Talking On the Phone While Driving Not So Dangerous After All 418
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."
Texting on the other hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
You fuckers need to keep your hands on the God damn wheel.
Re:Texting on the other hand... (Score:4, Informative)
That's not texting. That's talking.
Re:Texting on the other hand... (Score:5, Informative)
Legally, it's texting. If they get into a wreck, if the phone records were pulled it would show that indeed, they were texting at that time. I don't think these anti-texting-while-driving laws make a distinction between different input methods.
Re:Texting on the other hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
See Werner Herzog's short on texting while driving (Score:3)
This is an excellent 30 minute documentary about texting and driving - very moving.
cognitive science (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:cognitive science (Score:5, Interesting)
> Conversations can be more distracting than ethanol
However, I don't think distraction is the problem here. A distracted driver can, so some degree, compensate. Everyone has limits, I too have asked people to shut up or told the person on the phone "hold on a second, I need to drive" when a situation got precarious.
On the other hand, I know some bad drivers who have called me and talked for hours and never said such a thing.
But ethanol....thats special. I remember the first time I got drunk. The first clear thought I had was "I am fine, this stuff has no effect on me, I could do anything I normally do". Right after saying this, I stood up...and promptly the room started to spin and I fell back into my seat.
The problem with ethanol is not the famed "reaction time". As my Motorcycle safety and driving instructors both said.... if you are driving so close that raw reaction time matters that much, you are already in trouble.
The problem is that ethanol supresses the ability of most people to judge how impaired they are. An impaired driver can compensate (to a degree anyway), a driver who doesn't feel he is impaired can't.
That is the real danger of ethanol, fuck reaction times. I bet you my grandmother, before her car died, had reaction times as bad as a drunk driver, but, that's why she drove maddeningly slow down the road (I was stuck behind her a few times actually)...she was impaired, she compensated; drunk people often can't do that.
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Re:cognitive science (Score:4, Interesting)
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That's the whole point. In both cases you're a poor judge of your own ability. "I did it and felt OK and didn't die" doesn't mean it wasn't dangerous.
Re:cognitive science (Score:4, Interesting)
Watch the Mythbusters clips, mobile phone use IS more dangerous than drink driving,
Neither of which are as dangerous as people who genuinely present MythBusters as scientific proof rather than passable entertainment.
Yes, explosions are cool, that girl is attractive, and there's a certain B.A. Barackus charm to the way they build things, but let's be honest: they experiment like teenagers fuck; with more vigor than rigor.
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"The key is the ability to tune out the phone conversation as needed.",
Yeah, like whilst driving, for instance.
Re:cognitive science (Score:5, Funny)
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Cognitive load. Experienced drivers dont spend much cognitive load to drive in normal conditions.
Agree
Listening to music, not much.
Agree
Listening to someone talking, lots.
Um, depends. Is it my wife telling me about her day or my co-workers asking me what I coded 2 weeks ago because an installation went bad? #1 No problem. #2 I'm gonna have to call back when I get home.
Driving fast, heavy traffic, navigating new routes, and poor conditions consume significantly higher load.
Agree
All this is why you turn down the radio when looking for an address in the dark.
Wait, what?!? I have never turned the radio down when looking for an address in the dark. Is that a thing?
Re:cognitive science (Score:5, Insightful)
All this is why you turn down the radio when looking for an address in the dark.
Wait, what?!? I have never turned the radio down when looking for an address in the dark. Is that a thing?
Yes, that's a thing.
I have done that with my wife and three boys, when in heavy traffic in an unfamiliar area.
I also remember a time when I was invitied into the cockpit of a commercial jet for the entire flight (back in the day), and the pilots about 20mins out from landing saying, we can't talk to you anymore until after we land.
The human brain can only process so much information at once.
Re:cognitive science (Score:5, Insightful)
the pilots about 20mins out from landing saying, we can't talk to you anymore until after we land.
And they almost certainly could have landed the plane fine if you'd kept chatting. In almost every case, it would be completely fine. But very occasionally, they'd miss checking a dial or mishear ATC instructions and end up with a plane full of dead passengers, and they don't want to take that risk because, unlike many other people in this thread, they were behaving like responsible adults.
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Yeah that's a thing :) People often say "I can't hear myself think" - this means that noise is distracting them from concentrating.
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On the other hand, an increase in cognitive load reduces the perceived speed of time. If you remove all distractions to focus, a sudden change will be harder to react to, not easier.
Unless you do know how to focus and do it by paying attention to an increased amount of data in your surrounding, increasing thus your cognitive load and therefore reducing your perceived speed of time.
But then, you've just changed the music and phone for the chant of the birds and the movement of the branches in the trees, whic
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Sure .. way to make your family shut up!
Re:cognitive science (Score:5, Insightful)
Give me a break, you take your eyes off the road all the time and do other things that distract you. When you judge it is safe to do so because you have decided that you can look away at something and look back before anything happens in front of you. Because the closest car is 100 feet away and you have decided that you can look at your fuel gauge because even if they jam on their brakes the moment you look away, by the time you look up and see it you will still have time to stop. Yet someone could change lanes in front of you and jam on their brakes while you plow into them because you wanted to check how much fuel you had. How thoughtless and insensitive of you.
I've turned off the radio because I was looking for something and it was distracting. I did it because I have this ability to judge what I have the ability to do, and when it's impaired. Maybe you think other people don't have that ability, but they do. Conditions change, and just because some people don't have the ability to talk on the phone safely, doesn't mean everyone doesn't. Nor does it mean that it's safe to do it anytime I want to. I spend as little time on the phone as I can, and only when traffic conditions allow for it. And I've put the phone down while talking with my wife because conditions changed and I needed to spend more time focused on driving.
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Talking on the phone while driving down I-10 in West Texas is not dangerous. Talking on the phone while merging on Connecticut Avenue to the Beltway is dangerous. This study shows that drivers are smart enough to know the difference.
Re:cognitive science (Score:5, Insightful)
Because driving is an excellent time to push yourself to your cognitive limits?
How about this? "Know your limits ... and stay well below them while driving!"
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I talk all the time when I'm driving.
You know what happens when something comes up that requires more attention? After the event has passed, I ask the person to repeat what they were saying... because I was concentrating on what matters.
I can walk and chew gum. I can even run and chew gum! But I also have the sense to spit the gum out when I get winded...
Re:cognitive science (Score:4, Insightful)
Translation: "I'm of a superior intellect and thus can do more things in tandem than other people. I can talk on the phone or text and drive safely because I'm well above average!"
I would not want to share a road, or even a parking lot, with people like you.
Re:cognitive science (Score:5, Insightful)
More than 90% can't... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Methodology (Score:3)
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 ro
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I'd like to point out that this was exactly what I was trying to say [slashdot.org].
I was not saying I can multitask while driving. What I was saying, is that I can drop the other tasks when it becomes necessary.
Re:cognitive science (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the majority think that they're included in your 10%.
Driving is dangerous. Safety should ALWAYS come first. It sure as hell should come before your ego.
Re: cognitive science (Score:5, Funny)
Some people can walk and chew gum at the same time.
May they write that on your tombstone brother!
"Here lies Bob Johnson. He was convinced he could walk and chew gum at the same time. Unfortunately for him, he was wrong".
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I think you forgot the accident where your punctuation keys got ripped off the keyboard. Strangely your parenthesis and shift key managed to survive...
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Which of course is completely identical to a soccer mom driving along in the 2.5th lane going "and then she said that he's said that she's said...".
they sure aren't likely to say that they used a ce (Score:2)
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.
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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, no
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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.
Check out Figure 1 of the PDF (Score:3)
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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.
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Not sure (Score:2)
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.
the real problem (Score:3)
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why? texting takes more attention.
anyways the whole study sounds a bit suspect since their logic is just that since cheaper phone calls didn't cause an increase in crashing....... it's stupid.
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why? texting takes more attention.
The texting is problematic, but the ban makes it much worse.
The stupid people who will text and drive used to do it with their phone on top of their steering wheel. Now that it's a primary offense in some jurisdictions they are still doing it, but down in their lap, so the cops can't see it. At least before their focus was off but the road was still in their field of view. Now they just roll over the center yellows and never even see the head-on collision. We have one w
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That makes no sense.
People might do that, but that's not an argument in favor of leaving it legal, it's an argument for increasing the penalties and including texting as an aggravating factor when prosecuting vehicular homicide.
This is like that bullshit line about criminals being willing to break gun laws to get guns. It may be true, but it doesn't justify having a shit ton of easily accessible firearms for them to buy without a background check.
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My biggest issue is when people tell me that I can't use Google Maps as my GPS. I'm NOT going to buy a Garmin device! My 4" tablet is my GPS!
It wouldn't help anyway. The exception is only for navigation systems built into the car. An add-on gps, even if dedicated to the task is still illegal to use while driving in California.
Another one! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Which then calls into question drunk driving statistics.
Do people who disregard the law and drive while slightly drunk more likely to take other risks while driving sober, and get into accidents anyway?
Re:Another one! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually a friend of mine tells an amusing story of being in a class in HS where the teacher brought out the alcohol and driving stats and asked the class "What do these stats tell you?"
Apparently the teacher didn't like it when he raised his hand and said something which I actually believe to be true: "It takes about 10 years to learn how to drive a car well".
I would have laughed at you had you said that to me when I was in my early 20s. At this point, I would smack my 20something self for being stupid.
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So it should be considered optional for Grammar Nazi's to point out.
9 PM? (Score:3)
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.
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Could it simply be that there's fewer accidents after 9 PM, regardless as to whether people are on the phone or not?
They looked at accident data before and after the "free minutes" were available. So they were not comparing 9PM to 6PM, but rather 9PM with free minutes to 9PM without free minutes.
Anyway, I find their conclusion hard to believe. I was in several near accidents while talking before I swore off using the phone while driving.
Re:9 PM? (Score:4)
Could it simply be that there's fewer accidents after 9 PM, regardless as to whether people are on the phone or not?
They looked at accident data before and after the "free minutes" were available. So they were not comparing 9PM to 6PM, but rather 9PM with free minutes to 9PM without free minutes.
Anyway, I find their conclusion hard to believe. I was in several near accidents while talking before I swore off using the phone while driving.
Their assumption is that the "free minutes" changed anyone's phone call habits or driving behaviour. This is a pretty bad assumption.
So you mean to tell me .. (Score:5, Interesting)
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?????
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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?????
This must be the same researchers that are telling the world that pumping CO2 into the atmosphere has no impact on climate.
Remember in the 70's when the tobacco companies trotted out expert after expert to tell us that smoking was safe?
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Re:So you mean to tell me .. (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely those people are just not representative of drivers using cell phones. You notice them more, because of selection bias.
Most cell phone drivers are the ones sitting in some random lane, not changing lanes, driving slow and making everyone pass them. They are sitting at red lights after the green, and letting people pass when they should go.
Limited Conditions (Score:2)
Doesn't it seemed like a flawed study? (Score:2)
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As the paper notes they use Carrier data to show a "7.2 percent jump in driver call likelihood at the 9pm threshold".
How does the carrier know whether someone's driving or not?
First they came for... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Depends on distraction type and driver - probably (Score:2)
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)...
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Know your limits. For myself, a conversation to
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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 ke
I can't be the only one (Score:2)
Um... (Score:2)
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
Law didn't change behavior. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Purely anecdotal. (Score:2)
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.
Marginal (Score:2)
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 to
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Yes, because death is the only possible outcome of a crash.... And obviously improved safety has done nothing...
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Part of it may be the fact that it takes more brain processing when listening to the poor audio quality from a cell phone than someone speaking next to them. Plus the other person speaking is also aware of conditions around the vehicle and the driver can better prioritize on driving. Things are especially bad when one of the parties on the cell phone has less than ideal reception.
At those times traffic is low as well, so what? (Score:2)
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Right, it's much safer to blow through a red light at 9pm than it is at 7am or 4pm.
Did they measure... (Score:2)
... 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?
My destroyed truck would disagree (Score:5, Interesting)
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... (Score:2)
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.
I've seen plenty of people driving badly w/ phones (Score:2)
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
Problem Already Solved (Score:2)
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.
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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.
In the year 2000, oil will have run out, so no-one will be driving anywhere.
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Flying cars.
Which means the automated cabin attendant will remind you to turn off your electronics, return your tray table to its stowed position and please buy extravagantly from your in-flight magazine.
This research is CRAP (Score:2)
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?
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Here's what I remember happening in the UK:
1. The government said 'SOMETHING MUST BE DONE about people using the phone while driving!'
2. Media began reporting that banning phone use while driving would eliminate about 200% of accidents (yeah, I don't remember the number, but it was a huge and stupid demonstration of journalistic innumeracy).
3. The government passed a law.
4. Accident rates didn't much change.
So, I'm not at all surprised to see others find that banning phone use while driving has little or no
drunk drivers don't sober up behind the wheel (Score:3)
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.
Can someone explain the graph on page 2 to me? (Score:2)
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?
Driving is dangerous. Period. (Score:3)
I think about the amount of energy accumulated [vcu.edu] 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?
Inconclusive (Score:2)
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.
Eh, I heard... (Score:2)
Morons (Score:2)
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 at
It won't make a difference (Score:2)
Quite a lot of problems with the paper (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Correlation is NOT causation (Score:3)
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.
Re:They can both be right (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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 Ca
Re:They can both be right (Score:4, Insightful)
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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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 spe
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"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.
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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.
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