Despite Well Known Risks, Survey Finds Most People Use Smartphones While Driving (cbslocal.com)

From a report: Everyone knows it's dangerous, but a lot of people are still doing it -- driving while distracted. In a survey of 3-million motorists, almost 9 out of 10 admitted to using their smartphone behind the wheel. According to a report by Zendrive, which studied device use among 3.1 million drivers over 5.6 billion miles of driving, in 88 percent of trips, drivers made at least some use of their phones. On average, they spent more than three-minute on the phone.

Comments

Define "Phone Use"

[Anonymous Coward]

Dig past the article and you get a link to the published study. I had to dig but I found this:
"Phone use while driving is detected when the driver handles the phone for a certain period of time for various purposes such as talking, texting or navigating."
So talking hands free and using the GPS apparently count towards this total.

Re:Define "Phone Use"

[Aristos Mazer]

It doesn't make the research useless. You can find plenty of recent research that any conversation with someone not in the vehicle -- i.e., someone who doesn't know when to shut up when road conditions get interesting -- raises accident risk considerably, whether the phone is hands-free or not. I've seen stats indicating that having kids in a car where the only adult is the driver shows the same tendency, although not the same degree.

You can Google around for the research. Someone earlier on this slashdot thread found this paper, for example. The exact level of risk varies between studies, but all of them are considerable. That's why studies of cell phone use have begun including hands-free use.

Define phone use

[Anontroll]

If you dig deep enough you can get some of the methodology. They include talking hands free and using the GPS as phone use.

Confusing extrapolations and data

[Sumus Semper Una]

I wholeheartedly agree that using a cell phone while driving is distracting and dangerous. I've had too high a percentage of experiences being nearly hit by another driver only to later see at a stoplight that they've been using their cell phone to feel any other way about this. However, I do feel that the Zen Drive survey is making some strange extrapolations from their data. From the article:

Zendrive researchers also found that during an hour-long trip, drivers spent an average of 3.5-minutes using their phones. This finding is frightening, especially when you consider that a 2-second distraction is long enough to increase your likelihood of crashing by over 20-times. In other words, that’s equivalent to 105 opportunities an hour that you could nearly kill yourself and/or others.

Ok, that's just ridiculous extrapolation there. The assumption that you had 105 2-second distractions is in no way supported by the survey. There could have been 42 5-second distractions mostly involving stoplights. There could have been 420 0.5-second distractions from glancing at the phone and reading it without interacting with it. Or any distribution in between. They could have just included a section on whether the drivers were ever interacting with their phones for more than 2 seconds and used that to determine a link between that number and the "more than 3 minutes" number. At least then they would have data to back up the claim.

Also, what is "phone use" in this context? If I'm using a hands-free device connected to my smartphone to have a conversation without interacting with the phone does the duration of that entire conversation count as "phone use?"

tl;dr - Disingenuous and ill-thought-through extrapolations designed to reinforce your point hurt your argument, even if I would otherwise agree with you.

Re:I find this thoroughly unsurprising

[Dorianny]

What surprises me is that they need a study to tell this. Just look around, everyone who owns a damn cell phone is using it at some point while driving. At every red light, you can see at least 1/2 driver looking at their phone. Best way to catch them: cops in buses to spot them. And best way to deter them: higher ticket price.

People tend to not follow laws that they think are irrational, and most people think that prohibiting checking the phone while the car is at a complete stop, is stupid. Want to make things safer, then require the gear be placed in [Parked]. I don't know about other states but in NY you can get be ticketed while parked at the curb if the engine is running. The Laws in this case should strike a balance that minimizes risk and provides the most benefit, rather then idealism that in practice is wildly ignored

Re:I find this thoroughly unsurprising

[cayenne8]

Actually, it also assumes that laws against using a phone in the car are universal, and in the US, they vary by state to state.

I believe in my state, it is against the law to text and drive, however, you are fully free to talk on the phone all you want while driving.

Re:They could have done better with the data

[lactose99]

Nope. All evidence shows that it is the conversation on the phone that is dangerous.

Citation?

Really? Found this in 3 seconds: https://www.researchgate.net/p...