Slashdot Mirror
Why Cell Phone Bans Don't Work
sciencehabit writes "You can take the driver away from the cell phone, but you can't take the risky behavior away from the driver. That's the conclusion of a new study, which finds that people who talk on their phones while driving may already be unsafe drivers who are nearly as prone to crash with or without the device. The findings may explain why laws banning cell phone use in motor vehicles have had little impact on accident rates."
Indeed. If there were days of "shock enforcement" where 100% of available traffic officers specifically sought out to enforce cell phone driving laws instead of other non-immediately-deadly traffic infractions, people would respond QUICKLY.
Why do people continue to talk on their cell phones when it's against the law? Because they think they can get away with it. How do you change that? Ticket SO MANY PEOPLE that they talk and whine and bitch about it... that way the risk is genuine.
Do this once a month for three months without announcing the plan to anyone an watch things change QUICKLY.
PS -- Use unmarked cars and cameras, too.
and have taken a bunch of cough meds and antihistamines?
You mean the kind that have warning labels that say, "do not drive when taking this medication"?
But your false dichotomy is irrelevant anyway: I'd rather have neither group on the road with me.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
No, there is very little that shows .08 between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. is any less safe than 0.00. What has been shown is that in uncontrolled statistics, people with 0.08 crash more than people with 0.00. And that people with 0.08 have measurable deficiencies. This lead to assertions without proof that the alcohol alone, with the decreased reaction, was sufficient to explain the crashes.
What can't be determined from the same data (as it was scrubbed by the government to prove a point, not to improve safety) is whether 0.08 after 10 p.m. results in an increased tendency to fall asleep at the wheel if alone, or take increased risks if not (both have been proven true alone, but never integrated with the actual crash data for real world risk analysis, as that could jeopardize the party line that alcohol is evil).
Alcohol research stopped when MADD came on the scene with a non-safety-related goal of Prohibition. Alcohol is evil, and anyone looking at the causes too closely is killing children by supporting drunks killing babies. At least that's how it's been for the past 20 years as I've looked into this.
Learn to love Alaska
Absolutely. Actually, I'm pretty well convinced that a big part of the problem is the thing that many drivers don't do: focus their attention on driving, which, as you say, is inherently dangerous.
I was a training ride leader for the Boston->New York AIDS Ride back in the mid-1990s, and I wrote this as part of a safety introduction for novice cyclists:
Change 'riding' to 'driving' and I think it still works pretty well.