Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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

Posted by msmash on from the playing-with-fire dept.

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.

11 of 344 comments (clear)

  1. I find this thoroughly unsurprising by redmid17 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    People also know the risks of fucking with the radio, looking at maps, yelling at kids, driving while sleepy, or drinking and driving. Guess what?

    All of those still happen in spades are for the most part of impossible to eradicate. With a combination of education, training (eg no passengers in the car for 3 months) and penalties, we can reduce them like the world has done for drunken driving, but people will continue to use their phones while they drive just like they've let other things distract them as long as cars have existed. The only real differentiator is that the phone lets us combine nearly everything into a handheld distraction as opposed to having 10 different proximate causes.

    1. Re:I find this thoroughly unsurprising by Nkwe · · Score: 5, Interesting

      People also know the risks of fucking with the radio, looking at maps, yelling at kids, driving while sleepy, or drinking and driving. Guess what? The only real differentiator is that the phone lets us combine nearly everything into a handheld distraction as opposed to having 10 different proximate causes.

      Well the phone is different because it was not designed to be used while driving. Compare the phone to the climate control or radio controls in a car. The radio controls are in a fixed place on the dash and possibly also on the steering wheel. The radio controls typically have some sort of tactile feedback that you can use without looking at them. With a smart phone, it is not in a predictable location (your hand, the seat, a holder in the dash, your pocket, maybe the floor). With a smart phone, you can not operate it without looking at it (phone may be locked, the app you need may not be on the screen, no real buttons with tactile feedback, etc.) Smart phone screens are typically much smaller (in size and font) than are the radio and native car controls.

      Smart phone interfaces are not specifically designed for driving, where the native car controls are. Sure, some newer cars are going to screen based interfaces, and this is a bad trend, but at least these screens are mounted to the dash and car companies have some responsibility (and potential liability) around making these interfaces non-distracting, whereas smart phone manufactures do not.

    2. Re:I find this thoroughly unsurprising by Solandri · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This is the problem I have with most arguments against autonomous cars. People always want to compare them against a completely attentive and alert human driver who completely understands every hypothetical situation. Not against the statistical average human driver who has 0.5 seconds to grok the situation and react before an accident occurs.

      In a way I can understand it. If you can do better than humans in the human's best case, then you can do better than humans in all cases. But it just perpetuates the flawed reasoning most people use of making decisions based only on the best or worst case (e.g. winning the lottery, plane crashes, nuclear accidents). The real fix is to educate people to do these broad-band comparisons based on statistical average, not based on outliers.

    3. Re:I find this thoroughly unsurprising by countach74 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      We also need to consider what happens when those laws are passed. In my state, it's illegal to use your phone while driving. Calls are permitted with a headset only. So do people stop using their phones? Not at all. They just keep their phone out of sight to try to avoid a ticket, which is even worse. Now, rather than bringing the phone up where one can see the phone and the road at the same time, people are looking down in their laps, taking their eyes off the road.

      People will, for the most part, do what they want to do. Changing behavior is very difficult and laws are often quite ineffective at affecting the change desired. I'm not saying we should just accept that people will always use phones or that it's OK to do so, but a lot of times the "solutions" are worse than the problems they intend to solve. Also I'd love to see safety data regarding cell phones in regions that have strict laws vs. those that don't. Everything I've outlined has just been from personal observations and anecdotes.

    4. Re:I find this thoroughly unsurprising by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Plus, and I'm going to be called nasty things for saying this, but traffic accidents do not appear to be "way up", like they would be if smart phones were causing a ton of new accidents.

      I'm not going to call you "nasty things," because you're basically right that stats don't appear to be "way up." BUT it also depends on what stats you use. You're right that "distracted driving" stats are always hard to estimate.

      What we do know: overall number of crashes (including fatalities, non-fatal injuries, and property-damage-only crashes) basically had been in steady decline since the mid-1990s, when we had nearly 7 million crashes/year in the U.S. This trend lasted until ~2010, when it got down to ~5.5 million/year.

      For some reason total crashes have been steadily rising again, from a low of 5.3 million in 2011 up to 6.3 million in 2015.

      Granted, total number of injuries and fatalities have thankfully not been rising at the same rate (though they are rising again too), but for some reason total CRASHES have been going up quickly. (That is, particularly crashes with no significant injuries.)

      The official reports say that cell phone distractions have been steadily rising, though they only claim to account for around 2% of distraction-caused accidents in 2005 rising up to 8% of distraction-caused accidents in 2015. That is obviously a significant rise in that category, but I don't know how those numbers are estimated -- and still only accounts for (according to the report) 69,000 crashes in 2015, which is only about 1% of total crashes.

      But I think we need to ask -- if total crashes have risen by ~20% in the past 5 years, after >15 years of steady declines (despite increased total miles driven), why? Drunk driving numbers have generally been continuing to decline. Are drivers really just that much more reckless in general than they were a few years ago? Are the reports estimating things that poorly? Are people suddenly reporting more accidents for some reason? Or could there be some more specific reasons why we're now seeing ~1 million more crashes per year than 5 years ago?

  2. "Use" can mean anything. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I "use" my smart phone for driving directions. It is on. I look at it from time to time.

    I "use" my smart phone for music when on the road. Have a huge playlist and generally just skip tracks forward, not much else.

    I do not take or make calls with it when driving.

    I do not text when driving.

    I do not change applications, except between the music player and mapping app when driving.

    If it takes more than 1 button to do, I wait until a non-busy, straight, part of the road where grandma would feel safe driving.

  3. Public education goddamnit! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Phones -can- be used safely in a car. You just have to know that you need to prioritize tasks. In aviation we say "aviate, navigate, communicate, in that order" This means fly the plane first, worry about where youre going second, and talking to people is a distant third. ATC knows this, & theyre fine with it if it takes you a minute or two to respond, do what you gotta, just be safe.

    Its the same in the car "hold on a second while i navigate this intersection" and PUT THE PHONE DOWN until youre back on a straight stretch.

    Or just put the thing down & when you pick it back up, "hey mom, sorry i had to put the phone down to change lanes". She will understand, trust me.

    "Hey this is not a good time to discuss (very complex or emotional topic), let me get to my destination and I'll call you back."

    The problem we're having is that our reaction to it so far has been to just outlaw it & write tickets. This isnt going to work any better than "just say no" or "abstinence-only" education. People ARE going to do this, they just are, youre not going to stop them. Since that is the case, the best thing we can do is educate them on how to do it responsibly, and to also put some effort into updating our unwritten phone etiquette rules to fit.

  4. Re:They could have done better with the data by Carewolf · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Once a phone call is initiated it poses little or no risk as it continues. If I start a phone call while I'm at a stop light and continue with it I'm really not posing any additional danger to anyone. By comparison taking your eyes off the road to read and write a text message is inherently dangerous any time you are attempting to drive while doing so.

    Nope. All evidence shows that it is the conversation on the phone that is dangerous. It doesn't matter if you are doing it handfree or holding the phone in your hand. Having a conversation with a remote person takes 80% of your concentrations and increases your chance of having an accident 100 times.

  5. Finder's fee! by GeekWithAKnife · · Score: 1, Interesting


    If police will pay 10% of the fine to other motorists that can provide clear recoded evidence then we'll have free policing in everyone's common interest.

    You can submit recoded evidence of a serious crime already. Why not driving while using a mobile phone?

    --
    A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
  6. The key is redirecting the behavior by NotARealUser · · Score: 3, Interesting

    We keep trying to force people to do things they will not do. I am annoyed as the next person when some teenager sits at the traffic light texting their friend rather than going forward on green, but I think we go about the solution the wrong way. Fines certainly have their place, but when you see a trend develop that is not easy to correct, you need to think outside your paradigms and come up with more creative solutions.

    An example of such creative thinking is how residential neighborhoods solved speeding issues. Many newer neighborhoods created road patterns that made it difficult to speed. Their first attempts punished everybody - they created speed bumps all over the road. Later attempts were more friendly to the law abiding drivers because they found that by putting in curves, the roads became visually appealing and it reduced speed.

    Instead of thinking that fines and enforcement campaigns will solve this issue, we need to find better ways to adapt the technology and make it safer and less distracting. I don't have the ultimate solution on this, but handsfree devices in cars have helped greatly with voice calls. There is still a very big issue with text messages. That solution is still in the future. It is clear that people will not just give up text-message-like communication while driving, and it is also clear that there is no way to evenly enforce punishments on such a large percentage of people. Therefore, the best hope of a long term solutions lies in innovation and new ideas.

    The key here is redirection. If a behavior cannot be solved by education and/or punishment, we must find ways to redirect the behavior into something safer.

  7. The biology of why we drive with cell phones by maiden_taiwan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    People continue to use their cell phones while driving because of a limitation of our biology. Here's a quick demonstration.

    Imagine right now that you're petting a dog. Can you see (in your mind's eye) the dog's face? Can you "feel" the fur against your fingers and the dog's breath against your face? Can you "hear" the dog panting in your head? Most people can, easily. Your brain is great at simulating these sensations through imagination.

    Now, try to imagine agony. Imagine the physical feeling of crashing your car at high speed, because you were on your stupid cell phone. Can you actually experience the agony of your destroyed body in your mind? The answer (for almost everybody) is no. Your brain is very bad at imagining/simulating internal feeling. Our brains are wired that way. So we continue driving with cell phones, even though we know the risks.

    These ideas were inspired by the book, "How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain," by Lisa Feldman Barrett, chapter 4, "The Origin of Feeling." https://www.amazon.com/How-Emo...