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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.
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
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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.
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
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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.
About 1% of the population is capable of multitasking. Only they can focus on their gadget and the road. The rest should stay as far away from that as possible.
According to published studies, those who are actually good at multitasking generally consider themselves bad at it, and tend to avoid it. On the other hand, those who consider themselves good at multitasking are rather bad at it. Yet another manifestation of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
This is exactly what I thought when I saw pictures. The buses ran over the kid who was texting. Not one but two of them. How did he cause that?
Well from the article:
A 19-year-old pickup driver rear-ended a truck, and then was rear-ended by two school buses. Two people, including the pickup driver, were killed, and 38 were injured. Although there’s no evidence as to whether the pickup driver was texting at the moment of the crash, he had sent or received 11 texts in the previous 11 minutes.
You conveniently neglected to mention that the 19-year old 'kid' (he should be treated as an adult in my book) was irresponsible and caused the initial accident which then caused the pile up. Was it the bus drivers' fault for following too closely? You bet. But if that initial accident from the cell phone hadn't happened, that whole pile up probably wouldn't have happened either. People follow closely in rush hour traffic and it's bad driving. But maybe if that 'kid' had even put his break lights on, the buses would have also and the collision would have been just a rear ending. You concentrate on the car in front of you and if you are too close, you depend on them to give you some warning. If there's no warning, you both fail.
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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.
I think that the consensus is that a conversation with a passenger is different from that with some one on the phone - as the passenger is aware of the same environment and you both automatically adjust the tone/pace of the conversation depending on the current conditions. I.E. the passenger will generally keep quiet when you are performing a complex maneuver. That is not to say that passengers can not be a distraction, just that in general a phone conversation is a worse distraction that most passengers.
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No, start over. How the fuck does a rear-end collision in front of you cause a rear-end collision behind you? Either the buses could have stopped, regardless of the collision, or they could not have stopped, regardless of the collision.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
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.
What are "break lights"?
What your brake lights become after you get rear-ended.
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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.