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Talking On the Phone While Driving Not So Dangerous After All
Dorianny writes "New research which takes advantage of the increase in cell phone use after 9pm due to the popularity of 'free nights and weekends' plans showed no corresponding increase in crash rates (PDF). Additionally, the researchers analyzed the effects of legislation banning cellphone use, enacted in several states, and similarly found that the legislation had no effect on the crash rate. 'One thought is that drivers may compensate for the distraction of cellphone use by selectively deciding when to make a call or consciously driving more carefully during a call.' Score this a -1 for common sense."
You fuckers need to keep your hands on the God damn wheel.
You have limited infoprocessing resources. You spend some on a conversation, its less for driving. Conversations can be more distracting than ethanol. Its pretty simple. I've told my wife and kid to shut up when I'm concentrating on a new route. Know your limits.
they sure aren't likely to say that they used a cellphone when crashing that's for sure...
anyhow, driving while distracted is illegal in most countries for obvious reasons, no matter what the distraction. yet some douches read the newspaper while driving.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I think it's rather risky to post this without a question mark after the title - pretty sure I remember how "studies showed" that vegetables weren't good for you once.
I imagine it depends on the driver and whether they compensate by pausing the conversation when things need concentration etc. But I've seen people trying to drive a *shopping trolley* while talking on the phone and failing hard, so a car? Hm.
I was ok when they banned talking on the cell phone, it was banning texting that really annoyed me.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This jives pretty well with the study I have been showing everyone I can which actually studied the individuals who DO get in accidents with cell phones. What it found was that, as a group, they tended to get in more accidents than other drivers; even when not using cell phones!
Not only that but, while it has been found that most drivers using cell phones drive more cautiously; but these drivers in particular tended to drive LESS cautiously when distracted! This pretty clearly pointed to bad drivers with cell phones being more a judgement issue than a distraction issue.
So these findings are pretty unsurprising in light of that. It has been known for a while now that decreasing real phone usage doesn't change accident rates. NY state observed a 60% decrease in the number of drivers on the road observed to be using cell phones.... with no change in its accident rates.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Could it simply be that there's fewer accidents after 9 PM, regardless as to whether people are on the phone or not?
Call me crazy, but I always assumed more accidents took place during rush hour than after.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
So you mean to tell me all those people in the passing lane, who are driving significantly slower than the speed limit, weaving from side to side within their lane, and have their head tilted over, looking down, with their cell phone clamped to their ear are safe drivers?????
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The study addresses cell phone use after 9 p.m. on weeknights. But how much traffic is on the road at that time of night compared to, say, rush hour?
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
The study makes the assumption that people will wait for the free call period after 9pm, and assumes that if more people were waiting for that point that we would see a corresponding increase in crashes, but from what I can gather there's no segregation of the data to show how many of the test subjects have data plans that are not unlimited in call time. I have to imagine that if you're waiting for 9pm in order to make a call, it's an important call and you'll make it from someplace other than the inside of a car. Most people without unlimited call plans still make short calls after and before 9pm if they assume the calls will be short and not significantly impact available billed minutes.
Then they came for the texters, but I didn't speak up because I never text and drive.
Then they came for me... And no one would pick up.
I don't know, I knew a guy who would, every year, drive from Kiel (Northern Germany) to Malaga (Spain) in his Volkswagen van. While doing so, he would read poems and memorize these so could recite.
The distance is about 2700 Km (1600 miles) and he never had an accident. I don't know how he did it, but for about ten years, he was quite a safe driver (after that, I lost contact to him - because I moved to another place)...
My old commute back in The Bay Area took me over the San Mateo Bridge.
I started working night-shift for awhile, and left early one morning (4am?) to find myself driving eastbound over the high span portion in very dense fog. It was like flying in space. It was awesome, and I have never been more attentive at the wheel.
Solution? Build roads inside space tunnels to prevent people from being bored.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Part of the problem is we're using a term like "driving" to include everything from 80 mph bumper to bumper madness to "miles from nowhere" endless, flat, straight, deserted, try to stay awake land.
Like everything else, let's be precise about what we're talking about.
I've seen people reading all kinds of things, including very thick books while behind the wheel. Many women do their makeup while driving too. If you wouldn't read the newspaper or do your makeup while firing a gun, you shouldn't do it while driving.
I should never talk on the phone while driving. Heck, my driving ability decreases even with a in-depth conversation with a passenger in the car. Since I can freely admit that using a cell phone while driving makes me a worse driver, I have a hard time believing that there aren't enough others with the same problem to warrant even a statistical blip.
I call BS!
I see people swerving all the time when they talk and I live in a state where cell phone use will driving is illegal. They simply ignore the law.
It also p*sses me off when they get on the phone in the fast lane and slow down to 40 mph creating a traffic jam, or fail to drive when the light changes green, especially at left-hand turn lights which are very short. Or they nearly miss their exit and swerve across three lanes of traffic to make their exit. What right do they have to inconvenience all of the other drivers on the road so they can take a phone call? Cell phones and driving bring out the worse in people.
Talking On the Phone While Driving Not So Dangerous After All
Be that as it may, please don't tell all these idiot drivers that! :p
Talking and texting while driving was made illegal. Accident rates didn't change. That doesn't say anything about how dangerous it is to talk or text while driving. Instead, it just says that the law is sporadically enforced, if at all, and universally ignored by drivers. Accident rates didn't change because talking/texting while driving rates also didn't change.
I question how much free minutes changed calling patterns, too. I suspect cell phone companies offered that feature knowing there would be little or no change in calling patterns and they would continue to make nearly all the money they already were before the change, indicating that people aren't taking advantage of free minute time windows.
All I can say is that when I am in the car with someone talking on the phone while they are driving, they are absolutely distracted. And it is a lot more than when they talk to someone else in the car. I don't know why this is so, just that I've noticed a tendency for them to drift in the lane, slow down or speed up or not take curves as crisply. It may be that it is harder to talk to a disembodied voice than it is to talk to someone that is next to you. All the non-verbal ques are missing.
It's pretty obvious that, assuming there is one, the increased risk of talking on a cell phone while driving can only be marginal. Hundreds of millions of people have been doing this for years now, and we've not seen any huge surge in accidents. If you look at vehicle fatalities in the USA per year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year) you will see that the fatality rate per population has decreased steadily. We would have to see some increase between say 1995 and today, or even between 2000 and today, if there was any real risk of talking on cell phones while driving.
Now regarding those statistics, yes, obviously the fatality rate is lower today than say in 1970 because vehicles are vastly safer. But that is not the case over the last decade or two - vehicles are about as safe today as they were 10 years ago. In fact, in all the states in this part of the US the interstate speed limit was increased from 65 to 70 over the last 4 or 5 years, and even that coupled with the explosion in cell phone usage has not resulted in a change in the downward trend in fatalities.
Even the very recent explosion in texting and social connectivity over the last 5 years, which I agree is certainly a much larger distraction than talking, has not caused the fatality rate to increase.
I'll say it once again. Tens of millions of people talk on cell phones while driving now, while 15 years ago only a small portion of people could afford them, yet the overall statistics do not show any increase in fatalities. Thus if there is a greater risk it is only marginal.
Better known as 318230.
they sure aren't likely to say that they used a cellphone when crashing that's for sure...
anyhow, driving while distracted is illegal in most countries for obvious reasons, no matter what the distraction. yet some douches read the newspaper while driving.
Driving while nattering on the phone is as common as dirt. Just because there's some legislation passed does not stop people from doing it. I can sit at a light and watch drivers go past and often more than 50% are holding a phone to their head with one hand. If they put up some cameras to record this and mail out the tickets it might change things a bit, particularly as insurers would be alerted as to who is a higher risk.
I've seen the darnedest things while driving - applying make-up, shaving (face, not legs or back hair), dogs running back and forth in a car (right across the driver's view) and lots and lots of nose-picking (don't follow too close, fred, they're liable to fling a booger on your windshield!)
I will say this, every time I've seen an accident or been hit in one, the other driver had a phone in their hand. I'm curious who funded this study.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The graph at the end compares fatal accidents with pre and post ban. Most fatal accidents seem to be caused by drunk driving or speeding, not talking on the cellphone. The latter seems to cause fender benders and other relatively minor crashes. I have no proof for what I just said but I'm sure a study somewhere backs it up.
Hey, look at me! My opinion is valid because I found a website that says the same thing.
After 9pm it is safe to say there are less vehicles on the road to bump into and fewer other drivers also distracted with their phones. Not hitting that critical mass.
... the injury rate of drivers who were so enthralled with swiping through their cellphone menus when the light turned green that they were dragged out of their cars and thrashed by the people stuck behind them?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
There's also another way to interpret the data—that the negative effects of using the phone more after 9 P.M. for fully awake drivers are cancelled out by the positive effects of ongoing interaction with another person helping keep sleepy drivers more alert. If this is the case, then banning cell phone use might actually cost lives....
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Its highly illegal in my state to talk and drive at the same time; But everybody in the highway does it anyway. I see so many bloated middle-aged women on the phone, driving huge cars and driving people off the road due to being distracted by the phone, its insane.
The passing of laws doesn't matter if nobody wants to follow them. Worse, the same law that makes it illegal to do also makes it illegal to report somebody who is violating it.. since I would have to use a phone.
Low fines, no way to report others, no incentive to report others, all the incentive need to not report others, and cops more owrried about other things means that the passing of the law in WA to stop this hasn't done anything... but that doenst mean people don't die because people use cellphones on the highway.
The OP is wrong, and is trying to prove something hat is harmful isn't, my guess is special interests and a slashdotvertisment.
Granted, me and Ol' Belle (may she rest in peace) have a biased opinion. But ending up upside down because some teenage twit thought what was happening on her phone was far more important that looking out the window does tend to skew your opinion.
T-boned at an intersection after she had a full 10 seconds of red light in front of her. She never bothered to look, and blew through the intersection at 50+.
" consciously driving more carefully during a call" is exactly what intoxicated drivers try to do.
Or maybe it's just one study. Let's wait until a few people have checked the method and poked holes in the data.
Because, you know, when it's about life or death (and a car at any non-ridiculous speed always is), erring on the side of caution is not exactly stupid.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"One thought is that drivers may compensate for the distraction of cellphone use by ... consciously driving more carefully during a call."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't attempting to "consciously drive more carefully" the thing every single intoxicated driver ever tries to talk themselves into? You know, that same "conscious attempt to drive more carefully" that leads to surprisingly few accidents being caused by intoxicated drivers?
Intoxicated drivers typically drive far more aggressively than normal, rather than more carefully.
Most of those people have no idea what shooting a gun feels like...
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Either they're weaving or they're inattentive. Even the physical position of holding a phone up blocks peripheral vision. I almost had to dump my car over a curb to evade an oncoming car that roamed into my lane. I stopped using my phone while driving (until I got a Blutooth-enabled car) because I'd caught myself making mistakes while on the phone.
The article shows that accident rates have been dropping sharply for the years before cell phones became ubiquitous. If anything, that curve flattens out more when cell phones usage increases. I didn't read the whole article and probably won't, so I'll be interested to read how others with knowledge of statistics see this study.
That being said, I don't know if I'd want to see cell phone bans in place, but definitely some system of additional charges for cell phone use before an accident.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
In the year 2000 cars will be able to drive themselves, so texting, talking, sleeping, or being drunk shouldn't have any affect on accident rates.
You only have one job while you're driving. Drive the car. To do this, you have to watch out for other cars, be aware of road conditions, read signs along the road, watch for animals or humans crossing the road, monitoring your speed, etc. It's a lot to work on. You really even shouldn't daydream or let your mind wander - concentrate on the job at hand. If it's too boring, take the bus and stop endangering other people's lives.
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This research is total crap.
First, the increase in phone usage is just 7.5% so any effects would already be marginal.
Second, they have not controlled any other factors - people might talk more, from home. Are they talking more while they are driving?
Meaning 100% of the entire time drunk drivers are driving they are drunk. Whereas the occasional phone call is in fact a random and rare thing for the most part. But the wider issue is cast ye the first phone and all that rot. I was in a car for mere minutes today - as a passenger and in 6 miles we saw one person wander across 4 lanes of traffic no signal. One person slammed on their brakes for zero reason. One person stop dead in the middle of a right turn for no reason. One person drove in the shoulder to pass us. And as far as we could tell no one was holding a phone.
I will say this, every time I've seen an accident or been hit in one, the other driver had a phone in their hand. I'm curious who funded this study.
After skimming the first couple pages, I'm a bit offended that this qualifies as a "scientific study."
Basically, the "researchers" looked at a couple of graphs, and said, "OOH! Look! A correlation! CORRELATION == CAUSATION!!! WE GEE-NYUS-SES!"
The crocodiles in Pearls Before Swine do better research.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Here in Queensland, Australia, the government now applies rigid speed limits, whereas there used to be a latitude of perhaps 10 kph. In the usual city 60 kph limit, you get tail-gated, honked and abused at less than 55 kph. Anyone who's tried to keep between 55 and 60 kph will know that watching the speedometer closely in traffic is more dangerous than using a cellphone and I've had several close calls since the stricter rules were imposed. Of course, the government now collects more money from fines, although they don't have to pay the higher insurance rates they cause.
paleoflatus
You can skew anything anyway you want.
If I hold my phone and talk while I am driving I notice a noteable decrease in my driving ability, that's why I refuse to do it. Ill use my Bluetooth while driving though and my driving skills are not impacted at all.
Maybe he was lucky... If you are drunk, texting, talking on the phone or concentrating on adjusting the climate control on the unbelievably crappy BMW "smart control", you are not going to have an accident as long as nothing unexpected happens. But if something does, a child crossing the road, tire blowing out, someone cutting in front of you or braking hard... then your chances of avoiding that accident are a lot worse compared to a fit and alert driver.
Know your limits. For myself, a conversation to a passenger does not distract me. A phone call however does, even when calling hands-free, so I never take calls while driving. And anything that takes your eyes off the road for more than a brief moment is bad, no matter how good your concentration or cat-like your reflexes are. You can send a thousand text messages or read a hundred poems in perfect safety, but fail to notice slowed/stopped traffic up ahead on the highway once, and you're toast. Perhaps it never happens but why worsen the odds?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
The graph on page 2 shows "indexed crashes per billion highway miles travelled." It show "fatal crashes" and "all crashes."
What I don't get is that since about 2003, there have apparently been more "fatal crashes" than "all crashes," and that before 1991 all crashes were fatal crashes. What am I missing?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I think about the amount of energy accumulated when I am driving. Even at moderate urban speeds it is an awesome amount of destructive force when dissipated rapidly. To minimize the chance that such an energy release will destroy yours truly I minimize distractions. I view it is a long statistical game played over decades. Even small degradations of capability will tell in the long run. I am not a complete Pearson's Puppeteer about this (otherwise I would probably avoid cars altogether), but I try to channel the attitude a bit. I have always done my best to fully concentrate on the road. The fact that I have driven in many places where driving culture is quite crude and rude -- Eastern Europe, Asia -- has, I will confess, helped to concentrate my mind. As I see the crap that other people do in their cars, especially lately with all the cool new tech, I really am starting to get impatient for the robots to take over. With roughly 30,000 dead on our highways every year they can hardly do worse. In fact chimps could hardly do worse.
Mr Brin, Mr Page I know you are both quite busy. But, um, can you get on with it? Please?
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
More people have unlimited minutes, and after 9 p.m. there are fewer fellow drivers on the road. So looking for a statistical uptick in wrecks after 9 p.m. seems weak.
Also weak is looking for a statistical downtick in states that banned it. It's banned here, but I still see many doing it (anecdotal, I know).
And according to the summary, those two factors are their sole argument.
Just seems weak.
The jury's still out on ... science
What about all the people on phones who didn't crash into you?
Statistical inference is a bitch. If you don't have the data or can't do the math, you can't do statistical inference.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
If you actually believe that driving while on the phone does not distract you and impair your ability to safely drive, all I can say is you're a moron and ask that when you do get into a accident, please do your level best to ensure that you, and and only you, are injured. There are other drivers on the streets (with passengers, like kids, in their car) who would like to get home alive and unharmed and we'd appreciate it if you'd risk only your life rather than ours.
You may not respect the responsibility attached to driving around a massive machine capable of killing people so we'd really appreciate it if you could do your best to keep the destruction and injury focused on yourself, since you are the one taking the risk.
Sadly, it almost never is the moron on the phone (or texting or drunk or whatever) that gets seriously hurt - its usually some soccer mom with a car full of kids or some grandpa going to visit his grand kids who pays the price for this myth being wrong...
There is data that shows vitamin c does not prevent a cold cold, DUI check points do not reduce accidents, and praying for someone sick acutally correlates with a higher likihood of them dying. No one cares. People are scientifically illiterate. They make their decions based on emotion and supersition. Look around and you'll see it's true.
Well I guess it's a good thing they weren't studying texting then, hmm...
I think you're saying that in RPG terms, consuming enough Ethanol to reach the "legal limit" causes -5 dexterity, -5 wisdom, and +10 charisma, and you have to wait for the effect to wear off. However, talking on the phone is more like -2 dexterity and -2 intelligence, and the effect can be removed instantly by setting down the phone.
In contrast to this, every accident I've been involved in, they were just spacing out or made an error in judgement. No phones were involved.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I don't know if I'd want to see cell phone bans in place*, but definitely some system of additional charges for cell phone use before an accident.
*I've assumed from context that you mean for drivers in control of vehicles, in which case:
It's either legal or it's not; the consequences of the action shouldn't matter when it comes to pressing charges. By all means use evidence of cell phone use to prove the case for distracted driving or what have you, or in whatever-the-opposite-of-mitigation is when it comes to sentencing, but I don't think you can justify retroactively declaring something illegal (or legal) because of what happened (or didn't happen) next.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Just to list a few:
For starters this is a retrospective, observational (being generous here) cohort study.
I'd like a bit more technical detail on how they ensured that they were measuring mobile calls from cars (they have assurance from the telecommunications company)
They note a 7% rise in what they believe to be car mobile phone calls at 9pm on Monday to Friday on a background of steadily decreasing phone calls from 8pm to 10pm, and they don't mention whether this spike is statistically significant.
The spike in the rise of mobile car use is of a maximum of 1/2 hour before the level reaches pre-9pm levels, and continues to decrease. This interval is short - to notice an effect the recording of the car accidents in their source would have to be pretty precise. Any errors in the reporting of car accidents is probably going to make a 30 min window period difficult to measure.
They haven't analysed the variation in traffic at different times in the evening, which makes comparison at different time periods difficult. If the traffic is less after 9pm, the rate of accidents per car could be higher.
But the main problem is:
To show 'no effect' you need to ensure that your study is powered to make this observation - which they have not done. A 7% rise in mobile usage over 30 minutes would need ?how many crashes to give a statistically significant result that rises above the noise.
To be fair, they mention some of these issues as caveats, but I'm not sure they had enough statistics input for this paper. I would like to see the confidence intervals, how they were calculated, what software was used and what the p-values are. There should be a statisticians name on the paper. Certainly, you can't conclude that mobile phones are not dangerous while driving - you can only say that they found no evidence to show this in this particular study.
Real studies - i.e. evaluating drivers making calls in comparision with not making calls show significant degredation in performance.
So why didn't accident rates fall dramatically when phone use while driving was banned? And why didn't they rise dramatically beforehand?
I believe that that friend of mine was quite trained in driving + reading and knew exactly when to put down the book and when to continue. So, he could not be really distracted from driving while reading.
I agree: talking to passengers while driving doesn't distract me, but talking on the phone *does* - so I don't pick-up the phone either. I rather find a stop, halt the car and then call back if the caller seemed some "important" person (my wife, daughter, etc...)
In fact, knowing your limits is one of the key things I learned while taking driving lessons in Germany. My teacher would say: "You *always* need to have reserves: gasoline, water, your speed [never drive top-speed], and your own energy and concentration. If you are at your limits, stop!"
That's probably the one best recommendation he gave that I will never forget...
Taking the risk of sounding like I'm an ass-hat to you - WTF? I've been driving for 35 years - this is all handled at the level of unconsciousness.
When I look into a lane beside me I 95% of the time see exactly what I expect to see - either a car or nothing. Basically because my mind picks up the cars through mirrors and peripheral vision and tracks them, all the time. Even when a car enters my blind spots I still 'see' them there - predict their movements and actions, etc.
I'll back off or speed up sometimes, again without real conscious effort, to avoid things I predict other drivers will do.
I know how fast my car is going from sound and surroundings - no need to look at the dash.
I can tune the radio, change stations, adjust my climate control - all without looking, by touch alone.
In winter I do things that freak my daughter out when she's riding with me - testing my 'footing' when there is no other car anywhere nearby. Why? To calibrate how slippery it is out - and adjust following distance and speed to compensate. Again, no real thinking about it, I just do it. Always have.
The question I have is - WTF is wrong with the rest of you? This isn't rocket science! If you have to concentrate on driving after doing it for YEARS, you shouldn't really be driving!
[ dons asbestos suit ]
Why is pseudo-science such as this infiltrating the sacred, hallowed, information-filled pages of Slashdot? Is this a plot by aliens to turn our brilliant minds to mush?
Some people just can't handle concentrating on multiple tasks at once such as driving as well as talking into a phone let alone texting. Even if you have your cell phone linked by bluetooth in a newer car and can answer a voice call via a push of the button on the steering wheel or another method of answering it you're still making most people focus more on a conversation as to what to say and less on the road and driving. My former boss was like this when he'd take me home on occasion in his brand new Honda 4 door from 2012 and he'd answer calls from co-workers and his family and there was a couple times he did get distracted and almost caused an accident or wasn't as steady on his driving as he should be.
I've even almost once been killed by a person who decided she had to grab her cell phone and reply to a text message. Thankfully she's my ex girlfriend but back in 2007 she was doing around 110 km/h (or 68 mph or so) on a two lane road outside of Regina, Saskatchewan (Canada) and she took both hands off the steering wheel and damn near made the minivan almost swerve off the road into a ditch. To put it mildly that I was pretty pissed off and screaming at her was an understatement.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
Cell phones have never seemed more distracting to me than changing the radio or taking a sip from a cup. I will admit when you see someone drive erratically or make a mistake, then look and see them on their phone, you realllly want to blame the phone. Fact is though blaming the phone might as well be the same as blaming them for being Asian or a women. A lot of people only drive automatics with 1 hand anyways. Manuals take a hand off the wheel and on acceleration and deceleration, arguably the most important times to be prepared. Maybe we should start banning manual transmissions? I have a friend with only 1 arm that has a valid drivers license. He talks on his Bluetooth while driving and drives perfectly fine. If talking on a cell phone is so impairing, surely the use of only 1 arm is impairing him too much to give him a drivers license because he must drive as bad as someone with a hand to their ear.
I wish the girl who rear ended me while talking on the phone as I was stopped at a traffic light last year had RTFA. Could it be that people talk on their phones regardless of what laws are passed or if they get a discount on usage? Distracted driving is real - even the cell phone companies agree.
Greed is the root of all evil.
I also have never been in an accident where either party was on the phone.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
People that are dangerous when driving while using a phone are most likely those that are not stopped by a ban on phones.
That's one possibility. But it doesn't explain why accident rates didn't rise dramatically before phones were banned.
If phone use is that dangerous, then either accident rates should have risen, or the people who drive using phones were just as dangerous when they weren't using phones.
researchers analyzed the effects of legislation banning cellphone use, enacted in several states, and similarly found that the legislation had no effect on the crash rate.
The conclusion you can draw from that observation is not that cell phones don't affect crash rates; to do so, you would have to assume the kind of people who talk on cell phones while driving are the kind of people who would be affected by legislation
If instead, they ignored the passage of the legislation -- there might be no affect. This could be an excuse to ramp up on the awareness campaigns and strict enforcement efforts.
I constantly see people texting or calling others even with the new laws in place. There's no reduction in accidents because the law isn't stopping anyone from doing it.
Me neither. I've never been in an accident. Because I watch what I'm doing instead of screwing around with my e-gadgets.
As a point of interest, statistically it seems to be about 96-98% can't. It depends on which study you look at. Of the more activity-specific ones I've read, the incidence of people whose driving performance was not significantly impaired while simultaneously carrying on a conversation with a remote party has been around 2-4%.
Some of the studies suggested that the same subjects also tend to exhibit their extraordinary ability to perform multiple simultaneous activities effectively in other contexts. Curiously, so far there seems little evidence of correlation between this ability and other factors we might expect to be relevant, such as other measures of intelligence.
If anyone here is a real psychologist with experience of the field, please feel free to chime in with more concrete data, as the above is just based on some personal research as an interested observer.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Depends how intoxicated. But anyway statistics do not support the idea that "careful" intoxicated have less accidents. All level of BAC correlate with an increase in accident probability. It just increase mildly at first, but gets dramatic very quickly after 0.08 BAC.
Also driving a 9pm is much easier than driving at 6pm, phone interference may not be enough to make a blip on the statistic because there are seldom interactions with other drivers/pedestrians/unexpected events at this hour (except for deer and critter activity). That doesn't make driving on the phone safe at any other hour or condition that require full attention.
I'm kinda thinking single drivers might have some benefit from having a phone conversation while driving at night in order to keep awake. Isn't that one of the methods (CB Radio) truckers use to break the monotony?
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
perhaps what it really shows is that so called 'hands-free' calling is equally distracting as regular cell phone use.
Or you don't have a drivers license yet.
I'm betting on the latter rather than the former.
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Driving while having a conversation = safe
Driving with only one hand on the wheel (e.g. stick shift) = safe
Driving with with one hand up near your head and having a conversation = unsafe
Everybody knows that.
I can sit at a light and watch drivers go past and often more than 50% are holding a phone to their head with one hand.
I will say this, every time I've seen an accident or been hit in one, the other driver had a phone in their hand. I'm curious who funded this study.
Seems you answered your own question. Unless you've been hit dozens of times, falling on the same side of a 50/50 a few times in a row is hardly a statistical miracle. (you actually said more than 50%, but benefit of the doubt and all)
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Check out Figure 1 of the PDF. Minor annoyances: there is no legend, and one line label occurs where two lines are on top of each other. Major WTH: the green dashed "All Crashes" line is clearly taller than the blue dotted "Fatal Crashes" line until about 2004 when the number of Fatal Crashes became more than the All Crashes figure for the next 12 months. I stopped reading the PDF at this point.
I come here for the love
The original study that they are trying to debunk with this new bunk used better methods: direct measure of the number of accidents and direct measurements of whether the drivers were using their cell phones when they had the accidents.
And by the way, they concluded that hands-free devices are just as dangerous as the regular cell phones.
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departments/Human%20Factors/driver-distraction/PDF/5.PDF
As someone who rides a motorcycle on a regular basis (every day to/from work for 6 1/2 years, plus recreational riding on weekends), I am telling you now that you can see the erratic driving of a cell phone user before you confirm that yes, they are on their phone as you ride past them.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
OK i'll bite. Studies have shown that talking in person and talking on cell is different. As passenger in the car will pause when they see a potential risk ahead or when they see you requiring increased concentration, and give you another pair of eyes in the vehicle. Also, your brain is not pre-occupied with visualizing the person you are talking to, and interpreting mood, etc via tone of voice (it's easier for your brain when you can see the person).
The increased risk on a cell call is NOTHING TO DO with the operation of the actual device. It is the increased processing your brain requires to deal with a non-visible person.
A common analogy often taught to riders (see: Twist of the Wrist 1/2, a motorcycling safety bible) is that you have $1 worth of attention span. You can spend that any way you see fit, but you have only $1. If you spend 30c on processing a phone call, that only leaves 70c for everything else. Sure, some people may be able to drive better on a cell phone than others due to higher base skill, but driving whilst deliberately impaired whether it be by alcohol, drugs or cell phone use is putting yourself and others at increased risk.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Another possible reason for the non-increase of accidents is that although the phone users are more dangerous, the roads are safer with less traffic on them because rush hour is over.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Follow the money, I'm sure that will quickly lead to whoever funded the "study" and dictated what the results should be,
Self awareness - try it!
Please explain how this "study" corrected for the difference in traffic conditions between rush hour/daytime driving and driving on weekends and after 9:00pm.
On second thought, don't bother. This "study" isn't worthy of the effort.
Check out my novel.
Sounds about right. I was curious what their basis for assuming that there would be a correlation here. The people that talk and text while driving aren't exactly the most forward thinking people out there; so I was curious why they would expect for free nights and weekends to make a difference.
I'm guessing they came up with their conclusion, then set about figuring out how to create a study that would back it up.
As passenger in the car will pause when they see a potential risk ahead or when they see you requiring increased concentration, and give you another pair of eyes in the vehicle.
Ha. My ex would prattle on while I'm driving, and if I didn't make eye contact periodically or didn't respond due to concentrating on the road she'd yell at me to stop ignoring her.
San Francisco recently built a boulevard, Octavia Blvd, in the Western Addition neighborhood. It was the first one built in the country for several decades.
Interestingly, there are _no_ traffic signs telling you what you can and can't do. Center lane traffic regularly crosses the service lanes, which seems ridiculously dangerous. (Note, this is different from transitioning between service and center lane. And I always transition a block ahead of time and turn right from the service lane.)
I researched the CalTrans project sites and committee reports and learned that CalTrans _intentionally_ left the traffic rules uncodified. Turning from the center lane, even when the service lane has a green light, is absolutely legal. Other than regular traffic light and stop sign rules, and the no left turn from center lane boulevard signs, the only official rule is to not drive stupid.
Apparently it's an experiment in the recent theory that when people are unsure and confused, they tend to slow down, and in many circumstances the accident rate will drop. People turning from the center lane are very attentive. And people are also exceptionally attentive when crossing the intersection using the service lane. Both people are scared that some idiot will ram into them.
Octavia Blvd appears to be uncharacteristically safe given the amount of traffic it carries.
However, the transition from freeway to the boulevard, which crosses Market St at grade level, has been a death trap for pedestrians, perhaps precisely because it's free of obstructions and confusion and people feel safe driving too fast.
Like that talking to someone in the car is just as bad as talking on the cell phone, something I find unlikely.
Bad drivers will be bad.
Now texting, that takes your eyes off the road (and idiots that stop in the middle of the road to make a left turn across double-yellow lines too close to an intersection) is bad.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
There's also another way to interpret the data—that the negative effects of using the phone more after 9 P.M.
Or that phone usage has not actually dropped, it's only the law that has changed.
It's like when speed zones change. A council on my route recently changed a speed zone from 60 KPH to 70 KPH after the completion of a new roundabout, however 90% of drivers are still doing 60 because they wont change their habits. People have always done 60 down that road, so they'll keep doing it.
for fully awake drivers are cancelled out by the positive effects of ongoing interaction with another person helping keep sleepy drivers more alert. If this is the case, then banning cell phone use might actually cost lives....
This is utter bollocks.
A tired driver has already had their abilities reduced. Fatigue is the thrid biggest killer behind speed and drugs and alcohol and the biggest cause of accidents after drugs and alcohol. The problem with using a mobile phone whilst driving is that it distracts the driver. The driver has their attention taken off the road and put onto another task, what is worse is that the driver prioritises this other task over driving.
Talking on the phone will just inhibit a driver further. So not only will they be tired, they will be tired and distracted. If you're too tired to drive, you need to pull over and get out of the car. Fatigue wont be fixed by distracting the driver even more, stop, have a cup of tea and stretch your legs.
Distracted driving has always been the problem and being on the phone distracts drivers even more, this has been proven in multiple tests, so the study in the article can easily be explained by people ignoring the law.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I call complete bullshit on this one.
There's nothing more dangerous than a driver in a car with their head pinned to a mobile phone.
I've seen them change lanes without head checks, miss stop signs, drive through red lights.
It's sheer f'in luck they survive and for my own survival I stay well a truly away from a car when I can see the driver is completely distracted and on a phone.
Ditto. I threw my hands-free kit out when I noticed that talking to someone you don't see makes driving at the same time much harder.
-- Cheers!
I don't know, I knew a guy who would, every year, drive from Kiel (Northern Germany) to Malaga (Spain) in his Volkswagen van. While doing so, he would read poems and memorize these so could recite.
The distance is about 2700 Km (1600 miles) and he never had an accident. I don't know how he did it, but for about ten years, he was quite a safe driver (after that, I lost contact to him - because I moved to another place)...
I know people who have crashed because they couldn't stay off their phone, all at fault crashes. 3 of them have had multiple crashes and yet they still wonder why it's cheaper for me to insure my sports car than it is for them to insure a Corolla. I have also been in 1 crash where someone who was on the phone totalled my Pulsar (well, that's how I got the sports car, kind of a long story but the Pulsar was insured for more than it was worth).
However you'll find listening to music or even reading is quite different to texting and phone calls. I tried listening to Spanish lessons in my car and finding that I have to go back over them when I'm not driving simply because when the road requires more of my attention I simply tune out to whatever the instructor on the tape is saying. If I had of concentrated on the lesson and ignored my driving I'd probably have ended up finishing the course in hospital. The same with passengers or music, these are distractions I can easily tune out. However a phone call or text isn't like this, it demands your attention and most people dont tune out and worse yet, prioritise their phone over their driving.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
You mean I can walk and chew gum at the same time / talk while driving at the same time?
Its just a matter of learning how to do it, and specifically concentrating on driving.
Yep, that is correct. You can do the driving task mostly without thinking. People do all sorts of other stuff - smacking the kids, fighting with spouses, etc. and talking on a cell is small potatoes compared to those.
I used to bicycle daily to work and my brushes with death were a combination of cell phones or women with kids.
BS "study" is merely some statistics extracted from database information paid for by some cell phone lover or corporation to counter ACTUAL SCIENCE. Anybody who studies cognitive psychology will tell you that just about everything distracts you from driving your best. Including talking to other people - except then you have other people watching the road and you can use both hands to drive.
Hardly anybody has stopped despite the law being years old now. I still SEE people texting while driving. Nothing has changed as far as what I've observed. Anecdotal evidence sure, but pulling out some stats like that isn't much better - I'm a random sample and the "study" is just cherry picking by setting thresholds.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
You have limited infoprocessing resources.
Yes. Everyone agrees with this statement. Don't need 'cognitive science' to tell you that...
You spend some on a conversation, its less for driving.
Wrong. You're assuming being a fully 'safe' drive requires 100% of our brain's resources.
There is a finite ammount of attention and concentration needed to safely operate a vehicle. The rest is up to you...there's no other way it could be.
Your problem, and every 'texting while driving' Nazi is you make illogical and imprecise distinctions among **ALL** kinds of distractions...assigning weight to one over the other with absolutely no evidence for it.
ex: eating while driving
for some, 'eating while driving' means snagging a quick handful of trail mix at a stoplight....others, they've got their McD's burger box open with fries in one side, driving with the knee while they open a packet of ketchup so they can dip their fries
another ex:
Use of technology. Pushing buttons on a car stereo remote vs touching an iphone touchscreen. What's the difference??? One is to send a text, or type a name into a map, the other is to control the stereo.
In order to be logical, these bans have to cover **any** distraction...eating, applying makeup, reading newspaper (yes I've seen it got pics of the dude to prove it, was in chicago on the loop), texting, using GPS, reading a paper map, lighting a cigarette, arguing with a passenger....
These 'driver safety' laws won't have any effect until they are worded to allow for the complexity of human behavior.
In Oregon, the law is that you must be able to put two hands on the wheel at any time. That's step in the right direction IMHO
Thank you Dave Raggett
This is an excellent 30 minute documentary about texting and driving - very moving.
That's simply not true. It is well established that for most people (read "not narcoleptics"), talking aloud—particularly talking about a subject that requires at least a modicum of thought—significantly reduces your likelihood of falling asleep. Any claim to the contrary requires extraordinary proof.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
That's simply not true. It is well established that for most people (read "not narcoleptics"), talking aloud—particularly talking about a subject that requires at least a modicum of thought—significantly reduces your likelihood of falling asleep. Any claim to the contrary requires extraordinary proof.
Actually it is true.
And talking wont help. With the phone you're taking an already inhibited driver (fatigued driver) and providing them with a distraction (the phone) to remove their already limited attention from the road.
The only way to reverse fatigue is to rest. Talking wont do a damned thing, talking on the phone will make it worse.
Actually learn about managing fatigue before commenting on managing fatigue.
http://www.ntc.gov.au/filemedia/Publications/HVDF_Basic_July08.pdf
Here's some reading on basic fatigue management. Also, you completely failed to provide proof of your claims, therefore you cant claim I require proof to refute them (although I did because I'm a nice guy). So actually prove your claims before pretending they are irrefutable.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
You might have iron concentration, others do not. You might be a super stunt rally driver, others are not. It really doesn't matter how good a driver you are, there's invariably somebody out there who's worse; somebody who can't walk and chew gum. That's who these laws
Do you really want your doddery old neighbours taking their eyes off the road or using what few brain cycles they have remaining to think about a phone conversation? I wonder if your answer would change after they mow you and your kids over.
And say you and your doddery neighbour are both on the road in the same place and are both on the phone. Are you still focussed enough on the road to avoid an accident? Are you really that good? What if the office has just rung you up and they're asking you a difficult question? There's a swerve up ahead. Still focussing on the road?
I don't understand why people are trying to apply "I'm the best driver, so this shouldn't apply to me" logic to this. Driving is a fucking miracle. We hurtle around the world in these massive wheeled machines that we control with mere twitches. One wrong twitch and we're dead. One wrong twitch and we can very easily kill many other people. How much concentration are you really going to split out so you can have a conversation?
I can't believe common sense is going to take a back seat to shitbag studies like this based on data like free minutes, when every other study worth reading (including those based on actual call data, eye tracking, brain activity metering and hazard avoidance) points that having a conversation (even one handsfree) is making you a significantly poorer driver. You might not cause a crash but you might not be able to avoid a collision that you would have otherwise.
And what about people sitting in the car? Yeah, they're a distraction too but they're also another pair of eyes. If you've got kids flipping out in the back, get off the road and sort it out. It's not as easy to legislate against these but if you have an accident and it can be proven that you were driving an unsafe vehicle, they should throw the book at you. As a driver, your car is your responsibility. If you can't swallow that, get off the road. Some of us are trying to drive safely.
It's your responsibility to have told her to shut up and let you drive. Yeah it's not always a palatable option but most people get it when you explain you're sitting in a 1-2 ton missile on wheels controlled by you and you're finding it hard concentrate on the road because of their incessant whittering.
I read through quite a few comments on this one, and I thought about replying to just one. That wouldn't have been fair.First let me say, I'd be willing to wager that some people can talk on the cell phone at the same time as they drive more safely than they can drive without while others cannot.
Let's take a look at something most of you seem to know more about than science, sports (pun intended). Athletes practice many hours a day. The purpose of practicing isn't really to get to a point where one can constantly make conscious decisions to win whatever game they are playing. The purpose of practice is to build strength, and train the brain to make unconscious decisions the way they need to be made to reduce reaction time. Call it muscle memory or whatever you want. Some people learn to react unconsciously on the road.
With that said, this is only a theory. However, seeing that so many of you feel the need to refute an actual study if anecdotal evidence, I'll tell you this: Don't bother trying to convince me otherwise unless you're willing to get off your lazy ass and perform an actual scientific study that proves me wrong.
It really depends on the study you're looking at. Most of them measure responses on a difficult driving course while being asked cognitive questions. The participants are either judged for their answers, or given the impression that they are. Meanwhile they're swerving to lights or slamming on the brakes. They have no opportunity to answer the quiz questions except when they are in imminent driving hazards.
Real driving doesn't work that way. Not nearly. You are constantly on the lookout for unusual road / pedestrian behavior, but most of your brain is sitting there idle. If something does happen, you already know that the conversation has no preemptive value whatsoever. During the test, if you're not answering verbal questions in mid-panic, you're failing that part of the test. In real life, you deal with the driving issue, and then return to the conversation, "What did you say again, I was just swerving to miss a deer."
I was screaming at my television when the Myth Busters "confirmed" this (for instance). They needed a double blind study where the participants were lead to believe there was something else entirely being tested (such as fuel efficiency, with very few reaction events... in other words, make it like driving!!! Don't tell them you're measuring their driving skills, lead them to believe that you're not. Only then can you even begin to tackle the issue.
Most of these studies are designed around the biases that are extraordinarily prevalent in this thread. "I could pull it off, but most people are idiots. We need legislation to control the idiots."* It is a form of conceit. It produces a pre-formed conclusion in search of a study designed to confirm it. And if there's one thing that our universities can produce right now, it's studies that confirm preconceived beliefs. That makes it easier to get funding for future studies, after all.
*(This is an example of the logical fallacy of permitting the exception to prove the rule.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Recently, we were stuck in front of a woman who was talking on her cell phone (no hand-free set either, phone to ear talking) and driving erratically. And then she took out some makeup to put on WHILE talking on her cell phone WHILE driving. I say "stuck in front" because there was no way to get away from her quickly and she was swerving every which way. We definitely did NOT feel safe. I'm not sure what kind of risk assessment these people do who think "I can do these two highly distracting things while I drive and I'll be completely safe!"
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
People are different. We're not all affected by things the same way. Drowsiness is easily my biggest weakness while driving. I can get sleepy even if I've had plenty of sleep. Talking on the phone absolutely does help keep me alert and make me a safer driver. I've never come close to having an accident while talking on the phone. I've had numerous close calls from getting sleepy, including one that absolutely should have killed me.
In short: you're wrong.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Oh, so that time we got t-boned when some moron ran a red light while going 20mph over the limit was somehow the fault of our e-gadgets?
The other driver had no gadgets with him. The light did not just change. We were in traffic as well, so it's not like he had a clear road and we were just suddenly there.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
....I was almost sideswiped by some dumb bitch on a cellphone. Sorry, but as a motorcycle rider who has seen enough first-hand evidence, I'm going to have to disagree with this article, whole-heartedly. That's not counting texting occurrences.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Our data are restricted to calls routed through multiple cell phone towers in a contiguous region just outside of a major California down-town area during an eleven day period in 2005. Given the mechanics of call routing and signal switching, the calls could have been placed only by callers in moving vehicles.
But it doesn't tell you if they're driving. Actually, it doesn't even tell you if they're in a car.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Hello, I am from Spain, sorry about my english, and I have no doubt is dangerous. Nowadays half of the population uses what's up and just this week they were talking about people being run over while they were crossing streets. About using the phone while you are driving we get a fine and we loose points in ours licence. It is one of the biggest causes about having the accident. Also this month we had a really big accident in Galicia, Spain. This days they are investigating, the call the train driver had seconds before he was derailed. It looks like is the biggest issue in the all investigation. http://www.reducirgastos.com/
http://www.reducirgastos.com
You should reread my comment - I said about 95% of the time my assumptions and tracking are good. But I still look. Every Single Time. Also, no, roads don't have a uniform slipperyness in winter - short of a 10 mile detailed survey of the conditions, I do the best I can.
That's typically a lot more than most people do - they have no idea if they can stop in a given distance in winter weather until they HAVE to. By then it's too late if they guess wrong.
Hmm, after 9 pm? Maybe people who were drinking and driving got no worse at it when using a phone.
I sincerely hope your mom never encounters a really bad situation while driving. One of the few 'concious' things I do is check my distance on the highway from time to time - checking that it's between 2.5-3 seconds. I'll also increase that if someone is tailgating me - so if I have to stop I can do it slowly enough at first to give the moron behind me reaction time as well. Seems to tick them off a lot I agree that a 'recertification' would be a great thing for drivers, as well as at least a passing attempt to teach them what happens with mud, skids, etc. I think it would help reduce accidents a lot.
Sorry - I knew it would come off that way, but it's really not intended. Like most things I just expect that if you do it long enough you should be come good at it - everyone should become good at it. If you ski often for over 10 years you should be good at it. If you play pickup basketball every week for years - you should be good at it after 10 years. You know what I'm saying? And I drive, usually several times, every day. Every day! It's impossible to know, but I've had the 'spidey-sense' for quite a while (15-20 years?). Although I did notice something very dangerous years and years earlier - when you first learn to drive you have to think about it. After that, (a couple of years later) you will stop thinking about it and start to do things without thinking. Right when that starts I caught myself doing things wrong. I had to fix my 'autopilot' and train it right. It may be that people fall into that and never get out of it as they don't realize they have committed bad habits to their 'autopilot'. Badly trained autopilots. Then add cell-phones or whatever on top of that and... crash. Just a thought.
It is hard to prove that these things cause wrecks, because many people don't pay attention to their driving even when Not on the phone!
Be careful people, it's dangerous out there...
Try downloading the MP3 versions of the BBC's "In Our Time" with Melvyn Bragg. They make a downloadable MP3 available as well as streams. As an aside. In 2000 I started ripping NPR streams from Real Networks when I was in Moldova. I used "Total Recorder" which I still use from time to time to grab interesting streaming content. I had an aux jack in my Lada Niva's after market CD system. I would plug my 64MB (or was it 32MB) Creative Nomad MP3 player into the jack and rock NPR's All THings Considered as I tooled through Moldova and Eastern Romania. It was a bit of effort to make the audio so I did it only for longish trips. Even my wife was impressed, which is saying something.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
My unscientific method is I can spot a cell phone user from 30 car lengths away. I can tell the jackass is on the phone long before I can see the phone merely by the way they are driving. This method has a 0% false positive rate. Nobody drives as badly as a somebody yakking on their phone, except for, of course, the person texting with the phone in their lap. But even then, the bad driver indicators are distinctly different between yakkers and texters. The former just cause unnecessary traffic delays and aggravation to those of us wanting to be close to the speed limit, not 20 mph under, and the later being the ones who actually crash into things due to inattentiveness and not looking where they are going for long stretches.
Thanks, will check those out. There are a ton of interesting podcasts out there of course. Haven't turned on the radio in some years now except to try and get traffic reports.
I've said this all along: if cell phones were as dangerous as people make them out to be, accident rates would have skyrocketed over the last couple of decades...
We have a certain amount of processing capability, and the danger isn't until you cross the threshold. Talking generally doesn't do it. Texting usually does, though mostly because it's an inherently more cumbersome user interface.