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Hands-Free Or Voice-Activated Texting Not Safer
Meshach writes "A recent study (PDF) detailed in the Washington Post verifies that using hands-free or voice-activated texting is no safer than texting with your hands while you are driving a car. Using a handheld device to tap out a text message while driving has been banned in many states and provinces. From the article: '"One of the common comments was that they felt an inclination to look down at the screen to see if it heard them correctly, so that could be one possible explanation of why they were not looking at the roadway more frequently," Yager said. She said drivers said they felt safer when using voice-activated texting than when entering messages on a keyboard. "Perhaps it is because they view it as safer and therefore it must be, but still they have this inclination to look down at the screen," she said. "We found that their driving performance suffered equally with both methods." As has been proven in studies of cellphone conversations, Yager said drivers engaged in any form of texting were distracted by the communication effort.'"
In response to a big push by LEO in CA on the cell phone laws, I recently got one of those dorky 90's dash mounts for my phone. it's great because the phone is pretty much in my line of sight, but it's still distracting to activate the voice sms dictation. So I would say it's MUCH better than doing it by hand, but still not as good as not doing it!
If only there was a way to communicate in real time, via 2 way voice...
Someday.... someday...
Place nail here >+
Nope: http://unews.utah.edu/old/p/112608-2.html
Apparently not, but they figure the reason for such is the passengers tend to compensate with their own awareness for the distraction they add. Remote people can't compensate in this manner, and obviously the phone itself does not either.
unless your Mr. Bean
Studies have shown that bluetooth headsets make no difference when it comes to preventing accidents. The cause is clear, just sit in a car during an in-car conversation and simulate a near accident by stomping the breaks hard without provocation.
All talking stops instantly and stays stopped during the entire perceived danger. Granted, you may get bruises for freaking everybody out, but you'll understand the point:
Conversations in a car will never the be the same as a conversation happening with somebody outside the car. People driving with you inadvertently "help" you in a crisis by pausing in their communications during a crisis situation.
Interestingly, there's a small percentage of people (around 15% or so) for whom talking on a cell phone has no measurable effect on their driving. These are people with the ability to interrupt the conversation flow, saying "just a minute" or simply ignoring the conversation altogether during a crisis.
If you want training in how to do this, I'd recommend getting a pilot's license. While getting even a basic private license, the number of things you are expected to do precisely, concurrently during takeoff/landing boggles the mind to a newbie coming from a car. You are commonly expected to be manipulating radio controls, rudder controls, Elevator controls, and Aileron controls concurrently while watching a half dozen instruments and chatting with some guy a mile away in a tower.
You figure out quick how to ignore him when something unexpected happens!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Yet another poor quality study.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And wow, it scares me that someone on Slashdot doesn't know this and had to ask. It's not like it's some big secret that's being supressed or something. The question comes up pretty much every time the hazards of combining cell phones and driving are discussed, and the answer is always the same. Heck, typing in "is talking to a passenger as distracting as talking to a hands-free cell-phone?" into Google gives pages and pages that answer the question.
All they need to do is pass a law prohibiting any sort of distraction in the vehicle. Sunlight, fog, rain, snow, children, radios, cell phones, pagers, books, newspapers, makeup, bad days at work, bad days at home, sun visors, allergies, bodily functions, passengers, etc. etc. Once all the distractions are outlawed, there will never be another accident on the road ever again, proving that the government can indeed regulate us to safety! -------- There really needs to be a "sarcasm" font....
What did cyclists, pedestrians and other drivers think?
The surviving ones, I mean.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Voice, bluetooth, text, handheld, hendsfree, VoiceToText.....screw you.
As someone who is waiting on a (too small) settlement check for my destroyed vehicle, all I can say is put the fucking phone away and drive the damn car.
Texting teen blows a red light at 60, and I'm lucky the only thing destroyed was my vehicle. I am still vertical and breathing.
Hanging upside down from the seatbelt, covered in broken glass was not the way I wanted to spend the afternoon.
Piloting a plane while talking is very different than talking when driving. For the specific reason you point out - you are trained to engage in specific conversations with specific people using a specific language. When things get difficult, you shut up if at all possible.
Same with Police, Fire, Ambulance drivers - you have a limited, scripted set of tasks.
It's not the random babble with bog-knows-what that constitutes random phone conversation.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Right, they're looking at the screen and it defeats the purpose of voice activated hands free. I use Siri for quick texts while I'm driving. "Tell my wife I'm on my way." Siri says something about sending a text and "Ready to send it?" "Read it." Siri reads it back. "Send it." If Siri is having a deaf moment, I'll leave it alone until I get to a red light or I'll pull off the road if needed. Like condoms for birth control, voice activated hands free is only safer if done right.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
A bunch of citations in Wikipedia's section about it.
Quoth http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199702133360701#t=articleResults:
We observed no safety advantage to hands-free as compared with hand-held telephones. This finding was not explained by imbalances in the subjects' age, education, socioeconomic status, or other demographic characteristics. Nor can it be explained by suggesting that those with units that leave the hands free do more driving. One possibility is that motor vehicle collisions result from a driver's limitations with regard to attention rather than dexterity. Regardless of the explanation, our data do not support the policy followed in some countries of restricting hand-held cellular telephones but not those that leave the hands free.
May we live long and die out
When there's a serious traffic issue, I don't even have the ability to say "just a minute". My brain locks in on the road, and about a minute later, I say, "I'm sorry, I had to deal with traffic. What were you saying?" I just assumed everyone's brain worked that way. It's part of the basic fight-or-flight response programmed into pretty much all higher forms of animal life. When you sense danger, you freeze and you focus on the situation at hand.
Who are these 85%, and taxonomically speaking, which kingdom are they classified in?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
That depends. Are you listening to it to verify that your hands free got it correct? If so, then your brain is occupied doing that instead of driving and it is not any safer than looking at the screen. It isn't the fact that your eyes left the road for a split second, it's that your brain quit the driving task and shifted to the texting task and has to shift back to driving again, meanwhile, your car has traveled a football field or so down the highway without you realizing it.
That's when you drive with your knee.
I think what was the most amazing part of that whole video was that they managed to fit an entire studio audience into that little car of his!
In the realm of personal anecdotes, I have noticed something that dovetails well with this data. Bad drivers, that is, the people I know who get in more accidents and otherwise drive in ways that make me not want to be a passenger in their car.... they seem to also talk on the cell phone more and... they are the people who never seem to think they have a problem with it.
What I mean by that is, I have used my cell phone to talk, back when I had a flip phone with physical keys, i would even text. The thing is, I would be careful about WHEN i did these things, and would prioritize driving over them. Frequently if on the phone I would say things like "Hold on a second, I have to change lanes" or "Hold on, I have to drive for a second" to get some space to drive.... the bad drivers I know... I have never once heard them say that. Hell I have taken 5 minutes to type out a three or four word text, just because I didn't feel comfortable sparing more than 1 second at a time off the road....or waited until a red light....or... gotten over to the right lane with the slow pokes for a bit so I could chat.
On top of that, they tend to be the ones who don't signal, who cut people off, who pull stupid moves to get ahead... will pass people and wave through traffic while on the phone.
Most phone drivers are annoying because they drive extra slow. They sit at red lights longer than they need to.... exactly the opposite of what this study, and my experience, tell me that bad drivers do.
Similarly, look at the UK highway safety study that looked at marijuana use came to the conclusion that while they could measure impairment in reaction time... stoned drivers drove with an abundance of caution.
Or.... to put it the way I came to understand it from my motorcycle safety course.... if you are driving in such a way that your raw reaction time matters, you already fucked up.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"