brace position on airlines increases chance of death: mythbusted
Talking on a cellphone while driving is as dangerous as drunk driving: confirmed
http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2005/06/mythbusters_killer_brace_posit.html
Parent apparently did not read the linked page.
1) "talking... on a hand-held device...30% increase in the odds of being involved in a crash or near-crash" http://www.drive-safely.net/cell-phone-driving.html
2) "those who eat and drive increase the odds of an accident by 80%" http://www.drive-safely.net/eating-while-driving.html
3) "You are 23 times more likely to have an accident while texting and driving." http://www.drive-safely.net/texting-while-driving.html Note: this is 2300%!
So eating is more dangerous than talking on the phone, but texting is far far more dangerous.