Quantifying the Risk of Texting Drivers

An anonymous reader writes "More than 5000 people die each year as a result of being distracted while driving, and a new study indicates that teens and cell phones make for the most volatile combination. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that of all drivers under 20 involved in fatal crashes, 16 percent were distracted — the highest proportion of any age group. 'Shockingly, texting drivers took their eyes off the road for each text an average of 4.6 seconds — which at 55 mph, means they were driving the length of a football field without looking,' said David Hosansky."

Comments

Re:Inexperienced drivers are inexperienced

[WaZiX]

Do you feel any different about your friend's death knowing dude was texting or trying to eat a fast food burger? We are being extremely heavily propagandized that death from texting is horrifically worse than death by burger/cd/radio/8 track/plain ole daydreaming/being lost/reading a old fashioned paper map/reading a GPS map.

Distractions of any kind increase the risk of having an accident. Texting while driving is a relatively new phenomenon and many people are not yet conscious of how much it increases the odds of having an accident. It's not propaganda to point that out.

My work is directly related to accidents (I do statistical modelling of extreme events in reinsurance) and believe me that when you have to study "dumb" accidents caused by reckless driving, texting, alcohol or simply excessive speed (1) you fully understand the motives behind what you call "propaganda". People, often kids or young adults which are hit by death, vegetative states, para- or tetraplegia, amputated limbs, ... these are the consequences of accidents and they happen every day. Believe me that when you are exposed to those horrors on a daily basis you see things a little differently. And I have a relative distance between myself and the victims, I can only hardly imagine having to go to the scene of the accident or having to judge such cases all day.

Those campaigns may be shocking or seen as demagogy, but they merely translate a reality which fortunately most people don't have to be confronted to every day. Its not propaganda, its reality.

(1) Excessive speed relative to the traffic increases the odds of an accident exponentially and there is also an exponential relationship between speed and the consequences of the accident; reason why the combined distribution is often Pareto-like.

Re:Touchscreens just as bad as texting

[itsdapead]

You know what else is equally dumb, but has gotten a free pass? Touchscreen interfaces in cars.

Not just touchscreens - UI design for cars in general, especially any sort of "multifunction" button that requires you to look at a display in order to know what it is going to do.

Pretty much all car audio design is crap in that respect. Personal favourites that I have run in to (or have nearly made me run into things) include:

• Radio with 25% of the limited facia space occupied by big shiny bezel around a big doomsday-grade button for... toggling the audio enhancement mode. Buttons for selecting the source, changing channel etc. were scratty little things.
• One radio that started beeping when it lost its auto-tune lock on a station. Not just any beep but a beep that got louder, louder, louder and LOUDER... forget avoiding those pedestrians and oncoming traffic because THE RADIO HAS LOST ITS AUTO-TUNE LOCK! My god, man, you're driving without the aid of soft rock and unhelpful traffic information - do something!
• Anything with blue LED illumination. There's a reason why they use red lighting in submarine movies, morons! The device in question did have two brightness settings: blinding or merely dazzling. (See also other people's xenon headlights)
• Anything without a volume knob.