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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.
It's easier to say "ZOUNDS, we must BAN this THING" than it is to say "Our driver training is not up to scratch, we don't review our training at regular intervals and we don't have mandatory retests for the people we entrust our children to" because that would sound like they've not done their job.
Sadly this isn't restricted to driving buses either.
I am a leaf on the wind
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
As a motorcycist, I would encourage people to not talk or text on their phones while driving. Whenever someone tries to kill me, it's always the same: a woman fiddling with her phone. However, I'm sure this ban would be enforced sporadically, with no reduction in traffic accidents caused by distracted driving...it will just become another excuse for the cops to pull you over and smell your breath.
Great idea. What if someone in the car next to you has a real need to be on the phone?
The FCC has made these illegal for a REASON.
Dog is my co-pilot.
I think we're at the point we can agree that DIALING a cell phone or looking at a phone screen is dangerous. We've all had near misses ( or worse ). I think the NTSB is overreaching on an outright ban, but I like the direction it's taking. Talking on a phone is no worse than talking to someone in the passenger seat. Using voice activated dialing systems in a car seems like a reasonable line to me.
Seriously, eating a Big Mac from the drive thru takes more concentration from the road than talking on the cell phone. This is just ignorance by the NTSB. I don't see them trying to ban drive thrus!
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.
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.
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
Yes, texting while driving is inherently dangerous: It takes your eyes off the road and your hands off the wheel. That is presumably why texting while driving is already illegal in Missouri for drivers under 21. But there’s a big leap from the Missouri accident to the NTSB’s suggestion for a broad, new national ban.
So you would agree that texting while driving decreases your reaction time and decreases how alert you are to the road? Okay so what else does that? Well, being drunk and driving is pretty much a death sentence in most states. I drove a friend to and from work every day for a year adding over 1 hour to my daily commute. Because he was pass the legal limit when he was pulled over. After that he had an interlock system that he had to pay to have installed in his car that wouldn't let him drink and drive. All of this because he was doing something that impaired his reaction time and alertness.
Now you fight the NTSB about banning cell phones while driving? What happens now when you're pulled over while texting (if you even are)? $200? A slap on the wrist? Are you forced to pay to have a Faraday cage installed in your automobile? Is your driver's license revoked for a year? Why not?
I'm reminded of the car talk episode where a guy was calling into a radio station while driving and you hear him hit a car and one of the hosts of Car Talk says "Good, ya jerk!"
My work here is dung.
from TFA:
4. The absence of a timely brake application, the cellular provider records indicating frequent texting while driving, the temporal proximity of the last incoming text message to the collision, and the witness statement regarding the driver's actions indicate that the GMC pickup driver was most likely distracted from the driving task by a text messaging conversation at or near the time of the accident.
9 The GMC pickup driver was fatigued at the time of the accident due to cumulative sleep debt and acute sleep loss, which could have resulted in impaired cognitive processing or other performance decrements.
And that's why texting while driving is bad, boys and girls. And not getting enough sleep will, apparently, make you stupid enough to do it.
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.
Do people honestly have doubt that distracted driving such as operating cell phones is not a risk to traffic safety? Seriously? Sure, every accident has a multitude of factors involved and how they count the number of accidents where something is 'a factor' is shameful (if you get in an accident and a bottle of wine in your trunk breaks, suddenly your accident was 'alcohol related'), but come on people, having a conversation with someone not in the vehicle is not something a significant proportion of the population should be attempting to do. Trying to type and read off of a screen is a liability to yourself and others in your vicinity. I know we are all above average drivers, but they aren't and we sure as hell don't trust them.
Awesome Idea - until the person beside you is using the cell network to navigate and is quietly listening to directions until the cellphone stops working.
Then distracted by the lack of directions starts messing with the phone to fix the problem getting far more distracted from the road than they already were.
Or someone who is texting every couple of minutes... instead of hanging on to the phone for a few seconds at a time they'll now probably study the phone until the text goes through... which will be far longer.
Or worst yet, someone who needs the phone for a true emergency.
Man, that sounds like it will make drivers less distracted *rolls eyes* And don't get me wrong - I don't advocate actively using your phone while driving at all, but your "solution" will at best do nothing, and at worst just create a bigger problem.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
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
By their nature, bad drivers can't self-identify. It's the other driver, not them, right?
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
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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Uh that's a terrible idea. What about passengers? One of the reasons I take public transportation is so I can text. Executives are given chauffeured limos and towncars so they can work from them.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
A: They are just stupid - gov always is. Tailgating caused that. It's never enforced except by Darwin, and sometimes you can't avoid doing it. Leaving enough room means some fuckwad just puts himself in it.
B: Phones are distracting. There's an obvious reason. If the person you're talking to is in the car, they realize when you're entering a dangerous situation, and shut up, even help look for problems. On the phone, you're pretending to be doing something useful, probably pretending not to be in a car at all. Thus you don't get the critical pauses at times when it's dangerous. The other guy, unaware of your situation, might be driving home his crucial point just as you're turning left across traffic into a multi-lane zoo with someone changing lanes into your path. No time to be either listening or talking, IMO.
C: While I love my new Chevy Volt, all that animation on the multiple screens is MUCH MORE DISTRACTING than the phone is. Period. I use the phone to order pizza on the way to get it, that's about it. Never a problem, I pick my spot, and it's short and over with. But if you adust the cruise control, it takes time for that popup window to pop up, show the data, then go away - and your eyes are off the road the whole time. Ditto the center stack. I just know that several times while driving this car, I've noticed myself not paying enough attention, and it's been that, never the phone. Lucky this has only happened so far when it was just drifting out of lane on a road with no traffic...but I'm going to have to get discipline about not looking at the eye candy fer sure.
D: All you idiots out there for whom the only possible application of the word smart applies to something you're holding, not you. If they let you have this shit, you'll be texting and playing games...no way that's good - and it's so addicitve people already lie about it - they say it's dangerous when others do it, but not when they do - pure vain rationalization.
I think you're half insane to even have a cel phone. Gosh, that means everyone with my number who gets bored thinks they own my time - and you give into that because you're so damn insecure you think it gets you friends, sucker. If that's what it takes, they ain't your friends, they're parasites on your time.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
The reason to kill off cell phones while driving has nothing to do with this event. For some reason it grabbed screen time and the attentions of many people. However, the reason for banning phones has more to do with the fact that every time I go driving the driver of pretty much every other car I drive by is chatting on their phone. Studies have proven that when we multitask our IQ for each task drops significantly. Hell even the myth busters showed how much this can affect your driving and they didn't even have to do that much testing to show that talking on the phone was a problem. Compile a decade of reports from wrecks and I'm sure the point is obvious. I heard people constantly saying "oh but it will be so hard to enforce." This is simply lies. If its illegal to be on your phone at all while driving then any cop who sees a phone in a drivers hands has cause to immediately ticket the driver. Just as if they drive by me and they notice my seat belt is off. Fact is, this law would save lives at the cost of a slight convenience the human race didn't even have over 20 years ago. We made due then, and we can make due now.
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?
I just wish Taxi drivers could let go of their cell phones and start acting as professional as they used to be.
Name a time when taxi drivers were ever professionals!! These guys usually drive cabs because they can't hold down any other job.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
You don't want to forget droppable oil, spikes and other traps either. Takes out people behind you much easier than missiles.
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
Public transportation? Fuck off and die, you commie socialist marxist scum.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Because everyone is a bad driver when they're too busy talking on the phone to pay attention to what they're doing, dumbass. This isn't some new thing. It's been known for a very long time that most accidents are caused by distractions, and that talking on a phone (and even more so with texting) are significant distractions.
The NTSB is pointing out what is blindingly obvious to anybody who pays attention, rather then thinking that driving is a great time to be doing other stuff.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
How about we ban the posting of inflammatory, trollish summaries on /. and return the site to a place for bloody nerds, if any are left these days?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
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.
You mean by making it illegal? It already is dumbass.
I'm for a ban against texting while driving and talking on a cell phone while driving unless a hands free device is being used. Even using a hands free device is still a distraction to driving. My car has it built in and I can admit that when I'm talking to someone it does take away some attention to the road. It's not nearly as bad as holding the phone to my ear.
Too many times have I almost been in an accident due to a person talking on their phone not paying full attention to the road. On the highway it's not a big issue, driving through town while going through stop signs, lights, watching for pedestrians, making turns.. it's just too much to do with one hand occupied by a phone.
I'm only 32 but I can remember a time before everyone had cell phones when a person could drive 10 minutes without having to make/receive a call.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
This will no doubt pass, and the TSA will enforce it.
Since almost everyone has a cell phone this emergency is perfect for giving the Government carte blanche to pull anyone over.
This "Emergency" is too perfect not to exploit.
In recent weeks driving along some interstates I have witnessed numerous people driving below the speed limit, weaving from side to side within their lane and obviously looking down instead of straight ahead. The common element in all of these cases is that the drivers were doing something on their cell phones.
The crash with the school bus may or may not have been due to the driver following to closely, but I am sure as hell sick of seeing impaired drivers on the road and look forward to people being forced to pay attention to navigating a metal death missile at high speed.
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This isn't a one-study thing. Over the past five years a bunch of studies have come out saying, basically "cell phones increase your likelihood of crashing as much as drinking" and "hands free headsets do not lower this risk significantly".
Focusing on the phones makes sense. No one drives as well with the phone as without. Lots of people think that the headset helps, even though there's plenty of evidence that it doesn't. It does not MATTER if it keeps your hands on the wheel or your eyes on the road, the issue is attention in general. People's feelings on this don't match up with the actual evidence, so we're forced to legislate, since it impacts other people as much or more than the driver.
You make it illegal so that someone who's always riding around without paying attention to what they're doing doesn't have to kill someone before we get them off the road.
Missiles are cooler than the other traps. Especially when they are shot from the headlights.
Fight Spammers!
What about the passengers, is there any particular reason why they shouldn't be able to use their cellphone? Or the driver for that matter. The risks related to cellphone use while operating a car are from operating them both simultaneously. Having one sitting on the seat or in a purse receiving texts and emails isn't a risk factor for causing an accident.
Really? So all the passengers have to sit there in stony silence just because they are riding with someone going over 20mph?
How many "are we there yet" questions do you want to answer?
Its not talking on the phone that is so dangerous (a slight distraction admittedly), its dialing or texting that takes your eyes off the road.
We often call ahead for reservations, and chat with friends while riding in the car, or car pools, or buses or commuter trains. Your solution is worse than the the knee jerk reaction of the NTSB.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I do not understand the logic here. Because other driving habits are dangerous too, the use of cell phones while your driving is OK? You are so wrong. Using the cell phone while your driving is not safe. And it doesn't matter if you are using a headset either. I see it every day and there are studies to prove this. And because people are usually too stupid to make good decisions on their own, they have to be told what not to do. That's why DUI is illegal too, even if there are more things which you shouldn't do while driving. -H
hfoo
Why is the NTSB targeting gadgets instead of bad drivers?"
Because the gadgets are involved in, and the cause of, a very large number of accidents. You can cherry pick the accident stats all you'd like in a failed attempt to dodge the issue, but the fact is that the car's driver seat is becoming more like the comfy chair in the living room instead of a driver seat.
.
Should cell phones be singled out? I'd say no. But the problem remains, how do you determine the "bad" driver who thinks it is OK not to pay attention to what is occurring on the road around him/her?
How do you find and remove from the road the drivers who are simply not paying attention?
You do know that most major racing groups use radios to communicate to their drivers? That Rally car racing drivers are constantly talking to their navigators. If it is that much of a performance drop they would not be using them. Cell phones are no different than that. The problem is training and education and not gadgets. Right now I do not know of one single state requiring simulated driving tests, just the "get in and parallel park" stuff. Put them in a sim, make them stop for a deer, have pedestrians walk out in front of them, have a driver cut them off while texting. Have them hit black ice, have a person in the back yell at them, and have them make a cell phone call while on a turn. In a sim they wont do any damage and they will learn how to handle it. Right now we hand out a license to any person that knows alcohol limits and can park a car. Get them better trained.
Personally I prefer Red Shells.
Cell phones don't cause the accidents, they will however contribute to the accident. I'm not sure why it's OK to bar drivers from driving drunk, but driving distracted is perfectly OK. Ultimately, as long as drivers can maim and kill other people there's going to be justification for restricting what they can do while driving.
The real problem is that in the US we've been way too lenient.
What if it was the 1940s?
If they were not using their cell phone, they would have been able to focus better on hitting you.
Cab drivers in Boston have pictures of little motorcycles, crossed out, under the driver's window.
Fight Spammers!
I agree, people who cross multiple lanes at a time while going 70MPH should be taken out before they hit me.
Rather than single out one thing let's punish people who do stupid shit. People who do things like play on their phone and don't pay attention should just lose their licence for a few years same if you rather eat food than pay attention to the road. Too many people treat driving as if its a right and the government rather let you drive and take your money but instead they should be taking bad drivers off the road.
I sure wouldn't want to fly in a plane where the pilot were allowed to have their cell phone switched on.
Funny you mention that. I was talking via amateur radio to a pilot flying at 40k+ ft in a private jet just the other day. I was in VA and he was over one of the great lakes. I don't know if he was pilot in command at the time or not, but pilots are regularly required to fly and talk on the radio at the same time. The difference - pilots are _trained_ to do it, drivers are barely trained to drive, much less multitask.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Texting while driving is obviously a serious killer.
Legislation might not be the answer: I favor a technical solution. Say, devices automatically disconnect at a certain speed from IM/ voice, except for 911, something like that.
But to suggest that texting while driving is not a problem, even if this SPECIFIC story might have unclear details, is ignorant and dangerous FUD. Yes, this specific story's details might not directly support the idea that texting kills, but texting obviously kills, and to suggest that, since this ONE story doesn't support the specifics, then therefore, let's not worry about texting... that is irresponsible and ignorant.
Horrible story summary.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Distraction (and drunkenness too, now that I think of it) is a modifying disadvantage, in that's it's not all that bad on its own, but when stacked up against another danger (which may or may not be under the driver's control), makes everything much worse. Potentially dangerous situations that an on-the-ball driver can handle, become serious risks if the driver isn't "with it."
Phone talkers and drunks aren't with it, and not just because they changed what it is. What phone talkers and drunks are with was never it, and what's it isn't very weird and scary to an attentive and sober driver.
Following closely? Speeding? Someone pulled out into the street? A motorcycle is approaching on a cross street? A pedestrian had the unmitigated gall to exist? These things are deal-with-able, assuming you haven't decided to make yourself suck by placing a phone call or having that 3rd IPA.
Are these the same school buses that the same NTSB gives authority to bypass seat belt laws? I say its time to strap those kids down.
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.
Anyone that can pass a safe driver exam as well as a reaction time test *while* texting or talking on a cell phone should get an exemption. Exactly ZERO people would have exemptions.
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If cell phones are allowed on the road, I'd like it to be legal to allow a 1000ft cell jammer in my car.
Cell phones have always been allowed on the road. If talking to someone on a phone while driving is dangerous, talking to passengers is too; can you jam those conversations? I have personally been distracted by talking to passengers and now consciously avoid allowing conversations to distract me from the road ahead of me. Driving on public roads is a privilege that requires competence and responsibility. Reactionary banning of devices which can be abused will not improve safety overall.
NTSB is saying something I disagree with, so it must be wrong.
I also heard if you talk on the cell phone while pregant, your kids will get Austism unless you have a vaccine or live hear high tension power lines!
Just SOME people have difficulty concentrating on the road. School bus drivers distracted by kids and soccer moms distracted by ... kids (again). Just ban kids in the car! Problem solved!
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I can't drive and use a phone at the same time. I used to think I could but then I started paying attention and noticed that my speed was varying more. So I started using cruise control. But then I noticed that the truck was drifting more even after I had the steering checked and the wheels aligned. Finally, I remembered that when I used to do telephone technical support I was really good at it because I could visualize what was happening on the other end of the line so well that I wouldn't notice things happening at the next desk. The same thing was happening when I used the phone in the car -- I began to focus on the person I was talking to instead of driving. Yes, the bus was following too closely -- don't think that had anything to do with the driver's mind being occupied with something else? I used to ride a motorcycle and I learned to drive it as if everyone else on the road was consciously trying to kill me. That's how I drive the car now -- with the phone safely ensconced in the backpack in the back seat. Often it's turned off because when I'm on the road it uses a whole lot of battery trying to find a signal when I'm in between towers. You want to use the phone, fine. Now if you don't have any kids, haven't bred, and want to cull your defective genes that's your choice. But I hope you're in your own lane separated from me by Jersey Barriers because I don't want your car pulling in front of my truck. I don't want your blood on my conscience.
The result of such studies is much less likely to involve further restrictions on drivers, and much more likely to provide a further push towards autonomous vehicles that allow users to be even more distracted.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> Why is the NTSB targeting gadgets instead of bad drivers?"
Because it makes... oh, I already said that.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
And if someone pulled over in a space in a parking lot 20ft from the road you're driving down with your 1000ft cell jammer has a legitimate need to be on the phone?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I wouldn't say 1000 ft, there's no need for that. You'd be jamming signals on the other side of a 6 lane freeway.
However imagine for a second that you did have this jammer. Someone would suddenly lose a signal, and probably take their attention off the road to look at their phone to figure out what went wrong. So in reality you could make the situation even more dangerous.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Just require the driver in the driving test to talk on a phone, navigating a voice menu, eating french fries with dipping sauce, and selecting music from an ipod.
Renewal test every 4 years.
Just about every time I have almost been run over by a car, it's been by some damned fool talking on the phone driving. Half the time they didn't even notice they almost hit me.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
So the solution is to run a EMP device that fires an EMP every 2 seconds and drive a car with a mechanical ignition system. Smoke the idiots on the highway's car ECM and their cellphone. Plus I think I'll get to work faster the next few days after as a lot of cars will not be on the road.
This is turning out to be a great idea.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Because if poor drivers were targeted, nobody would be allowed to drive.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
You can play that game all day. If not but for oxygen the arsonist wouldn't have been able to create a fire, but it's still the arsonists fault. If not but for automobiles there would have been no accident at all, that doesn't absolve the bus drivers of following too close and/or being inattentive.
You do know that most major racing groups use radios to communicate to their drivers? That Rally car racing drivers are constantly talking to their navigators. If it is that much of a performance drop they would not be using them. Cell phones are no different than that. The problem is training and education and not gadgets.
That's true but there's a world of difference between a rally driver and your average soccer mom, at least in training and experience, and possibly in some kind of inherent/instinctual skill, it's really not a valid comparison. Also navigators are in the car so that brings up the in-car awareness argument. Pit teams can also see what the driver's doing and know when not to interrupt, a lot of F1 drivers tell the crew not to talk to them in corners.
Almost all good racing drivers were on karts and/or simulators from childhood, and even some who've done so can't cut it when the competition gets tough.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
They get to make suggestions to other government agencies, congress and the states. They can't enact anything. The FAA often ignores them completely.
If you use their logic with cellphones then the state should outlaw talking to passengers especially children. I'd be willing to bet that the number of accidents cause by drivers interacting with their kids have caused an order of magnitude more accidents over the same period of time.
Now I would have no problem at all if the states had an add on fine if investigation found that the accident was caused by the driver using a cell phone....or the car radio....or talking to their passenger.
But just saying X lives will be saved is silly unless you are willing to also publish the X number of lives that would be saved by doing some other regulatory action.
I want a government not a nanny.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
I'm not sure why it's OK to bar drivers from driving drunk, but driving distracted is perfectly OK.
Because "distracted" can't be defined, and varies even more widely than the effects of alcohol.
Some people are "distracted" while driving simply because the number of things they need to pay attention to just to drive is too much for them. On the other hand, some people can do complex math in their head while driving and perform as well as if they focused just on driving.
Personally, listening to the radio or a person talking to me (in the car or on hands-free phone) doesn't distract me at all. If I have to think about answers to questions, then that is somewhat distracting. Because of this, I limit cell phone use in the car to things like "I'm stuck in traffic...I'll be there 10 minutes late"...long conversations about the movie I just saw aren't appropriate.
This last bit is the primary reason that cell phone use in cars is so high...too damn many people feel they need to constantly talk and get feedback about every little thing in their lives. Facebook and Twitter probably wouldn't have been popular 20 years ago even if the current devices and connectivity existed.
What about the passengers
Hey stupid, he covered that. Do you bother reading the comment you respond to? No really, it does help.
The NTSB isn't targeting eating, or car stereos (with fancy graphic equalizers that allow you to remix the songs while you are driving), or talkative passengers, so I can come to only one conclusion: Allowing the driver to talk is apparently what makes cell phones so dangerous.
It is reasonable then to suggest that, rather than banning cell phones, we should require ball-gags as standard equipment in a motor vehicles. Police should the enforce the use of these new devices, and issue tickets to drivers that fail to use them.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
This will increase dramatically the number of times some friend or relative gets irrationally pissed off at you for ignoring their phone call or screening them because you are not immediately answering your cell phone. :D
I think that the problem is with WHEN people decide to use their phones while driving. It's not dangerous at all to glance at your phone at a stoplight, and I think that it's minimally dangerous to use your phone on a familiar road while driving straight in light traffic. The problem is with people who are talking on their phones while trying to aggressively change lanes in rush hour or with people who are looking at their phone to text or dial in stop-and-go traffic. I think that if you are reasonable about when you choose to use your phone, it negates most of the danger. The problem with the studies is that subjects are tested in situations where they shouldn't be using their phones anyway under normal circumstances. You don't have to worry about missing an exit or crashing into a car in front of you when you know the area and you aren't following closely to begin with... ie: situations where it's safe to use your phone.
That would work... I'll let you take care of the people jamming stuff needlessly....
Personally, I just want a 1000W fresnel spot to point at the people behind me who forget how to turn their high beams off, or cruise around with their fog lights on at night....
No, but picking up the damned thing to see what it says (and likely respond) are risk factors for an accident.
I have seen people nearly drive off the road because they're texting, and I regularly see someone who is trying to text at a red light who isn't paying attention when the light changes to green.
Hell, I once saw the guy in my rear-view mirror with both thumbs on his Blackberry and not looking at the road. If that's not completely "distracted" driving, I have no idea what is. I wanted to get out and slap him silly, because he wasn't paying attention and I don't feel like getting rear-ended by some tool who can't put down his phone long enough to drive to work.
Though, in fairness, the craziest thing I ever saw was a lady eating take-out Chinese with chopsticks while driving and juggling a coffee. The mind reels.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
That'll work great in downtown Manhattan... what could possibly go wrong?
Cellphones are a lot different than that. Cellphones are in use on open roads, not closed tracks.
On a closed course, the traffic is known, not variable; excepting Rally races, the crew communicating with the driver can also see exactly what's going on around the driver.
The chance of a sudden, unexpected and unknown to the communicating party, change in conditions, which may require them to shut the fuck up so the driver can concentrate on the road, is extremely slim on a closed course. On the open road, conditions change constantly and the person on the other end of that phone has no fucking clue when they should shut up.
Add to that, communication during a race is kept to a minimum, the bare essentials. Communication by your average cell user blabs incessantly about random useless shit. A few seconds during a race, versus an involved conversation lasting the duration of the commute, hmm, which is more dangerous?
Then, add in dialing or reaching to answer the phone. Racers use radios with either wheel-mounted PTT buttons or a decent VOX system, so they never take their hands off the wheel except to shift.
No, you're right, absolutely the same.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Why is the NTSB targeting gadgets instead of bad drivers?
Because that would be antithetical to the current social paradigm in the US, to wit: You can't hold people personally responsible, you must either blame society, a group or organization, or simply "too much freedom".
That last one is popular, and the NTSB has decided that "too much freedom" is the problem this time. Since there are some people too irresponsible to be trusted with a cell phone and a driver's license, you must punish everyone by imposing restrictions on the entire populace.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Yes they were following too closely. Why? Because they had cellphones on. Saying they were driving too closely is like saying "The bullet didn't kill him, blood loss did.". Driving while on the phone is a huge distraction - far more than talking to someone in the back seat. The guy in the back seat shuts up when things get dangerous - while the person on the phone keeps on talking and no, your brain can't ignore him while the truck is slamming on it's brakes.
Scientists studied accident reports and discovered they were caused by 1) drunk driving and 2) cellphones. They investigated again and found that both alcohol and cellphone use slowed down reaction time.
For a long time, we had an alcohol accepting culture. People that used alcohol laughed and said "I can drive drunk", and idiots believed them. But we have always had anti-alcohol sub groups (Prohibition for example), in part because alcohol has many other bad features besides affecting driving. Slowly anti-alcohol groups lobbied for years till it ceased to become socially acceptable to drink alcohol. Eventually the anecdotal evidence became exposed for the ridiculous arugment it was
But more people use cellphones than drive drunk. There are no intelligent anti-cellphone groups like we had against alcohol. The majority of people do something stupid and dangerous and falsely believe the anecdotal evidence that it is safe. THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT SAFE. Your argument about "I have done it safely" is as moronic as the drunkards claim that they drove safely. WHat counts is not if you personally have in the past done it, but stasticially, is it safe.
And the answer - whether it is from studies in Utah, studies by Harvard, Studies by Britain's "Car and Driver", studies in Australia, or any of the many many other places that did studies is: Driving while using a cell phone - even if it is hands free - is just as dangerous as driving while drunk.
It is going to take a long time to outlaw. We are going to need a "MACD" to pop up and do what Mothers Against Drunk Driving did.
But it IS dangerous despite what all you arrogant "I can drive safely while texting/calling" believers think. Just as driving while drunk is dangerous despite what all the drunkard morons think (Ever try to take their keys? - you sound the same.) Eventually it WILL be illegal, just like drunk driving. The only question is, how many innocent people will you murder before you admit you are wrong - no, you can't drive safely while using a cellphone.
There are already laws that address motor vehicle accidents, proper operation, etc. If there's a wreck, it shouldn't matter why. We're past the point of splitting hairs over what's safe enough to do on the road. More laws are just about more revenue: it gives the cops yet another mundane thing they can stop and ticket you for.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
Because without bad drivers, NTSB would be out a job.
They need something to blame; something that is unlikely to affect their continued operation. Ergo, they lobby for removal of distractions (sensible, I guess) but I'm thinking, as I'm sure many others are, why aren't they targetting bad drivers?
Incidentally, the Driving Standards Agency in the UK, along with several other agencies including the Police, are considering a separate motorway portion of the standard driving test. Damn good idea; currently the standard driving test does not include three lane highways, which apart from directly outside schools is the site of the most terrible incidents involving cars and fatalities, and it's mainly down to people who don't know what the fuck they're doing on fast roads.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I can't help with the fog lights ... but my standard procedure for high beams behind me is to simply "adjust" my center rear-view mirror.
After you shine the light back at them a few times, they tend to drop their brights.
Now, if only I could do something about those people who insist on driving with their hazard lights on when it's pouring down raining at night, not realizing that it (1) means that either their turn signals or brake lights are effectively disabled and (2) screws up your night vision even worse so you can't see the difficult to see lane striping (3) gives people massive headaches which can slow down their reaction time driving. If you feel unsafe driving in the rain ... pull over and stop. (but make sure you pull really far over, as some other idiot might have his hazard lights off, and the person behind him won't see you pulled over, or the lane markings)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
* both school buses had problems with their hydraulic brake systems, which led to reduce braking capabilities
... and failed eight of the 20 remaining buses serving the school district
... that was sent to the hospital that day to pick up students suffered a brake failure in the hospital parking lot and hit three cars.
* NTSB did its own inspection
* also noted that a third bus
http://threeriverspublishing.com/TRP/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9620:texting-and-driving-caused-bus-wreck&catid=66&Itemid=264/
Yeah, sounds like the only problem was texting. (sarc)
Oh, by the way, it's *already* illegal for drivers younger than 21 to text while driving in Missouri.
I can't name a time, but I can name a couple of places: London and Australia in general.
In Australia I ran into an EE who was driving a cab (you sit in the front and shoot the shit with them there). This while they paid me to fly halfway around the world to install software.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
First you fix what you can. Imagine somebody is having a lot of trouble catching a baseball, and it turns out they have the glove on the wrong hand. First, you tell them to put the glove on the correct hand (something anybody can achieve). You don't start by telling them they should "get better" (which is not something that everybody can just do).
1. Twin 20mm Frontal Assault cannons with Eye Tracking aim.
2. Bumper mounted wreckage shovel.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Why say "not to take sides" immediatly before taking sides?
Does anyone else freak out like I do at the possibility of laws like this?
For example, let's imagine Stacy (fictional person) has a 30 minute commute to work. 5 days each week, she spends the time driving home from work on the phone, talking with friends.
After the NTSB recommendations are applied, she drives home in silence. Then when she gets home, she spends 30 minutes talking on the phone with friends. Everything else in her evening is pushed back 30 minutes, and now she goes to bed 30 minutes later each night.
Now, Stacy is missing out on 2.5 hours of sleep each week. After a couple weeks, this mounts up to a substantial amount, and it begins impairing her driving!
I honestly feel safer with Stacy being able to choose how she spends her time each day. She might not always make the right choices, but I trust her choices more than the ones the government would like to force on her.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
How many people have heart attacks while passengers in cars? How many need the driver to call ahead instead of just rushing to a hospital?
Name one. One.
Then tell me how their survival chances are reduced because the driver is talking on a cellphone instead of concentrating on driving as fast as safely possible to the hospital.
Then I'll tell you how many people are sent to the hospital by other drivers talking on their phones: many. Every year.
--
make install -not war
You do know that most major racing groups use radios to communicate to their drivers? That Rally car racing drivers are constantly talking to their navigators.
Yes, but they are not having to stare down at a phone pecking in numbers. They have a direct link that requires no effort on their part other than to start talking. Also, they are professionals and have trained from day one to use the equipment. Also, when they get into a situation where a crash has just occurred in front of them, their attention completely shifts to the task at hand and they will stop communicating with the pit until they can spare the cycles to do so.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Rally co-drivers are constantly talking to the drivers. Telling them what is coming around the next corner (e.g. left turn 200m, 3rd gear). The drivers are mostly driving though.
Race drivers are not the same as regular drivers. Like you say, better trained. Focus. Not comfortable (or not fast).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Then they might have to wait the 20 seconds max it takes for a 1000' radius jammer to completely pass them at 60MPH.
But so what? I said
--
make install -not war
You might try reading my post, it really does help. I'm asking about why passengers shouldn't be able to use that phone. But, then again, I'm sure it was much more useful for you to call me stupid for failing to properly read the post...
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?
Maybe I do...
I wasn't commuting 105 miles a day due to a poor economy. So often that time on the phone is when I have to take care of business. It's often the only time I get to talk with my kids before they go to bed - before daddy gets home.
Sure, I'd like to quit and take a job locally. But then my family would be out on the street. I tried for 2 years to find a local job. No I don't have some outlandish mortgage. We have a modest house with a very modest payment, less than $100K mortgage.
That said, most of the studies conclude that driving on cell phone is equal to drunk driving. Two problems with the premise. a) Either this is an argument to abolish drunk driving and/or raise the legal blood alcohol level or b) the drunk control group was not inebriated in any way by the quantity of alcohol they were given.
Sure, there are dangers, and impediments to performance. Especially in tasks that require higher thought and concentration (financials, math, recollection).
But some studies have pointed to mere conversing on a phone being about the same risk as talking to a passenger.
And yes, while some point to the fact that you're driving. You should do nothing else but drive. Let me give a rebuttal. Seriously, who does that. Do you sit silently ignoring the passengers in your car?
Heck, in quiet like that, I am more likely to daydream, become distracted or zone out. In fact, use of cell phones has kept me awake and from nodding off - even saving my life and the lives of others.
As for the risks...yes they're there. But are they significant? I'm not sold.
I've got over a 100,000 miles driven in which I was utilizing phone, texting, or watching Netflix.
Oh yes, I've watched the entire ST:TOS series, and a 1/3 of ST:TNG all while watching Netflix streaming. And guess what I've learned from doing that.
1. No accidents while doing such.
2. Most of my close calls have been when I am NOT using my cell phone.
3. Watching re-runs of TV is much safer than dialing, texting or reading while driving.
4. Almost all built-in GPS units in vehicles are designed wrong. They're put in the center column which takes the driver's eyes off the road. Placing such units in front of the steering wheel will greatly improve safety. That way, even when a driver is looking at the GPS console, they're peripheal vision is still on the road.
Oh, by the way, let me ad that I have not had an acciddent in over 15 years of driving. My one accident at age 19, during the first year I was driving, did not involve a cell phone.
I did get my first moving traffic violation conviction. Accidentally ran a stop sign on a drizzly day. Mind you, this stop sign is on a road that used to be a mere farm path. I've seen 3 cars use that road in a year of driving in the area.
So what is the risk? Sure, I might die while talking on a cell phone. But I might die just driving. Is the risk substantial. I think for some yes, for all some.
Is a law going to stop it? About as much as the Federal 55mph speed limit caused traffic flow not to exceed 55mph - it didn't.
Lastly, the great statistic that puts most of the junk science to rest in it's coffin.
If driving with a cell phone equals equivalent risk as driving drunk. And driving drunk is a major factor in accidents. Then with the great increase in those who are driving while using a cell phone. The number of accidents and deaths should have skyrocketed. Instead, we're seeing a steady decline.
In conclusion, why pass a law that in a dozen years might become a moot point when we all start having patented Google "AutoAutos" that drive themselves. ;-)
The difference between cell phone useage and drunk driving, is that at any time I choose to set down the phone and give driving my full attention, I can. I can't do that while drunk. I have been able to combine years of cell phone and car driving without a single incident. I don't see what the difference is between that and talking to someone in the phone with you. I use my phone as my GPS as well. I see this as yet another government intrusion. Texting while driving is silly. But hands-free phone useage? I don't see why that should be banned. The vast majority can accomplish that without any issue whatsoever. And for me, phone useage adds to my quality of life. My wife can call me for directions, I can help people get to my house, I can ask my wife which store I need to get to. Its a huge convenience. And I think its safer to call as your driving than to pull over and attempt a merge back onto the highway. Especially in heavier traffic.
I'm shocked that all these slashdot poster are going on and on about how cell phone use should be banned. I'm sure almost every single poster does it on a regular basis.
This would be perfect along with a tiered system depending on how well you do on the simulated test. The higher you score the more privileges you have, and have some sort of symbol on your car to indicate your tier. Allow higher tiered drivers to reasonably, legally exceed the speed limit, allow them to make a phone call, etc etc. If you can prove that you can safely perform these tasks, why shouldn't you be allowed to? Also retests every 3 years.
Taking the law into your own hands is never the appropriate action unless you are defending your life from an IMMEDIATE risk.
I agree, but then again, one could make the argument that "endangering others by breaking the law is never the appropriate action unless you are defending your life from an IMMEDIATE risk". I agree that people who drive in the left lane at the speed limit are obnoxious, and are making the highway a more dangerous place to drive... but people who speed are just as culpable as people who intentionally drive the speed limit in the fast lane. Both are putting their personal desires above the general good.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Also, when I was sitting in on the public talks that our province held while they were considering the banning of cell phones one of the "experts" brought up an interesting point. The person on the other side of the phone has no visual context of what you are doing. A passenger is more likely to pause during periods where you are concentrating on a specific action such as left hand turns or merging. We just do not notice it as much because its rather natural.
Here's a study to back it up.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369847805000057
For fun here's a study that doesn't
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369847805000471 (mind you, they were instructed to talk in monotone and a constant pace)
Errr... it's already illegal... I'm not sure what...? Can't tell if trolling or just stupid...
I can see why you didn't log in.
That _is_ usually the case around here.
If you are driving through a different State and don't know where the hospitals are. Granted, if you do know where the hospital is, it's best just to go there and hopefully you don't have some dick in front of you trying to control traffic.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Gadgets (especially cellphones) are a menace. Plenty of studies show that drivers who drive while using cellphones are impaired to a similar extent as legally-intoxicated drunk drivers.
See this and this and this.
Awesome. Because there's no chance whatsoever that someone in a car would want to use a phone, when that someone is not sitting in the driver's seat.
Oh, and I also forgot that all stores, offices, houses, sidewalks, and public plazas are built with 980 ft offsets from every road.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I haven't seen anyone comment on the distraction of GPS systems. Of course, they also get you where you need to go quicker so reduce your time on the road looking for your destination. But still listening to the thing and trying to follow its instructions can be at least as distracting as having a conversation with a passenger or using a hands-free phone.
I mean there is no question people do all kinds of stupid things and I can hardly believe people using phones with one hand while they try to park their car or back it out of a tight spot. But I think to claim hands-free is more of a distraction than a conversation with a passenger is a stretch. At a minimum, it would depend on the circumstances. Someone having a simple conversation on the phone with both hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road could certainly be less distracting than a screaming argument with a passenger.
As an aside, my favorite distracted driving story is about a friend of a friend going to work and seeing the woman behind him doing her makeup in the rearview mirror in stop and go traffic. A few minutes later the guy stops the car in traffic and the lady rear ends him. He looks back and sees her pulling her lipstick out of one of her nostrils.
"Contrarily the lookaside buffer might not be the panacea... "
I'm sorry, but the article linked is flat out wrong. They're missing the point. Yes, two bus drivers did things that were wrong that contributed to the accent. But what really matters is proximate causation. Their actions did not cause the accident. But for what they had done, it would not have been as bad. What caused the accident was a distracted driver in a pick-up truck, sending texts, not paying attention, and rear-ending another vehicle. Had that not happened, there would not have been a pileup. Period. Even if the school bus drivers could have avoided making it worse, no matter how much attention was paid, there still would have been an accident. They did not cause it. While I feel that the NTSB is overstepping by trying to put a national ban on all cell phone usage while driving, it doesn't change the fact that this accident was not caused by the scapegoats that the article tries to present, nor was it caused by the scapegoat that the NTSB is trying to present (people who talk on cell phones while driving, a SIGNIFICANTLY safer activity than texting while driving).
The NTSB/NHTSA know that "bad driving" is already illegal everywhere. But it's unenforcable. People are not convicted of careless driving unless it's given along with another reason (such as a DUI, red light ticket, or as part of a crash investigation). You can't just have someone blow in a hole and get a "beep" for bad drivers or have a "bad driver" camera at intersections. So you target some traits of the bad drivers, even if they are poorly correlated with crashes and instead will catch mostly good drivers or, in many cases, cause worse driving (I see people trying to stealth text now, hiding the phone, making it worse for their driving than if they just held it up where they could more easily watch the road peripherally, but where others could more easily see what they are doing.
Sadly, the real fix is crowdsourcing reporting of bad driving. I called the police on a car driving 30 mph under the limit and weaving all over the road, and was blown off while I pressed the issue until the statement was "if you pull over now, I can send a car out in the next 6 hours to take your statement." They wouldn't even take the plate or description of the driver. It was too early in the day to trigger the "oooh, may be drunk" action. But she is still out there on the roads. And nothing anyone can do about it unless she pisses off some cop.
Learn to love Alaska
The kid DID cause the initial crash, not the bus drivers. The fact is this accident wouldn't have happened without the kid.
Roads should NOT be used by anybody but professional drivers.
For everyone else, they should take public transportation or use commercial car services/delivery services. 95% of the people on the road should never be allowed to drive.
A drivers license should cost at least $10,000.
This would be the start of a proper transportation infrastructure. Leave driving to professionals, so the general public doesn't waste 2 hours a day on useless labor like driving, when they should be doing something more economically productive like reading or sleeping or programming on a computer.
Really, it's the 21st century, and we force the population to do hours of manual labor per day to even get to work? Make them sit in a car and force them to drive to get to work? They can't read a book or work on their computer while going to work? Really?
Sure, I can understand that. That's up to the police to determine though. Most officers I've talked to have no problem with someone driving up to 10 miles per hour over the limit on a clear day. I mainly have a problem with people assuming that the other person is just driving fast for their own ego. (It may be true 90% of the time, but that doesn't make it a valid excuse to enforce your opinions on the road IMHO.)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
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
Then ban car pools because the people in the car will conversing and the driver will be distracted.
Then ban radios in cars because they will distract the drivers. (but then people will fall asleep at the wheel from boredom)
Then ban drive through lanes in McDonalds because drivers will be distracted while EATING in cars (or die from food poising at the wheel).
Then ban drive though lanes at banks because drivers will be distracted while counting money while driving!
Why is the NTSB targeting gadgets instead of bad drivers?
Because the unions will have their ass if they try to make out it was the drivers' fault.
while I don't think we need more nanny laws (increase fines when i do something stupid and have the cell phone in my ear and my seat belt whipping in the wind) a person in the car has a specific need to shut the hell up and not bother you when you're suddenly dodging burning barrels and zombies. the person on the phone not so much.
Generally very true. It's easier to be very good at anything if you can have a high degree of concentration/focus on it. "Rainman" was a good (but actually very uncommon) example of autism giving someone over-the-top focus and being able to perform stunning mental feats as a result. Of course most autistic people can't capitalize on their "gift" that well. Lots of discussion nowadays about how a lot of the "great people" of the past were "borderline autistic".
I've always felt I fit in that category, and I'd imagine a lot of "geeks" do. Not too good socially, reclusive, highly focused.
But getting closer to the root topic, cell phone use is like any other semiautomatic behavior. It can be done transparently with other things, or it can completely take over your thought process such that only very automatic behaviors can continue. Of course XKCD has covered this perfectly.
So everyone is that way, on different things. It's just a matter of to what degree your brain shuts down when you're trying to talk on the cell phone. I really don't think it has anything to do with formal multitasking. In my opinion, "multitasking" is the performing of more than one task that involves significant mental management at the same time. Autonomous things, like walking, don't count. You wouldn't count "walking and chewing gum" at the same time as multitasking because both walking and chewing can be done fairly well autonomously. Texting and walking OTOH, can get you into trouble because you typically take all higher control away from walking to text, and may walk into a pole as a result. Same thing happens when texting into a car... as long as nothing happens that your peripheral vision and subconscious reactions can't handle comes up. But if a deer runs out or a car swerves ahead, your subconscious may not be able to jar your attention from your phone. That's not really a multitasking failure, multitasking skills really can't help you with that. It's sort of like "muscle memory" but for mental things. And it's like cruise control, it can drive for you but you still have to steer, you can't expect it to do it all.
If you're going to do something like text and walk at the same time, safely, you have to look up frequently, and not get caught up in a series of replies that causes you to not look up during an extended period of time. I don't know what that skill is but I don't think it qualifies for "multitasking". Or maybe it does - and it's a case of these people not multitasking, but instead single-tasking and letting the other activity not be managed consciously. Call it "minortasking" maybe. You can't safely minortask driving while texting. You probably could safely multitask it, but that means you are constantly consciously managing your driving. I don't think too many people are good at that sort of thing though.
And so they want to make it illegal for everyone. I don't think I like that either. The basic mentality there is "if too many people can'd do xxx safely, we're going to make it illegal for anyone to do xxx". That looks ok until you're one of the (minority/few/whatever) that can (or I suppose, think you can) do it safely, and lose the right. There'll always be the argument that a lot of people think they can handle it but can't.
I don't think we'll ever be rid of arguments like this. Too many good arguments in too many different directions.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Because good drivers know that using gadgets while driving is not a good idea?
Because gadgets don't vote for officials who approve budgets for things like the NTSB.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The problem with the study is that it lumps texting (always dangerous) with talking on the phone (something you can learn to do safely.)
I used to follow someone and maintain a low profile on the Interstate while using the phone, but after practicing with the phone, I can now be fully aware of everything going on around me and carry on a conversation too. It just takes practice, and a determination that driving the car is priority #1. I can ask the other person to repeat something, or tell them to "standby" if there is a traffic threat I have to deal with and use both hands, and in a pinch, I can just drop the phone and worry about the call later. But you have to practice this stuff.
Same thing with GPS. 1st GPS I mounted in the car, I crossed the center line while staring at the dang thing. Now I know how to do that and intermittantly look at the road for as long as it takes to change whatever needs changing or reading, etc.
Texting, OTOH, I don't think is possible to do safely, as I don't think there's any way to do it efficiently enough to make it worthwhile without taking your eyes off the road for too-long a time. I'd only use it if it had, say, speech recognition so I could send something without keyboarding.
Welp, by the responses, you can tell who does and does not drive while texting and/or talking on the cell phone. To compare it to eating/smoking/shifting a manual transmission while driving is laughable...at best.
While texting/talking, you are taking your eyes and, more importantly, mind off what you are doing...which...btw...is a driving a deadly 4000+ lb bullet. I can drive on the freeway and tell you who is texting and/or talking on their cell...I cannot do the same for smokers/eaters/etc. They are usually driving at least 10mph slower than everyone else and are drifting out of their lane.
BTW, handsfree devices don't help either. All a handsfree does is free your hand, it does not free your mind or your eyes (while dialing) from whatever engaging conversation you are in.
Umm, it can.
When you drive past my house, I'll deploy road spikes.
It's shouldn't matter whether we're good or bad at it or any overly broad number of the people killed or anecdotal evidence of why it doesn't apply to me or you. The question is all things considered how much does it raise the risk of death or serious injury to the average citizen and is that risk acceptable for the value they get from talking on the phone.
Additionally, if they outlaw it you'll have to ask your self the same question though the risk will likely include imprisonment int he event of the death or serious injury of another.
The weeping and gnashing of teeth on both sides gets old. We should just focus on making rational decisions both in public policy and personal actions and move on.
Just wow.
Are you aware of how many lives the NTSB has saved investigating air and rail accidents alone and making recommendations to prevent them from happening again? They aren't perfect, but my lord how ignorant people are today. Look at any of the VAST library of air accidents if you want to learn something.
They are banning the USE of them while driving. It's no different than alcohol. You can store it in your car, you just can drink it while you're driving. Ironically, both do the exact same thing when you use them in the car. They cause people to crash. It should be banned, and the fines should be no different than the state DUIs.
Which is the fact that humans shouldn't be allowed to drive. Clearly they are too fallible. I am a professional driver, which does not necessarily make me better than all of you, just the ones who do idiotic things (like pass me on a double yellow and cut me off to take an exit).
In all likelyhood, unless you are very close to a hospital and know the way there, calling 911 and getting an ambulance on the way is going to be safer, faster and more effective than trying to play ambulance driver yourself.
Heart attacks probably are less likely to happen in a car simply because the people are sitting and hopefully at rest. But that isn't the only eventuality that could lead to someone's need to use a cell phone. I've used a cell phone a number of times over the years to report accidents and road hazards that I observed.
How about this as a possible example? You are running a cell signal jammer when the vehicle in front of you is t-boned at high speed right in front of you at a rural intersection. Being a good samaritan you immediately put on your hazard lights and park so as to protect the crashed vehicles from further accident. You get out and attempt to render assistance or see if it's even possible. How long might it be before you realize that you are blocking everyone from calling 911 while you are caught up in the situation? Even if there are homes nearby they might not have landlines as many people these days just use their cell phones. I'm not 100% on how On-Star type systems work, but it's possible that your jammer could be blocking these reporting mechanisms as well. Even if you have the forethought and situational awareness to turn off your jammer, someone else at the scene might not and leave theirs running. Every second wasted trying to get around a jammer to call 911 increases the risk to someone else's life.
Or how about the simple infringement on your rights if you as a pedestrian can't complete a conversation on your cell phone because cars driving by have jammers?
They're known associates with a driver. Drivers are bad. Therefore, they are bad.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
They did say that driving while phoning is as dangerous as driving drunk. Since 80%+ of the drivers I see on the road are using one it is clear we need to repeal the drunk driving laws because it is relatively safe. Those 80% don't die every day, I would have noticed the decline in congestion on the roads by now.
The reason we subjugate ourselves to law is to better procure justice. If law does not accomplish this purpose then it m
Oh, but everyone knows science is nonsense -- let's go with our gut.
You "believe" it. Unfortunately, the NTSB has decided to do a little bit better than that.
Those communications are an AID to the driver, not a distraction. The person they are talking to knows when is an appropriate time to talk, and only says the minimum required for the task at hand. I can guarantee you none of those racers are chatting with their girlfriends, trying to get their broker to make a trade for them, are getting the ever-so-important notice that their friend has entered a new word on words-with-friends, or any of the other 100% useless crap (for the purposes of driving) that non-racers use their phones for.
Na, the pilots have iPads now.
The reason we subjugate ourselves to law is to better procure justice. If law does not accomplish this purpose then it m
Can you give us your plate number please?
I think most people should minimize their use of cell phones in moving vehicles. Texting in a moving vehicle should almost never happen. Eating a burger in a moving vehicle also a pretty bad idea. Being drunk or otherwise inebriated in a moving vehicle is an extremely bad idea. So is being very tired, or angry, or otherwise out of your right state of mind for any reason.
But none of these things, per se, should be illegal. The reason why we make these things illegal is to cut back on something that they cause: reckless driving. The strength of the supposed justification for banning them is proportional to their correlation to reckless driving: the more frequently and the more extremely reckless peoples' driving becomes as a result of these things, the more we want to ban them.
But if we just enforce the laws that are already on the books about reckless driving (exceeding the speed of traffic or safe road conditions, following too closely, poor lane control, impeding the flow of traffic, etc), then we will punish people for doing these behaviors exactly in proportion to how frequently and extremely it makes them drive recklessly; and we will spare the people who defy the statistic and drive safely despite partaking in a behavior which has a strong but imperfect correlation with reckless driving.
Lets us say, hypothetically, there was some activity which had a 100% correlation to reckless driving. If people do this thing and then drive, or do this thing while driving, then absolutely 100% of the time their driving will be reckless. In that case, we'd certainly want to punish people who do this; but there would be no need to punish doing that activity per se, because everyone who does that activity would also be driving recklessly, so punishing reckless drivers would punish all of the people who do this activity.
Now lets say an activity has a 50% correlation with reckless driving, and that correlation is along gender lines: if men do this and drive, or do this while driving, then they will drive recklessly, every time; but women can do this and drive perfectly fine. In such a strange case, I imagine we would want to ban men from doing this activity and driving, but not women; but again, that would be unnecessary, because 100% of men (50% of the population) who do this and drive will be driving recklessly, so punishing reckless driving will punish all the men who do this activity.
Now lets say there's an activity which has a 50% correlation to reckless driving, but it's not along such clear lines. Maybe it's along some simple lines that are hard to tell at a glance, like blood type. Would we want to ban all people with a certain blood type from engaging in a certain activity because it might cause them to drive recklessly? And go out and test everybody's blood to tell who is or isn't allowed to do this and drive? Or wouldn't we just ban driving recklessly?
What if it wasn't one simple factor, but some complex combination of factors which 50% of the population happen to exhibit, and if you have this complex combination of factors and you do this activity, you will always drive recklessly; and if not, you won't? Would we ban doing this activity and driving if you have this complex combination of factors, and test for that? Or would we just ban driving recklessly, and let that catch them?
What if we didn't know what combination of factors contributed to it? Just, 50% of the population drive recklessly while/after engaging in this activity. We can't tell who will do it or not in advance, so we can't ban only those people who will be affected. Is 50% high enough to ban it for everybody? Half the people out there can do this and drive perfectly safely; the other half can't; do we punish half the population for doing something harmless just because we can't tell in advance whether or not it will be harmless? Or do we punish the people who end up doing the harmful thing as a result, i.e. driving recklessly, and leave the people who can do it harmlessly alone?
Or maybe it's
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Shifting with a manual transmission (or paddle-shifters and tiptronic-style clutch pedal-less devices) IS PART of the driving.
In fact I absolutely hate automatic transmission because I feel I am missing some control over the vehicle. I also ride enduro bikes where braking is many times just using your clutch/gears. If you drive sporty/dynamic and have a manual car (with hopefully RWD as FF cars are shit for anything but winter driving maybe) then you already are using these techniques.
Automatic is for the people who want to talk on the phone, eat, watch a movie, text etc ... generally people in the Americas. Just compare the cup holder sizes in US/Euro models .. if the Euro model has one at all (My BMW has NONE, my Ford (Euro model) has 4, none of them can hold the smallest Clean Canteen... at best a small cup of coffee paper cup...
Now the question is: should I let the asshole talking on the phone in front of me and then slow down to 10kms/h before every turn, or risk the person behind me letting him/her in and then they might crash me from behind...
Can't comment on this particular accident.
However, we do have data in Canadian provinces regarding hand-held devices (cellphones, texting behaviour, etc) and driving.
In Saskatchewan (pop 1 million) fatal accidents known to have contributing factors of the driver either taking on a cellphone or texting while driving were 60 in 2010 (the last year data was available), with 8500 non-fatal accidents.
This compares to 69 fatalities attributed to impaired driving, with 760 injuries and only 1400 collisions.
Since impaired driving as a cause can be made with much more certainty (blood alcohol readings are taken from drivers either by breath analysis or blood tests at the hospital or by the coroner when road accidents are involved) it remains a possibility that talking/texting while driving has surpassed impaired driving (about 20%) as the major cause of road fatalities in that jurisdiction.
Just long enough for the next jammer to drive into range! Splendid!
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
While driving, apparently the eating and coffee are more dangerous than texting. You have to ask yourself, if the more dangerous activity is the one that is never talked about, is this really about safety in the first place?
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
The problem here is the "Banning" mentality. We've discovered something that people do which is a danger to other people.
The knee-jerk reaction is "Ban that action!" "Make it illegal!"
This type of logic has several problems, as anyone who has taken even a moment's consideration will see.
First of all, we shouldn't be banning anything and everything we find that makes life more dangerous. There has to be some sort of risk/reward analysis that considers the total value. Banning smoking in restaurants, banning salt packets in restaurants, banning body-mass-index over a certain value, banning high cholesterol in people, banning having no health insurance... where does it end?
Given: Texting causes accidents. Question: How many accidents are caused by texting? Is it worth putting in any effort, or are the efforts better spent investigating other aspects of driving, such as road hazards, traffic light timing, or automobile construction?
Second, even if we have good reason to we shouldn't be banning something unless doing so is effective. Will banning stop the practice? Historically, consider other bans of the past that are also dangerous: speeding, running red lights, DWI, and so on. Also, consider the bans against drugs, guns, prostitution, and alcohol.
Thirdly, we need to consider unforeseen consequences of the ban. Banning texting forces people to hide their texting by placing the phone on their lap - which is more dangerous than letting people text in the open. Banning drugs, guns, prostitution, and other things has caused a rise of violent crime. How does one detect texting? Will it be a policeman's word against that of the driver? Will the police be able to use texting as a pretense for stop and search? Will the police have a device like a breathalyzer that scans a person's phone? Will we need to abolish peoples' rights to privacy to implement?
And finally, we absolutely need to consider alternatives. Is education more effective than enforcement? (This happens to be true for drugs, for instance.) Will this be an issue in 10 years with self-driving cars, and can we just ignore it until then? Are there other solutions, such as a special "driving keyboard" which make texting a little safer but not completely safe?
The obvious analogy is to ban hunting, because people occasionally get shot. Or ban any dangerous profession (such as machinist) because people occasionally get killed.
There are real things to fear in the world, but small groups will use your fear as a way to increase their control over your behaviour. Try not to give in to the fear - think it through in a clear and logical manner.
I'm not forgetting about them, but if you give me missiles, it will fulfill a daily fantasy of mine.
Yeah, fame, wealth, attractiveness... all good but what I really want is some missiles!
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
And one missile every ten years of maintaining the highest possible ranking... I'm really fixated on car mounted missiles today.
OHHH and if you score low enough, a ban from the more dangerous activity, eating while driving!
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
No. I think it is plain that what he was saying is that the counter-argument about brain-power is shit: There are obviously a lot of smart people in the world who can't multitask, and a lot of stupid people who can -- and vice-versa.
It's not at all clear that intelligence has anything at all to do with multitasking ability.
Kid-proof tablet..
And so they want to make it illegal for everyone. I don't think I like that either. The basic mentality there is "if too many people can'd do xxx safely, we're going to make it illegal for anyone to do xxx". That looks ok until you're one of the (minority/few/whatever) that can (or I suppose, think you can) do it safely, and lose the right. There'll always be the argument that a lot of people think they can handle it but can't.
This is the reason speed limits exsist. Lots of people think thay can drive safely at high speeds, not so many of them can.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
There are (at least) three ways to be a bad driver.
One is simply to not look at the road. I'm all for laws that disallow operating the sort of things you have to look away from the road for. This isn't anything to do with distraction per se, this is simply 'You can only look at one thing at a time'.
So anything that requires more a quick glance should be banned. Texting, for example. (And a lot of car interface things should be rethought, also.)
The second is hand problems. I.e., holding a cell phone, holding a burger, whatever. Cell phones are actually worse than most other things because you can't 'stop'....if you're doing something that requires two hands as you try to take a bite, you can remove the burger from your mouth. But all too often, we instinctively do not want to remove the phone from our ear as we then cannot hear, and they do not know to stop talking. It's a little weird, yes, but everyone does it. We are trained to be polite, and during a cell phone conversation we will often be polite at the expense of safety. We obviously don't think of it this way...but we like to think everything we do is safe until suddenly we're in a car accident wondering what the hell just happened. Think about it in a non-car context..how often have you done weird contortions to continue a conversation instead of just saying 'Hey, I need to hold the phone away from my face for about ten second to do something, hold on?'.
So holding phones to your head should be disallowed. Hands-free only.
The last is distraction, where you start driving 'by automatic' and are not paying attention enough to react in time. The question is, how much of a danger is this, and are cell phones really such a large contributor of it that we need to ban them totally?
I don't actually think this is as much a problem as some people think. Conversations rarely take someone's attention to the point they aren't paying attention to other stuff. Well, I say that, and then I remember people not in cars indeed having cell phone conversations and not paying attention to the world around then...and OTOH, I've seen plenty of idiots not in cars not paying attention for no discernible reason at all.
I have no real answers, but I often feel as if we've lumped all these dangers together. Hands-free removes two of the three ways that cell phones can cause car accidents, and I don't know if anyone's actually tried to figure out how many people got in accidents due to the last one. (As this article points out, this crash was not actually that.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I didn't say its the same, as a matter of fact racing is extremely demanding, and having driven with racers, I know their reaction times are completely different than the average driver. However riding with a race car driver is also completely different on normal roads, they will use one hand while driving, pop a tape in the tape player, while during a turn, all the while talking to you about normal life and just barely looking at the road. What they are doing is extremely easy to them. And the only difference between them and the average driver is experience, and reflexes. Both of those can be taught. Rather than rule out every little thing that can distract a normal driver, change the requirements of the normal driver to the point where they can handle those situations. Otherwise you will have to rule out every load bang, every car radio, every girl with a tight top, every overly large bump, deer, and other things too numerous to mention. Instead make the person able to handle those situations or he/she does not get a license.
Why is the NTSB targeting gadgets instead of bad drivers?
Because cell phones are actually a distraction (though, personally, I still don't think they should be outlawed), and because the NTSB wants to look like it is doing something to justify its share of your paycheck.
Answering that question was really easy. I suspect you intended that question to induce some other reaction. Perhaps in the future you can be less obtuse.
Pardon my vent, I'm just tired of all the weasel-wording, flippant self-righteousness, and general poncery in public commentary. Say what you mean. If your position really does have such inescapable merit, let it stand on its own -- don't browbeat the listener. Show some respect for your audience.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Why is the NTSB targeting gadgets instead of bad drivers?
Let's ask a similarly stupid question: "Why are we targeting drunk drivers instead of bad drivers?" When you can answer that question, you should be able to form a pretty good answer to the question above.
I didn't say its the same
Cell phones are no different than that.
I've spent more than a few minutes on the track, myself. You've ridden with them, I am them.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
That's how things work here in America. Don't attack the problem, assume the first correlation you come to is the causation and attack that. Bonus points if it's already a controversial topic such as a violent video games.
Nah, speed limits exist to raise revenue. Otherwise they'd be set above, not below, the speed the average person drives.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
What next? NTSB bans listening to music and people talking in cars?
Seriously, We need an end to the ridiculous nanny state. Stop judging me already guilty based on how you think I might act.
It's true! Safest solution is to keep automobiles in the garage. But that's not what automobiles are for.
mfwright@batnet.com
According to the US National Transit Database (record of every public transit system in the US), the average light rail system costs $5.66 per passenger mile. This compares with $1.41 per mile for driving a car. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTran#Cost_comparison_with_other_public_transit_systems
So I check the Wikipedia source for that $1.41 per mile cost and look at http://commutesolutions.org/external/calc.html. (The site currently lists a cost of $1.36, but close enough.) They give only $0.01 per mile as the cost for State and Local Construction, Improvements and Repair, and only $0.006 for State and Local Highway Maintenance and Operations, for what looks like a total capital cost of $0.016 per mile. I tried looking at the source for the $5.66 per mile cost for light rail over at http://www.ntdprogram.gov/ntdprogram/data.htm, but frankly I don't have time to dig through all the links on that page. The Wikipedia article gives a capital cost figure of $1.78 per mile for light rail.
I have trouble reconciling this $0.016 per mile capital cost for roads against the $1.78 per mile capital cost for light rail as listed at the Wikipedia article.
This looks a lot like certain capital costs for roads are not being accounted for.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Re: Deer and muscle memory.
The singular time I hit a deer, it was about the worst-case scenario possible: It was a dark and empty divided highway, there weren't any lights around except those on my own car, and in retrospect the fucker must have been running across the road full-tilt: I remember hearing its horrible little hooves scratching against the asphalt for an instant.
But I don't remember processing "is that a deer? is it headed toward me? should i slow down, or should i accelerate? how much? when?"
Instead, the thought process went like this: *glimpse of something appearing at the edge of the headlights, just to the left, moving fast* *smash brake pedal*
"Wow, that seatbelt hurts, the new brakes are working well" *near darkness as the popup headlights are both sheared off by the carcass* "Piss. I guess I'm pulling over to the shoulder now." *deer rolls down off hood* "Yep, here we are. And...stopped."
"Is everyone OK?"
All in the time it takes a fourth-gen Firebird to get from 65 to 0 in an ABS-assisted, pedal-to-the-firewall stop, which isn't much: The debris trail was remarkably short.
In terms of distraction, I wasn't on the phone, but I was already shaken and mentally busy from an almost-physical altercation a couple of minutes prior that I was replaying in my head and discussing with my passengers, and I was slowed somewhat by the couple of beers that I'd had earlier (I had been running sound at a private party).
But handling the deer incident, as well as mechanically possible, was automatic. Like riding a bike, or countersteering, or catching a baseball. I don't remember deciding to brake, because I didn't decide to -- I was already doing it by the time the decision-making part of my brain caught up with what was happening.
Would I have behaved differently if I had a phone pressed to my ear? Dunno.
Would other people behave differently? Perhaps. I've spent a good portion of my life pushing vehicles to their limits (and sometimes beyond) just for fun, whereas most folks haven't. It's quite likely that there are things that I do automatically that some other people can't.
But I'm certainly not the only person capable of doing this. Just as I can't even see my hands as I type this, and I'm not the only person around who can touch-type effectively. It might be a little unusual, but to say it can't be done is plainly false because I've done it.
And if I can do it, anyone can. I'm not special. I've just got more practice.
Kid-proof tablet..
And for completeness:
Chauffeured limos? Fuck off and die, you neo-con capitalist fascist scum!
And so they want to make it illegal for everyone. I don't think I like that either. The basic mentality there is "if too many people can'd do xxx safely, we're going to make it illegal for anyone to do xxx". That looks ok until you're one of the (minority/few/whatever) that can (or I suppose, think you can) do it safely, and lose the right. There'll always be the argument that a lot of people think they can handle it but can't.
This comes down to a basic question of the good of the many vs. the good of the few. When certain activities prove themselves to be dangerous and cost society a lot in some way, society will usually clamp down on it to protect itself. This is why we have things like building codes. Maybe you think you can build a building safely without worrying about any building codes, but many others have said the same thing and built unsafe structures that killed people, so governments invented building codes to prevent this. Maybe you think you can fly an airplane safely without bothering to get any training or take any tests (for licensing) which prove you are capable of operating an aircraft safely (including making all the radio calls you need to, communicating with the tower, etc.), but others said the same thing and wrecked their airplanes, killing themselves, their passengers, and people on the ground, so society invented aviation regulations and pilot testing and licensure. Maybe you think you're capable of driving a car safely while having a BAC of 0.2%, but lots of other people claim that too, yet they cause crashes and kill people (but frequently not themselves, annoyingly), so society invented laws prohibiting drunk driving and allowing officers to test driver suspected of DUI, and those convicted where I live get to spend a weekend or more living in an Army tent outside in 120F heat wearing pink underwear as punishment.
The basic mentality there is "if too many people can'd do xxx safely, we're going to make it illegal for anyone to do xxx".
I don't know of any normal country that doesn't have that mentality. This mentality has been around for as long as societies and laws have been around. If you think we shouldn't have any laws at all regulating dangerous behaviors, there's a very nice country where you can move that you should enjoy greatly; it's called Somalia. You don't have to worry about anyone telling you what you can and can't do there, as long as you have more guns than they do.
And an AC chimes in with an orthogonally-related retort.
Thanks, AC, but I prefer threads.
Kid-proof tablet..
Whatever you choose to call it, my point was that people good at it might be smart at some things, but not everything, and people who are smart at other things (like theoretical physics, computer programming, or whatever) may not be very good at "tight scheduling" like a skilled chef is. This was in response to the poster above who tried to draw a parallel between being good at "multi-tasking" and being smart.
You can bundle up little kids pretty effectively. The very old is the real problem--the ideal solution would seem to be some form of casual on-demand travel. Sized between a minivan and a passenger van, cheaper than calling a taxi because it would cover a given area and just pick up people needing a ride from the shelter to their dwelling.
Gene Simmons, is that you?
Did anyone look at the overall study or are you just looking at the one accident. There is a study on spacial concentration and if you are talking on the phone(yes that includes hands free devices) your brain tries to enter the conversation. Think of it like this, if you just answer the phone, are you concentrating on anything else? Those of you who think they can are sadly mistaken and are the ones the NTSB is really focusing on. One bad apple and all pay the price!
The problem with those are that they are less discriminating, you may get someone other than the asshole you are targeting.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Handsfree phones should be required; anything else should be prohibited.
Hands-free doesn't help: http://unews.utah.edu/old/p/062206-1.html http://www.aaafoundation.org/resources/index.cfm?button=cellphone
There are other studies to point to. Point is, it's not the distraction of the hands that's the really big problem, it's the distraction of the brain.
Maybe you mis-copied, but that second link is to a study from 1991. Hands-free cellphone devices hadn't really taken off yet, unless you count the classic image of someone with a phone duct-taped to their head. If you missed the 1991 date at the top of the study, one giveaway is right there in the second paragraph (emphasis mine):
What CB radios were to the '70s, cellular phones were to the '80s. From early 1984, when the first complete systems became operational, the number of cellular phone users has grown to over two million. By the mid-'90s, when cellular service will be available throughout most population centers in the United States, the number of subscribers is expected to grow to between ten and twenty million.
The first link is to a study from 2006. I got my first hands-free Bluetooth headset in 2007, and it was bit balky to use. My wife's new Fiat comes standard with a voice-activated cellphone interface, so there are no fiddly buttons to mess with. Technology has progressed a bit.
I'd really like to see a more recent study that looks at hands-free cellphone use and explicitly lays out variables such as 1) how much button-fiddling is required, 2) how much the driver has to look away from the road to operate the hands-free unit, 3) how much the driver has to look away from the road to operate the phone itself, and 4) a description of any instructions given to the driver during the test (to weed out the Mythbusters scenario described further up the page, where the drivers apparently prioritized conversing over driving).
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Well that's a lot of suposition.
In actual studies of people driving while on a mobile phone, they are about as dangerous as someone who's drunk behind the wheel. That's the actual data, it's not subject to wishful self-justification.
Given the number one cause of death and permanent disability for any person aged 0-30ish is road traffic accidents, not talking on the phone is a small price to pay.
Ive learnt to ignore the phone when it rings and I need maximum attention on the road.
If I think its safe I take the call with hands free but assign maximum attention to the road. I sometimes have to ignore the person on the other end if the traffic demands my attention.
This kind of thing took a while to learn and takes disapline. Building this skill into the driving test is the decent way to address this stuff rather than playing wackamole on technology and irritating the crap out of everyone, driven by fear.
A blog I run for the wealth
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
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Cell phones are the low-hanging fruit. Much easier to pass a law against them then to actually make drivers drive any more carefully.
You can have that: move to New York, Boston, Seattle, etc. and you can take your "proper transportation infrastructure" and never need to venture onto the road.
The rest of us will simply continue driving in our unprofessional ways on our unprofessional transportation infrastructure. The fact that we do pretty much doesn't affect you at all as long as you stick to your "professional" ways.
It's worse than that: helicopter pilots have to make all the same radio calls that fixed-wing pilots do, but their craft is different: unlike an airplane, where you can just let go of the controls and the plane will keep flying itself straight, helicopters are fundamentally unstable, and require constant corrections on the controls to stay in stable flight. There's two controls, one for each hand. This doesn't leave you with any hands to operate the radios, where you need to switch frequencies as you move from one tower's airspace to another (plus, you need to operate your GPS navigation system, and various other instruments too like adjusting the altimeter as the barometric pressure changes, etc.) Of course, you can take your hand off the controls briefly to do these things, but only briefly. The workload a helicopter pilot has is quite a bit more than any car driver. Of course, as you said, they're trained to do it, and more importantly, they're actually rigorously tested by FAA examiners to make sure they can do it before they get their license. This is totally different from car drivers, where there is no real testing to get a driver's license. My own driving test consisted of three right turns and parking, and probably about 1000 feet of total distance traveled.
Right now I do not know of one single state requiring simulated driving tests, just the "get in and parallel park" stuff.
Holy crap! What state does this? When I got my driving test in TN, my entire test was: pull out of parking space (the regular straight kind, not parallel) in parking lot in testing center located at corner of two streets; go to parking lot exit, turn right onto road. Drive ~100 feet to traffic light of intersection. Turn right. Drive another ~100 feet, then take immediate right turn back into parking lot. Park.
Because bad drivers use gadgets when driving and in doing so risk their own and others' lives.
Athy, athier, athiest.
Moving 3.5 trillion people to cities is not a realistic solution.
Brain fart. That should be "3.5 billion", not "3.5 trillion".
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Multitasking is not a trainable activity.
Pilots are, however, trained to ignore the radio if they need to focus on attitude control, just like a driver should ignore his cell phone if some schmuck in a BMW has just cut him off on the freeway.
It's not hard to learn, really.
I was thinking it was just a statement about exactly how effective simply "banning" something is. :-)
Or maybe it was a bad troll.
Actually, if you watch NASCAR, when there is an accident the spotter is in the drivers ear telling him where to go. Often specifically telling the driver to do the opposite of what his reaction might be.
A three year old child was killed and the mother is in hospital after a car driven by a young lady hit them. She had received 5 text messages at the time of the incident, and was preoccupied at responding when she killed the child.
Driving and Texting should be treated as driving as DUI and subject to jail time
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Easy. Because bad drivers use gadgets while driving. Duh.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Right. Because the spotter can see what's going on. That was my whole point, thank you for making it.
When you're on a cell phone with someone who can't see the conditions you're driving in, they have no clue when to STFU and they certainly can't advise you of the road ahead.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Einstein was terrible at multitasking. Schroedinger, on the other hand, was a champion at it.
This has to be a troll. I just can't picture it any other way.
is quite dangerous. It should be banned too.
First off, I mentioned both air and rail which would imply more than just the aviation safety group. I could include marine as well, though I did not initially. I realize it's way easier to just drag an organization through the mud and deliver crackpot theories than it is to come up with an argument, particularly when a mountain of evidence goes against you... but then again, I suppose I'm feeding the troll, aren't I?
No bro, you completely missed the point. He's saying that women are better drivers!!! *ducks*
Apparently you are only just getting a law preventing holding a phone while driving. I assumed you got one about the same time it was banned in the UK. I have seen a test done on several programs, including Mythbusters, and, while handsfree might be OK, holding the phone is very dangerous!
So you are smart but not wise.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Oh, and religion is totalitarian bullshit...
Funny you mention "religion" and "totalitarian" together in the same sentence, as most of the worst totalitarian socialist/communist regimes of the past 100 years are/were atheist/anti-religion.
Statists, whether they be communist or socialist, always seek to weaken/eliminate religion so as to weaken morals and the sense of right & wrong, as religion that teaches love and kindness to others causes people to start to rebel against State orders to carry out mass murders, wars of aggression, pogroms, torture, and ethnic cleansings.
For Socialism/Communism to work, the State must take the place of God as the central moral/societal authority. Religion should balance the power of the State and vice-versa so that neither gains total control. History teaches that both religion and the State tend to remove freedom and cause death & suffering if allowed to assume total control over a society.
Religion not only provides a moral framework within a society and moderates extreme & destructive behaviors among the citizens, it also serves to moderate the tendency of the State to abuse it's power over it's citizens. The State serves to prevent religion from abusing it's power over it's believers. It's a form of check-and-balance that is essential for free, just, tolerant, and kind society.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
That's because the men assumed they were in a different place or going a different direction. The women knew they were supposed to notice the difference.
I disagree. I have had two cars totalled and one suv damaged by people on cell phones. The first totalling occured when one woman stopped in a turning lane "decided" or rather assumed without visual verification that it is ok to turn while there is a stream of cars going through an intersection for their green light -- she never even looked up to see if cars were still going through the intersection, she was on total auto pilot while jabbering away. It was pretty low speed but due to the angle at which she hit the wheel on my car it was a total loss. Twice I have been rear ended by interstate drivers on the phone (one female, one male). One resulted with a totalling and the other caused significant damage to an SUV I was driving at the time. Each time was due to slow traffic in front and fast traffic behind -- yes and it was rush hour. The following drivers had ample time to stop (they were WAY behind me) but never once looked up from their phones until they were on top of the drivers ahead of them. People are very poor at driving when on mobile phones.
This depends on the component of the religious organization you are talking about. A bunch of monks living out in the boonies are not at all totalitarian but a dogmatic theologian who is a Bishop and actually has to deal with church and civil politics -- yes that can be very authoritarian.
"The absence of a timely brake application, the cellular provider records indicating frequent texting while driving, the temporal proximity of the last incoming text message to the collision, and the witness statement regarding the driver's actions indicate that the GMC pickup driver was most likely distracted from the driving task by a text messaging conversation at or near the time of the accident."
What part of "the stupid son of a b*tch in the pickup was texting" did you not understand? He was the first one to hit ANYONE, and everything else followed from that.
See, the situation is obvious. Congress can't outlaw stupidity, which causes most accidents, and they have to do _something_, so they will find a good scapegoat to sacrifice and the public will be appeased and you probably won't see any noticeable difference in dangerous behavior on the road.
All I can do is wish you and the rest of people who make their livings on the road best wishes and a prayer because your safety is much more at risk by the stupid actions of others. Stay safe!
p.s. I buy a lot of music, so I just carry a packed MP3 player on the road with tons of music, audiobooks, lectures, etc. Also, there's a lot of cool stuff you can get that's free (and legit) online: archive.org, librivox.org, jamendo.com, just to name a few.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
You might want to check your units there.
Yah, yah, I caught it after I posted. See my reply to my own post. Posted well before your reply, I might add. ;-)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
1% o fthe population is smart enough to join MENSA. And it's not the 1% that Occupy is protesting, it's more like 50% of slashdotters. Or used to be, I think there are fewer smart people here than there were in the past.
Free Martian Whores!
;)
And so they want to make it illegal for everyone. I don't think I like that either. The basic mentality there is "if too many people can'd do xxx safely, we're going to make it illegal for anyone to do xxx". That looks ok until you're one of the (minority/few/whatever) that can (or I suppose, think you can) do it safely, and lose the right.
A heavy drinking alcoholic isn't even buzzed at a .15 BAC. Should we raise the drinking limit because alcohoolics can drive better after a six pack than I can after three beers?
Free Martian Whores!
Then I can eliminate 6/7ths of all serious accidents tomorrow by not allowing anyone under the age of 25 or over the age of 65 to drive.
I would have to say the demands on the race driver are far more extreme than a daily commuter. Yet the communication via radio or in person with the driver is not so distracting to the race car driver that they ban it. The only difference there is training. You train a daily commuter on how to handle the situations that come up and they will be able to handle it. They will know when to shut up, and when to react. Right now the amount of training to get a license is laughable. When I first got my license after driver training I almost rear ended a truck from trying to turn on the radio. I decided then and there it was not going to happen again and trained specifically to be able to handle situations on the road. I've since been able to stop on ice to avoid drivers with bald tires, ditch to sides with out skidding to avoid cars losing whole wheels, and handle my car on the freeway when a person in my car went into a choking fit. With way too many more obscure problems to mention. Proper training and licensing can handle this problem. Just banning a cell phone will just cover up the real problem that most drivers don't know jack about driving.
No. Speed limits are set so someone with bald tires and bad shocks can drive on it when it's wet and still not be that dangerous. Speed limits aren't set to what the "average" person would drive, but for the fastest an average driver in a less than average car can drive. Set the limit so it's safe for a professional in a Lotus and the limit would be well over 150mph.
If speed limits were to raise revenue* the fines would be smaller, which would give people an incentive to speed, rather than the disincentive the $150+ fines give. No way am I going to risk $150 to get to St Louis ten minutes faster. Ten dollar fine? Sure, I'll get there in 45 minutes rather than the hour and a half it takes (provided it's sunny, the road is dry, and my car's in good condition).
* Yes, there are some "speed trap" towns that lower the limit from 55 to 30 as you round a corner, these are indeed to generate revenue. But these are the exception, not the rule.
Free Martian Whores!
Usually.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
What no one seems to be talking about (pun intended) is that a blanket ban on hands-free devices would also preclude one from speaking to another person in the car.
... exactly how is that safer?
So, sure, just tweak the law to allow for conversations with persons actually present in the vehicle.
So it'll be OK to take your eyes off the road to respond to conversation with your passenger, but not the disembodied voice in your headpiece
This has been well studied. Changing the speed limit has no measurable effect on the speed people drive (if the change is small), but a definite effect on local revenue. (And it's supposed to be your personal responsibility to drive slower than the speed limits in bad driving conditions).
Maybe I'm just jaded because I live in a town that made the national news for its shenanigans with red-light cameras (after the lawsuits it ended up paying back millions for wrongfully issued tickets, but no compensation was ever given for all those raised insurance rates).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Einstein was terrible at multitasking. Schroedinger, on the other hand, was a champion at it.
And his cat was terrible at it, but was a good multitasker anyway.
Free Martian Whores!
C18GTSO's Chicken
Would I have behaved differently if I had a phone pressed to my ear?
Dark road, buzzed? If you'd been on the phone you probably wouldn't have seen the deer until you'd already hit it. It would have been *crash* *SCREECH* "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT????"
Free Martian Whores!
At least your reply was funny. :)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
If they ban all phone usage including hands free devices, how will they ban the hands free device that hooks my phone to the radio in my car and the buttons on my steering wheel. When I'm in the car and get a call I hit a button on my steering wheel and then hold a conversation like the person is in the car with me. When I'm done I hit the same button on my steering wheel. If I want to make a call I hit that same button, say the name of the person I want to call and then it dials it and I talk to the person if they pick up. Unless the cops were to pull my phone record, which would require some pretense like me rear ending someone, they could never know if I was talking on the phone, singing along with the radio, or just crazy and enjoy the sound of my own voice. Honestly, hands free devices are only a problem if people are fumbling with there phone to dial numbers or texting and then it is just bad hands free design and implementation. I never have to take my eyes off the road or my hands off the wheel. F.Y.I I have an android phone, and a Mazda 3 with some modifications I made to the radio to allow the phone to be hooked up to it, that involve a Bluetooth headset being ripped apart and installed into my steering wheel but there is nothing stopping an auto manufacturer from putting a system like this into a car stock. Like in my sisters new Chevy Cruz or what ever they are calling the latest iteration of the sub compact. No, sadly all this is going to be is another excuse for the cops to pull someone over and find a reason. Though I understand this more than I do seat belt laws for adults. I mean come on, if I'm dumb enough to not wear a seat belt and I die in a crash didn't I just reap the just results of my actions. I don't need the government to tell me that a seat belt is a good idea, and anyone who is to proud or ignorant to realize that gets what they deserve.
Not to mention EM spillage, the last thing we need is loosing the ability to call a tow truck from the side of the freeway because all the cars passing by have Cell Phone Jammers that keep knocking out my signal. If the jammer is powerful enough to block the phone in a way that isn't easily circumvented, i.e. external antenna, range booster, then it will be powerful enough to at least weaken the signal of phones nearby the car.
"The chance of a sudden, unexpected and unknown to the communicating party, change in conditions, which may require them to shut the fuck up so the driver can concentrate on the road, is extremely slim on a closed course"
which implies that a driver can't fully concentrate with someone talking to them. If the driver's concentration was impeded by this radio talk, you can be sure the NASCAR people wouldn't allow it.
Not to mention, it is the driver's responsibility in any situation to tune the talking out if it is going to bother him, not the talker's responsibility to shut up.
Changing the speed limit has no measurable effect on the speed people drive (if the change is small),
That goes contrary to what I saw when the national 55 mph was mandated, and when the limits were raised again. At first people ignored the 55 mph and drove the speed they were used to, but after heavy enforcement the norm was about 60 mph (a cop usually won't pull you over unless you're doing more than 5 mph). When the limit was raised to 65, most people started doing 70.
As to the red light cameras, yes, those are put in for revenue, but in the name of safety. Ironically, they have been shown to increase the number of accidents, and some cities are discontinuing their use. Also, some cities have discovered that the expense of installation and maintenance isn't nearly covered by increased fine revenues.
Free Martian Whores!
The suburbs -- and unless you're a farmer, you live in the suburbs, not the country -- are even less "survivable". Think about the goods that you consume on a daily basis (including food, water, oil/gas/other fuel, etc.), and the infrastructure it takes to get them there. Now think about the fact that you need to get those goods not only to your house, but to millions of other houses over a huge, spread-out area.
Cites are more efficient, but they depend more on the technology.
Where I grew up qualified as suburban, by your definition, and likely by some others. But we had our own water well and septic system. We had oil heat, but we also had a wood barrel stove that could keep the place warm. We had a small garden, a large yard. We had wooded lands around us. This was the norm for the town. There were even small farms around.
If civilization collapsed overnight, our way of life would be drastically altered, and a lot of people wouldn't be able to cope, I'm sure. But we would have had a chance. My dad used to hunt deer, we could cut wood for fuel, we could expand the garden, we'd even be able to open the well cover and get water with a bucket and rope after the generator ran out of gas.
In the city, you would have two choices: Leave or die.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Next they will insist that we not talk to other people in the car and then demand that we drive single person vehicles so that talking to others is impossible.