Slashdot Mirror
Distracted Driving: Everyone Hates It, But Most of Us Do It, Study Finds
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Insurance company Esurance has a new study out on distracted driving, and it makes for interesting reading. Almost everyone agrees distracted driving is bad, yet it's still remarkably prevalent. Even drivers who report rarely driving distracted also report that they engage in distracting behaviors. The study also raises some questions about the growing complexity of modern vehicles, particularly the user interfaces they confront us with. The Esurance report includes survey data from more than a thousand participants. More than 90 percent said that browsing for apps, texting, and emailing were distracting. Yet more than half of daily commuters admitted to doing it. The survey also found that the longer your commute, the greater the chance is you'll get distracted, probably by your phone. Even participants who reported they were "rarely distracted" admitted to distracting behavior like talking on the phone or even viewing GPS Navigation data. (Any task performed while driving should be able to be performed in under two seconds to avoid becoming a distraction.)
The radio is distracting. But it's nothing compared to billboards.
Or LED-based cop lights, for that matter.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
I do not own a car. I bicycle as my main transport.
I've seen other cyclists riding while staring intently at their phones.
I've seen accidents caused by same.
I do not know what the solution is. You can tell people not to do that, and they already know not to, but it remains that every single day I see a driver, pedestrian or sometimes a cyclist paying more attention to phone than surroundings.
Instead, I do distracted train riding. I’m so reckless, I’ve been known to read books while the train flies along. If I’m feeling especially daring, I’ll close my eyes - sometimes for minutes at a time.
So be careful if you see my train coming!
#DeleteChrome
The biggest source of distracted driving: "GPS signal lost."
Because I know the damn map app took five minutes to warn me it had no idea where it was.
This is the dumbest thing I've ev
--Sent from my iPhone
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
My dash cam has captured two car accidents where you can clearly see the driver is playing with their phone. One where a woman with a baby and a toddler in the car drove at 35mph directly into the back of a work van while wandering between lanes. Another where a guy simply drifted off the road and into a rain ditch at 45mph causing the car to go airborne and do a 360 spin in mid air. I gave the videos to police and the insurance companies. Everyone should be using a dash cam.
People follow far too closely.
From the summary:
"Any task performed while driving should be able to be performed in under two seconds to avoid becoming a distraction"
The rule of thumb for vehicle separation on highways is to leave two seconds between you and the vehicle ahead. The next time you are on a busy highway, Note how few drivers actually leave that much space. And when you do leave such a gap some jockey cuts right in.
The two misbehaviours taken together are leaving a lot of wreckage around.
A similar "study" in Washington State this past year reported similar findings, but actually included the questions. From memory, they had defined "driving" as being behind the wheel, en-route. Not necessarily moving. In Seattle's stop-and-slow traffic, you can spend five minutes stopped at a light; it's not "distracted driving" to check your email when there's no velocity and no where to go.
Let's get the questions (which are suspiciously missing, even as they trumpet "occasional distracted driving") before we attribute any credibility to this study.
Its only distracted when other people are doing it, because I'm watching them be distracted.
--
You did what? -- Anonymous
I almost dropped my tablet and nearly sideswiped a bus.
Just because other people do other more or less stupid things while driving doesn't make using your phone any smarter. If you use a headset then at least you're keeping your eyes free to watch the road.
But by now we've all been on the road the day everyone is dodging around someone who's weaving between lanes, or going half the speed limit - any when it's finally your turn to go around the car, sure enough the driver has a phone in their face. There are plenty of ways to die in this world, but if I get taken out by someone who thinks their email is more important than my life, I hope I can haunt them for eternity.
I don't know about the rest of you , but I honestly cannot wait until autonomous cars are finally really here. I would rather have my commute time back to myself.Sure, I like driving, but time is money. could be watching youtube to learn something else instead, and what a great time to do it. 1hr to work and back home I don't get back.
That's not true, I always kee
Table-ized A.I.
I need both hands on the handlebars to keep the bike straight while maintaining any significant speed.
Sometimes one brake isn't working well and I need the other hand ready to apply the other brake; that can be a problem even if realizing the need to brake.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Is the most distracted driving I do.
suka!
Looking at your GPS: Bad
Yelling at your fighting kids in the back seat: Good.
What I can't stand about these surveys and studies is that they all seemed pre-ordained to get the results the researchers are looking for. I have not doubt that driving solo, the radio pre-set before you leave with no food or beverage will give you the maximum amount of attention to pay to the road. But the world doesn't operate like that. People have others in the car, hold hot coffee and change radio stations.
When all these things are present, when is it bad? Is there no difference between going through a school zone at 8:30 and driving on a lightly traveled interstate?
All discussions seem to be centered around the stupidest, least coordinated person driving through a congested street with kids jumping out from between parked cars. There's no allowance made for adjusting to the environment. There are those who argue you must have 2 hands on the steering wheel at all times. And yet, we don't outlaw one-armed drivers or manual transmissions. Does taking your hand off the wheel to shift while operating the clutch with your foot distract you from the steering and observing the road? The absolutists will probably argue that it does, and is less safe.
How many kids can a parent have in the car at once? One? Two will eventually fight. And with the current laws they all have to be in the back seat that will trigger looking in mirrors ( rear view and special ones just for viewing the back seat ) or turning around. How about a study showing the impact of 1, 2 3 or 4 kids i the car with a parent? Not likely, because distraction by looking in the mirror when talking to your kid is being a "good parent" while looking at the radio to change the station is "bad driving".
Every single study is just another attempt to wrap an option in statistics .
The problem with a study that classifies things like "viewing GPS navigation data" is that it ignores the wide range of distraction that could cause.
I view GPS navigation data. My GPS is mounted immediately above left of my steering wheel. It's closer to my view of the road than the instrument cluster. The last hire car I had showed the GPS instructions on the instrument cluster itself.
That is a big contrast to some idiot fumbling around with the phone lying on his passenger car seat, or playing with the central console's touchscreen while screaming down the highway.
The only "distracted driving" accident I've been in was when the guy behind me didn't realize that I was stopping at a yellow light and slammed into me from behind.
An overwhelming body of evidence says that if you're doing the things you described then you are significantly worse as a driver than you otherwise would be. Your reactions are slower than they otherwise would be. Your judgement is impaired. You do make mistakes.
Now, maybe so far other drivers have been able to compensate for your mistakes, taking avoiding action to prevent an accident, or waiting patiently behind you when you were slow off the mark, or leaving extra space to accommodate your panic braking. Maybe because you weren't paying attention you didn't even realise this was happening all the time. But it does happen all the time, with better drivers compensating to some extent for the worse ones, and unfortunately it breeds a false sense of security in those who "don't have a problem".
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I've been doing a lot of that stuff - eating, drinking, singing - for FIFTY YEARS. I got my first cell phone in 1990, and I've been talking on the phone since then. I don't have a problem with "distractions".
No, you have a problem with comparative analysis, chance, and the human toll of time.
Talking on a phone is not even close to the same thing as the other 95% of society addicted to social media that requires considerably more interaction (and that headset isn't statistically helping you). Driving distractions include eating and drinking, which were proven factors long before cell phones.
Your hearing, eyesight, and reflexes; I can assure you that you do NOT hold the same capabilities that you did FIFTY YEARS ago. One accident in half a century? There is no insurance company in the world that would attribute that statistic to skill alone. Luck has been on your side my friend.
Then again, none of this matters. That Pepsi and McShit food you're putting in your body says a lot about your longevity.
The thing is, because we drive safely on a daily basis and probably had avoided some accident do to our quick reflexes. We think ourselves as excellent drivers, however in the matter of fact, we are nearly all average drivers, who makes mistakes from time to time.
So while driving on a daily bases you have ran across 1 or 2 idiot drivers. out of the thousands of cars that are on the road that you need to interact on your drive. However chances are that idiot driver is just as good driver as you are, it is just not a good day for them
I know once in a while I am not having a good day, I miss an exit, a car is in the blind spot, my foot is a little to heavy or light on the petal... A slew of stuff where I could had been killed if not for the reflexes of the other drivers. Now this isn't a daily problem, most days I go along no problems, I am a perfectly boring motorist. But lets say I have 1 bad day where I make a lapse of judgement for a few seconds. During that time, I am the Idiot driver who is a problem. Now we multiply the problem with thousands of drivers who are perfectly good drivers 99.9% of the time. that still means there there is at least 1 in 1000 driver on the road interacting with you nearly every day.
For me to be safe, I need to admit my faults as an imperfect driver, this humility means I will normally take extra percussion just in case I do something stupid. To risk contradicting myself the drivers who see themselves as good or excellent drivers often put themselves and other in more danger, because they feel they can successfully navigate a world with less tolerances. But still they are fine 99.8% of the time. However that 1/1000 extra causes that 1 problem driver a day to 2 a day.
There are things that distract us all the time, and it is nearly impossible to legislate all of them. Just being in a bad mood can be just as dangerous as driving on the phone. However if there are things we can control, we should. Drunk/Drugged driving, Talking/Texting, Tends to be the biggest thing.
But other things distract too. The reason why when we are lost in the car, your turn down the radio. Is because you need less distractions to navigate an unfamiliar area.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
We need to be as excited about distracted driving as school shootings.
A) Distracted driving kills far more people
B) Individuals CAN immediately affect the safety of the world by doing the right thing.
I think there are things we can do gun safety, too, but darn if we don't focus on the problems that are the most difficult, out of our control and least significant.
-Dave
Looking at your GPS: Bad
Yelling at your fighting kids in the back seat: Good.
In California:
Looking at your GPS: Bad
Fiddling with a paper map while doing 80 MPH down the freeway: No problem
Don't make me stop this car!!!!
Have gnu, will travel.
> What I can't stand about these surveys and studies is that they all seemed pre-ordained to get the results the researchers are looking for
Well said and I can't agree more. I took Psychology as a first year option in my CS degree course. It was mostly full of women that were doing liberal arts and social studies. These are the types of people doing all these kids of studies.
As someone doing a logic/math related subject (CS), it was blindingly obvious that Psychologists routinely perform a giant hand-waving masquerade with their experimental methodology to make their results appear "scientific" and rigorously obtained, and are totally OK with that.
In fact their method and analysis is so totally full of obvious arbitrary holes and logical contradictions, that any truly scientific discipline would simply consider both the approach and the results themselves completely meaningless/valueless.
> but we don't have the option of not taking passengers somewhere.
Yes we do. Thats what pickup trucks are for.
How about a study showing the impact of 1, 2 3 or 4 kids i the car with a parent?
For our oldest two it wasn't related to how many kids, but was the fact that legally they're supposed to be backwards facing. The kids hated it. And dealing with a screaming kid, who is backwards facing, is a lot more effort than one who is forwards facing. Flipping their safety seat, to forwards facing early, was always a big help.
I have rented quite a few cars in the past two years. The info systems are very distracting. Sometimes doing very basic tasks can be distracting. For example, trying change the radio band or even changing the channel can require 3-5 button pushes or screen touches just to find the function I want.
We need a standard interface.
I'm dri
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
I only get distracted when I run over a pedestrian or a cyclist. Those pests! /sarc
People are generally driving like they're in a computer game these days. It is extremely bad and irresponsible. I can see it happen daily. The ego of the drivers is sky high. Self-driving cars without any ego cannot come too soon.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
When you're driving a car, you have to drive a car. Kids fighting or arguing is not your job. Your job is to look at the freaking road and try not to kill anyone. Comprende?
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
Let me know if my comparison is inane...
If someone has three beers and jumps in their car, they could:
If someone is texting and driving, which I would maintain is even more distracting than having three beers in their system:
Don't both of these people have close the same chance of injuring or killing someone?