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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?"
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.
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?
Now had the kid been on the phone (hand held or hands free) instead of texting even his accident would not have happened,
because he would have had his eyes on the road.
Its my contention that forcing cell phone out of the hands (some states even forbid hands free phoning) represents a cure
worse than the disease. Too many people fear a ticket for talking, and they compensate by texting from their lap (or below
the level of window). Texting out of sight takes your eyes off the road. Talking on the phone, while still a distraction, allows
your eyes to be on the road.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
They are targeting cell phone users because when something bad happens constituents expect a government response. While it is impossible to legislate (or enact regulations) to "be a good driver", it is possible to legislate or regulate cell phone usage. Just another regulation that will be arbitrarily enforced...
Why is the NTSB targeting gadgets instead of bad drivers?
Because using cellphones statistically seems to downgrade everyone a bit, so an excellent driver becomes a good driver, a good driver an ok driver, an ok driver a bad driver, and... a bad "barely got my license" driver a motor powered angry bird
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Because what you want is the guy barreling down on you to be looking down at his phone to see if his call dropped when he enters your jamming field.
Won't end well.
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.
This particular accident is not the reason why the NTSB is proposing this. The NTSB is proposing this because there is a huge amount of incontrovertible evidence that when people talk on their cell phones while driving (regardless of whether the phone is hands-free), the become distracted and drive badly.
Why is the NTSB targeting gadgets instead of bad drivers?
The NTSB isn't targeting gadges. The NTSB is targeting bad drivers. You can put your cell phone in your car while driving, and nobody will target it. But if you talk on your cell phone while driving, you are a bad driver, and you should be targeted.
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It's easy. Politicians love to look busy by passing new laws rather than prodding the executive branch into enforcing laws already on the books. If any of the following were to be enforced regularly, the problem would solve itself by either teaching inattentive drivers to change their ways, or remove them from the roads:
* reckless driving
* Driving below minimum legal speed (usually 10mph below speed limit)
* hindering the flow of traffic
* improper lane changes
* failure to use indicators when required
* failure to yield the right of way
* failure to maintain control of the vehicle
* following too closely
* driving left of center
* traveling in the passing lane
* failure to obey traffic signals
. . . and so on
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
If cell phones are allowed on the road, I'd like it to be legal to allow a 1000ft cell jammer in my car.
That's fine. Since we are granting requests then, I would like to be able to house a jammer-seeking missile in my car. This would have two benefits:
1) Would allow my cell phone based GPS to continue working.
2) Removes an asshole from the planetary gene pool. Now THAT's green!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Listen, most of the people who you talk to think they're one of the "good drivers," who can talk on a cell phone and drive at the same time. It's not like this argument hasn't been used before. I'm sure most of the people you would ask would also respond that they're "smarter than the average person" or "better at X than the average person." NO ONE wants to think of themselves as deficient or average in any manner.
I work at a driving simulator. We've done quite a few studies on distracted driving (including two studies specifically targeting cell phones). These studies have sampled a few hundred different drivers, from all age ranges, technical abilities, genders, etc. ALL of them show (VERY clearly) that EVERYONE is bad at driving while being congnitively distracted. Hands-on, hands-free, whatever--the facts show that if you're concentrating on something other than the task at hand, EVERYONE has problems.
Am I concerned about not legally being able to talk while I drive? Hell no. It's about time.
And the passengers in the minivan each with their cellphones on and working get theirs jammed why?
Ram that cell jammer up your ass and turn it on and fry your nards... You DO NOT need to procreate, one of you is enough.
Yes, those examples cite bad driving while on a cellphone, not just driving while on a cellphone, as the cause of the collisions. But driving while talking on a cellphone doesn't reduce the rate at which people do the bad driving. In fact it seems obvious that distraction by the phone makes it more likely to do more bad driving.
Just talking on the phone isn't colliding with someone. But talking on the phone doesn't make anyone a better driver. It's obvious to everyone on the road how very often it makes many people worse drivers.
Handsfree phones should be required; anything else should be prohibited. And any collision or moving violation should cause subpoena of the phone records (phone#s redacted) to see whether the driver was on the phone at the time. If so, they should be found guilty of distracted driving (and perhaps negligent homicide, if they killed someone). And their insurance policy shouldn't cover the event.
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make install -not war
Following too closely will result in a ticket.
Also cell phones are linked to more than one accident. There is plenty of evidence that cell phones are a major cause of driver inattentiveness and accidents.
The proposal against banning all cell phones could be excessive, but there are plenty of reasons to be concerned about the issue.
Why is the NTSB targeting gadgets instead of bad drivers?
Because it is always easier to come up with a technological solution (even if it doesn't work) than it is to address the real (usually human) problem.
even hands-free phones
This really illustrates the absurdity of the claim that phones are to blame for the problem.
If you're using a hands-free device, you're just basically having a conversation with someone who isn't actually in the car. It's not going to be any more inherently distracting than having a conversation with somebody who is in the car. So if hands-free phones are a problem... So is talking to a passenger.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Because cars can only contain one person?
What?
Then they can pull over. There's rarely a case where the person in the car has to be moving while talking. That's what we have emergency responders for - who can be called into action.
Note that I'm not (necessarily) advocating mobile jammers. Someone in a nearby car might not need to be on the phone, but they might just want to be, and are not driving. It's their privilege to be on the phone, that is not overwhelmed by someone else's interest in jamming everyone.
I'm just pointing out that these "need to talk and drive" excuses are BS.
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make install -not war
In other words if you have the brain power to be good at it, you are smart enough to know that you shouldn't do it. As you can feel your normal attention drain while trying to multi-task.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You all seem to be commented as if it's only bad drivers who are the problem. If you think that you're good enough at yakking and driving to be able to do it safely, you're wrong. You're not.
Every other goddam day I pass someone wondering, "What the hell are they doing?" And the answer is always - ALWAYS - yakking on their goddam phone.
HANG UP AND DRIVE.
As a motorcyclist since the 80s, let me assure you there was no shortage of people trying to kill us motorcyclists before the advent of cell phones.
Look, this is pretty straight forward. Show me a graph of car accidents as a function of year, then superimpose the percent population with cell phones as a function of year over it. If you see the number of accidents increase at the same rate as the percent population with cell phones, I'll buy that cell phones are the hazard people claim. But even though there are more drivers today then in the past, the number of fatal accidents over the last 15 years has decreased. Sure, cars are safer now, and that accounts for some of the decrease, and I'm sure advanced Emergency response techniques also accounts for some of it.
Point is, show me the data. The data I've seen doesn't support the claim that cell phones are as dangerous as they claim.
And don't even get me started on the claim that cell phones cause cancer....
Makes sense. The only people who should be allowed access to "root" are those who won't use it unless it is unavoidable.
- doug
In some states there is already a ban on eating / drinking (soda and the likes) while driving.
Cell phones have been around for 15 + years. The fact is at this point in technology, cars should be better equipped to promote hands free-driving as an automatic installation in all new cars, they aren't. Hands-free is no different then holding a conversation with a passenger, or a parent looking through a special mirror to look into the back seat of the vehicle to check on a child; these are all distractions, period. Cigarettes should be banned while driving. How many times have drivers dropped their lit cigarettes in their lap or in the car and panicked.
I believe that texting while driving is far worse than talking hands-free on the phone. Anything that takes the eyes off the road is a distraction.
Conversely, I have witnessed many people perform stupid driving habits (running red lights, failure to signal, improper lane changes, etc...) that cause accidents, but if there's a gadget involved, the accident is usually noted against the gadget.
I think that we do need more rigorous drivers training and tests. I believe that part of the issue goes into the road planning that is performed by municipalities. There are way more factors than just gadgets that are related to the cause of accidents.
I personally have witnessed 3 Spanish speaking men cheating on a written driver's test, and what did the DMV do, they yelled at them. Instantly those three should have been thrown out of the DMV.
People forget, driving a vehicle is NOT a RIGHT, it is a PRIVILEGE in this country, and this privilege is not revoked enough for people to understand the consequences of their actions.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
So we're banning smoking in cars, manual transmissions, and the handicapped now?
I think that's the mentality that's missing from this whole argument. A risk / benefit analysis. I think LaHood said that 3000 people a year die due to distracted driving. Out of 300 million. Or around 1 in 100,000 . Everybody would be safer if they stayed in their basement, rather than getting out. But there's a whole world out there that's worth exploring, and it's worth the risk to leave your basement. Being able to communicate with other people while traveling makes your life better. That's worth something. Listening to the car radio is worth something. Reading the newspaper while driving makes the ride more fun, and is worth something. Each of these items has risk. Some risks are worth the benefit. Others aren't.
In the end, we're all going to die of something. The challenge is not to make every moment its best, nor to live the longest possible. It's somewhere in the product of these two.
Then they can pull over. There's rarely a case where the person in the car has to be moving while talking. That's what we have emergency responders for - who can be called into action.
I'm sitting alongside the road, calling 911 because my passenger is having a heart attack and you drive buy cutting me off.
Now, depending on the power of this jammer, I may not be able to call anyone for a few minutes... life and death minutes.
That line of thought is the same reason people ride in the left lane at the speed limit because "other people shouldn't be driving faster!" You have absolutely no idea why the person in the other car is doing what they are doing. If you don't like what they are doing, you always have a choice of giving them plenty of room to get away from you. Taking the law into your own hands is never the appropriate action unless you are defending your life from an IMMEDIATE risk.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
No, because there's lots of super-smart people who are/were bad at multitasking. I don't know for sure, but I'll bet Einstein wasn't exactly a great multitasker; people like that generally aren't. In fact, men tend to be very bad multitaskers, compared to women. And just because someone's great at multitasking doesn't mean they're going to be smart in anything else.
So what you're saying is that you pulled some random stuff about Einstein out of your ass and are trying to use it as justification for your argument?
Supposedly he liked working at the patent office, because it allowed him peace and quiet to think.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
The bus drivers still should have avoided the accident - that's the whole point of paying attention and having safe following distance. With the buses not crashing the entire accident wouldn't have been nearly as bad.
So the "professional" drivers did far worse than the kid, and without even having the excuse of a cell phone distraction.
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I'm going to bet you live in a city. Where I grew up, my next door neighbor was one mile away. The nearest Wal-Mart was an hour drive. What you are proposing would have left me and my family more or less under house arrest. Public transportation isn't always available, and driving is not so dangerous as to justify the draconian measures you are suggesting. We aren't talking about flying airplanes!
the correct answer is to move to the city.
You're somewhat out of touch with reality. Half the world's population lives in rural areas[1]. Moving 3.5 trillion people to cities is not a realistic solution.
Cites also have the problem that, if infrastructure fails, everybody dies. They're not "survivable", in military terms.
And some of us just like the country.
[1] http://esa.un.org/unup/p2k0data.asp
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