Shocking Revelation: It Isn't The Phone That's Dangerous; It's The Driver
from the crash-and-burn dept
We have discussed the futility of banning cell phones while driving for some time at Techdirt. The evidence keeps pouring in and all of it seems to suggest that a driver capable of driving distracted while on his phone will dutifully seek out other ways to be distracted if the phone is no longer an option. However, it's worth pointing out this continuous deluge of evidence because, for whatever reason, both national and local politicians just seem to love flailing their arms about cell phones mixed with cars.That's why we'll point out a new study done by MIT researchers which has found, yet again, that people who regularly use cell phones while driving also exhibit other risky driving behaviors, even when no phone is present. If nothing else, the method for this study is interesting:
The study involved 108 people, equally divided into three age groups: 20s, 40s, and 60s. For each person, the researchers correlated answers on a questionnaire with data collected from on-board sensors during a 40-minute test drive up Interstate 93 north of Boston. The drivers commanded a black Volvo SUV tricked out with an eye tracker, heart and skin monitors, video cameras facing out the front and back windows, on-board sensors, and other research gear.No phones were allowed to be used during the study obviously, and yet researchers found some interesting correlations with the people who admitted regularly talking on their phones while driving: they were more likely to drive faster, to spend more time in the left hand lane, to brake harder, and to change lanes more often. None of these are as drastic as, say, upending the SUV and falling over the rail off a cliff and landing in fiery fashion on a school bus filled with nuns, but the changes do suggest an increased likelihood of danger.
"These are not 'oh-my-god' differences," says study leader Bryan Reimer, a human factors engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. "They are subtle clues indicative of more aggressive driving." What's more, he says, other studies have linked these behaviors to an increased rate of crashes. "It's clear [from the scientific literature] that cell phones in and of themselves impair the ability to manage the demands of driving," Reimer says. But "the fundamental problem may be the behavior of the individuals willing to pick up the technology."In other words, crappy drivers are crappy drivers. If they aren't chattering away on their phones, they'll be singing Carly Rae Jepson with their eyes closed, or putting on their deodorant, or reaching into the backseat for that bag of Cheetohs they left there last weekend. But do we ban cheese snacks in cars? Do we outlaw Old Spice-ing while driving? Should pop music be banned in the car (resist...temptation...to say...yes...)? Of course not, particularly when these studies continue to show that distractable drivers will find another way to run us all over.
At least if they have their cell phone out, it'll be that much easier to dial 911 when they make us roadkill.
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Filed Under: bad drivers, driving, driving while talking, phones, safety
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https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rockstar.gta3&hl=en
Thank God non of them are iDevice users =P
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This might explain the errant bullets.
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Cell phones while driving will distract you, making you more likely to miss a sign or light.
Cell phones while shooting will make you more likely to miss your target.
Does that mean cell phones while driving and shooting will cancel eachother out and help you drive and hit normally? Double negatives, you know.
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Transit
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-autos-teen-drivers-20120824,0,5316572.story
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If we're going to start banning all the things that can distract us, then we should probably start with those who allow themselves to be so easily distracted.
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Chrono S. Trigger, this one made Mrs. Wally and I laugh...
....Mrs. Wally caused a few accidents in front of our house coming in from her morning jog ^_^
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Can we start with small children in cars?
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Accidents in the back seat cause children.
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Put them in the trunk where they belong!
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Also, could we ban politicians that keep trying to write bad laws? The laws are not the problem but obsessive compulsive politicians behind them are.
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I recently heard something about how the current congress is the worst ever because they only passed a handful of bills, and my thought was that should make this the best congress ever.
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If things are going along well then not doing much is a good thing, but when faced with the worst economic environment in almost 100 years, perhaps we should be trying to do something to fix things?
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In the UK
In the UK, you can get points on your license for any of the above if it is impairing your ability to drive. It's called driving without due care and attention. Didn't stop them outlawing using your phone whilst driving though - and outlawing the practice has not made the slightest difference - crap drivers still use their phones, hog the overtaking lanes on the motorway and follow other drivers far too closely! We need ways of forcing crap drivers to either become better, or get them off the roads.
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More. Rigorous. Licensing.
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Typo
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Distracted drivers....
If the driver (not a passenger - not sure how we do that, but those "techies" that can magically stop piracy can figure this one out too) is using a cell phone, the air bag is disabled - the problem will slowly take care of itself.
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"It's clear [from the scientific literature] that cell phones in and of themselves impair the ability to manage the demands of driving," Reimer says. But "the fundamental problem may be the behavior of the individuals willing to pick up the technology."
We're questioning the logic behind banning each individual distracting activity; treating symptoms rather than the disease.
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Your motor nuerons are all needed to keep your steering wheel steady, you're eyes scanning, your feet ready to rapidly work the pedals, and your hearing in case there is engine trouble.
Holding a cellphone to your ear slows your reaction time and is comperable to that of someone with a person who is buzzed from a beer. Your motor nuerons in the brain are needed to grip the steering wheel and keep your reaction time up, holding your arm up to talk like that takes away from your reaction time.
Your eyesight is extremely important when driving, so when a cell phone is held to one side (note most of them are now rectangles the size of our hands) it creates a blind spot.
Hearing has its merits outside of engine trouble when the terrain of an intersection blocks your view.
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It's like my dad always used to tell me every time I sat in the middle seat of our 1987 Toyota Pickup after starting a poke war....
*jovially and jokingly in mock angry gruff* "Hey!!! Don't hit the driver".
This is also the same guy who consistently gently elbowed me every time he changed to gears 2, 4, and reverse :-)
Oh and as for eating and driving...I tried it once....never again. I was so worried about the mess it made I became very unaware of my surroundings...near accident.
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It is merely perception on the frequency we notice the bad behavior. Which are you more likely to see, someone with their head tilted taking a bite of a taco while turning in an intersection without checking for oncoming traffic or talking while holding a cell phone to their head.
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Which is the entire point. If you introduce new technology without proper training, it's amazing how people will screw up using it.
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You know, I'm under the impression that cell phone use while driving actually takes concentration away from actually gaining more experience while driving.
I find when I go at 70 or 75 Miles per hour up I-71 to visit the in-laws, I have to go with the traffic pattern rather than the speed limit. I don't use my phone while driving unless I get stuck in highway traffic behind and accident. I've even seen traffic flow patterns as high as 85MPh much to my wife's chgrin.
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My father once got briefly distracted with the radio (changing stations) and hit the car in front of him because the traffic stopped all of a sudden. My father isn't an irresponsible driver and he seldom turns his attention elsewhere but in that brief moment we crashed. Now a person that texts while driving will probably find no problem in dealing with the radio whenever.
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You raise a good and valid point.
I use mine constantly in the car. The expensive ones usually have some sort of gimmick like Gold cables. The cheep quality ones actually hold less sound quality and are susceptible to heat. The middle range ($15) is the sweet spot because it is durable, withstands heat, and don't sound like an actual tape is being played.
All I can say though is that I have had to replace 4 generic brand tape adapters within a span of 2 years. I tested one of my older brand named adapters from 8 year ago and it till sounded like new. They wear out sort of like a regular tape would, just more slowly and some more quickly than others.
My logic for buying mid-range tape adapters is simply that the more expensive ones use a gimmicky gold wire and are typically made of cheap components on the actual devices.
My current one is a Philips branded adapter I bought at Wal-Mart and I am not remembering the price of it.
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Logic however
In fact deaths and injuries have reduced significantly over time by improving car and road design.
In those domains where blaming the driver is not an option (aviation and motor racing) technical measures have resulted in even greater safety improvements.
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Ie. too bored to be bother with paying enough attention to be bothered with stay alive.
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Disabling cel phones in cars a stupid idea
1.) woman is trying to escape from homicidal attacker, cannot make call to police while driving, has to pull over and get out of car, wait for cel to reset itself, thus giving killer the chance he needs.
2.) you're driving through a bad part of town and you're lost. Can't use cel phone for mapping. Have to park, get out of car and wait for phone to reset. Become a victim of muggers.
3.) driving on busy freeway, lost. Passenger has cell phone and could use it to get directions but cannot because it is disabled while in car.
4.) you are driving and see a drunk driver but you can't call police to report.
I hate bad drivers just as much as anyone, but target the bad driving, not the technology. Politicians seem incapable of making wise decisions. I don't have much faith in he so-called safety experts either; in my experience most of them are pretty disconnected from he real world.
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I would say that the people proposing such ideas are shills for the Payphone industry.
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This time I don't agree
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Your in a freaking car, unless your call is "I'm lost, is this the right way?" or a real emergency what are you going to do with a phone in traffic?
Sometimes you need to just hit the button and send them to voicemail. If its ZOMG important they are going to call you right back.
Just because you get the incoming text chime doesn't mean drop everything and deal with it right then. Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
We have thousands of distractions, we do not need thousands of laws to outlaw each one. We need people to be responsible.
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Those words are there to stop a lawsuit, if we stopped letting people do stupid things and shift the blame to 3rd parties we'd be better off.
If we started making people have to have responsibility for their actions, rather than keep the precious snowflakes in protective bubbles where nothing can be their fault, they would learn that their actions have consequences before they get to the point where they drive through the mall because they were busy texting about the new Beiber single.
I watched an episode of Judge Judy, STOP JUDGING ME, ONLY JUDY CAN JUDGE ME!, a young man carjacked a woman and destroyed her car.
He was angry to be hauled into court because she was seeking money to replace the car.
He didn't understand what the big deal was.
He was cold and didn't feel like walking all the way home, so he knocked her down and took her car.
As I recall his mother was in there supporting him, and was fussing trying to protect her baby.
There is a school of thought that he might just be an idiot, but the bigger concern for me is no one ever let the cold light of reality shine upon him his entire life.
If you kick the dog, it will bite you and no one should yell at the dog.
If you steal from someone, you should get arrested not just have to grudgingly return the item.
I saw a girl today on one of the Judge shows who was being sued by her mother for a $1000 loan. She lied to her mom and said it was for brakes on her car... it was to pay the "taxes" on $50,000 she had won online. She stood on national television and said she didn't think she had to repay the money, because the scammers should have to pay it back. She was able to justify to herself that she had no responsibility in the entire thing.
This is the problem, with everyone doing everything "for the children!" we've removed them from reality and now we are seeing the havoc this causes as they are suddenly on the roads with the rest of us.
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We set aside Federal dollars to run "Drunk Driving Enforcement Zones" which puts many cops on the streets at checkpoints, meanwhile elsewhere crime continues.
Rather than pretend kids are little adults or that marketing execs can make a flashy presentation that will make them stop, lets spend that money instead on the programs shown to work. Kid gets drunk and killed a woman's family. She forgave him and now tours High Schools with him telling his story. He can relate to the kids because he was them, he doesn't use words run through a focus group - he speaks the same thing the kids speak.
Rather than a see someone who was texting and driving sent to jail (depending on if there were victims) or out on the street picking up trash - lets send them to speak to other kids like them and explain how shitty their life became because they grabbed the phone. Object lessons are good things. If the speaker repeats, no second chances.
But we really need to do more than blame 1 thing, pass a law and call it all better. This study shows that its idiots not cell phones cause problems. Pass all the laws you want against cell phone use in cars, people will still be stupid... makes more sense to try other tactics than just pass a law to appeal to the popular idea that cell phones are to blame.
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Those words are there to stop a lawsuit, if we stopped letting people do stupid things and shift the blame to 3rd parties we'd be better off...
If we started making people have to have responsibility for their actions"
This this a thousand times this.... you cannot stop stupidity - but you can hold those who commit it responsible for their own actions. You sir, have my vote.
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There are ABSOLUTELY two types of drivers that talk on cell phones, and if you can't discern between them it's safe to assume that you're one of the ones who probably shouldn't be piloting a metal cage propelled by explosives anyway.
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Filed under Durrr....
ex. Craigslist - They provide a classified ads service. Classified ads have been used for years for good and bad things, but now with the addition of "on the internet" there are all sorts of expectations piled on them no one tries to impose on the few paper classifieds.
Your child runs away to someone who pimps her out on Craigslist? Sue Craigslist they are responsible, because its on the internet. Meanwhile the time and money spent on that media frenzy isn't being used to keep the pimp away from the victim and keeps them from testifying.
No one wants to look into why the child fled the home, why the parents did not monitor their children using the internet.
ex. TSA - because of no rules making the cockpit of the planes secure, there is now an entire industry devoted to treating everyone like a terrorist and stripping civil liberties away from people. It's all seeing eye expands further and further as people demand more visible "safety" ignoring that 90% of it is just feel good snake oil. A bar to secure the cockpit door would have added a few unpaid for pounds on every flight!
ex. War on Drugs - Drugs are the reason you get carjacked! With the billions of dollars being spent, and the sheer number of people incarcerated the crime statistics do not bear out that drugs are the real driving force. Maybe you shouldn't have been flaunting your wealth and been lack in simple steps to protect your property.
ex. Cell phones when driving cause crashes! - Stupid people cause crashes, and will do so with or without a cell phone. Assigning the blame to the cell phone makes an easier outside target than people blaming themselves.
ex. Fast Food made my baby fat! - Its the fault of the toy in the happy meal! They never said their food wasn't healthy. Real problem parents who refuse to tell their child no, your child did not hold a gun to your head demanding a happy meal. The restaurant advertises, does not threaten to burn your house down unless you buy from them. They also advertise penis growth pills on TV, would you blame that company if your child demanded those and you got them for them?
ex. Adultery - I'm addicted to sex and helpless. She lead me astray. The closest you can come to someone blaming themselves, but they often fall back on a higher power helping them overcome this challenge rather than admit they were perfectly fine doing it until they got caught. They made the decision to put their own pleasure ahead of other important things.
It is much easier to blame an outside force than to accept that humans make stupid decisions. It is much easier to make everyone feel better by attacking the outside object you can assign blame to, than make them deal with your actions have consequences.
Personal responsibility is pretty much dead, its time we bring it back.
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I, myself, am unabashedly guilty of the former. I tend to average about 6 to 7 mph over the speed limit, and when I have somewhere to go, I don't want to have to touch my brake. Consequently, if you v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y pull out right in front of me because you have a smartphone jammed up your nose, I'm going to be displeased.
That said, I recognize the danger of aggressive driving, but I wouldn't be so quick to categorize "driv[ing] faster, ... spend[ing] more time in the left hand lane, ... brak[ing] harder, and ... chang[ing] lanes more often" as implicitly dangerous behaviors. If I'm more focused on driving and on my surroundings, I'm going to be more alert, reactive, and maneuverable than a distracted driver.
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Agreed. Distracted driving is way worse. Although I do have to drive slower for added safety too =/
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The people next to you might not like it much if you jibber jabber on your phone while sitting next to you on a bus or train, but at least you're not posing a danger to anyone else doing so. Better, more viable mass transit will reduce highway deaths. Or we can go all in and set an aggressive goal of getting the entire auto fleet to use Google's self-driving technology in the not-distant future.
Either way this seems like a more effective means of promoting safety than getting the average person to behave more responsibly than they do already.
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DWD
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Heavy Metal
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Basically everything you wrote is untrue (and some of it is also misspelled! Great post!) but this in particular jumped out at me:
"Your eyesight is extremely important when driving, so when a cell phone is held to one side (note most of them are now rectangles the size of our hands) it creates a blind spot."
I have to ask....are you a duck? Lizard? Pigeon? I'm trying to figure out what error of biology would have caused you to have a blind spot when holding a cell phone to your ear, which is about three inches outside of a human being's field of vision. This isn't like, some grand scientific revelation, this is something that you should understand if you have ever actually used a phone. Just judging by the inaccuracies in the rest of your post I'm voting pigeon.
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The point is no matter how you hold your phone it blocks your field of vision in some way.
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I'll be glad to explain what I mean and show you my points if you can point out to me what you perceive as inaccurate.
Your posts are no more accurate and somewhere in the past if posting I proved you wrong and you're only butthurt. So aside from the typos, people can actually look past them and get to my point.
In the words of Gene Wilder:
"YOU LOOSE!!!! GOOD DAY SIR!!!!"
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Not Distracted...Just busy
Every time I was talking on it, the cord always got in the way of shifting my 5spd while I was trying enjoy my coffee and donut.
Prior to cell phones the cord was not an issue.
Now that the cord has been eliminated and hands free is is readily available, everything else remains pretty much the same.
People have always been distracted while driving and they always will be.
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It says nothing about how often they or other drivers actually talk on the phone, how much talking on the phone impairs them, how likely they are to distracted by other things, etc. All of that is being read into it.
Some people want to take this story and twist it to mean that cell phone using drivers are bad drivers anyway, so there's no point in banning cell phone use while driving. It doesn't come anywhere close to demonstrating that.
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What all this is likely to do IMO is accelerate the development and acceptance of autonomous vehicles (a la Google). Production cars are getting more and more of the components of this already. Some can control speed based on sensing the car in front of you. Some will monitor the driver and "wake" you if you become drowsy or distracted. Some will parallel park themselves. A think a new generation is coming along that is much less in love with driving than their forebears. They'll happily text away while the car does the driving.
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Cell phone Driving Test
Only a few would pass and less drivers on the road would mean a whole lot of less of a whole bunch of things that are wrong with the roadways today.
Certainly the accident rate would go way down.
Problem solved!
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Re: Cell phone Driving Test
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I'm offering
Well, I don't normally dress in drag, but I'll wear a summer dress for you if you want.
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http://855winthecase.com/blog/infographics/distracted-driving-statistics-and-laws/
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