25% of Car Accidents Linked to Gadget Use 317
BogenDorpher writes "In a recent study by the Governors Highway Safety Association (PDF), driving distractions such as cell phones and other electronic devices cause as much as 25% of all US car accidents. It is common knowledge that driving while distracted is not a safe thing to do, but now we have some scientific data that goes in-depth on the topic. From the article: '"Despite all that has been written about driver distraction, there is still a lot that we do not know. Much of the research is incomplete or contradictory. Clearly, more studies need to be done addressing both the scope of the problem and how to effectively address it," said GHSA Executive Director Barbara Harsha.'"
Here come the "But not special *ME*!" posts (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you're NOT special.
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I got into all my car accidents when I was young and foolish, well before I had a cellphone.
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Ditto.
Early 90s - I was eating McDonald's french fries and I was looking at the container instead of the road. I didn't see the guy in front of me suddenly stop. Bang.
It's not smart to take your eyes off the road.
Even for a single millisecond.
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It should, perhaps, be noted that in one millisecond, your automobile will travel about 1.3 INCHES (assuming you're driving at 75 mph) (that's 33.5 mm and 121 km/hr for you metric types).
A traffic accident that comes within 1.3 inches of being a non-accident won't even ding the paint of your car, much less kill anyone.
Exaggeration for effect is all well and good, but sometimes it's so over the top that it has the opposite of the
Re:Here come the "But not special *ME*!" posts (Score:4, Funny)
It's not smart to take your eyes off the road.
Even for a single millisecond.
Yes, we should ban the dashboard from cars. All those indicator lights and gauges are distracting. There's no reason why anyone needs to know empirically how fast they're driving.
Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead. Traffic changes fast, faster than you could believe. Don't turn your head, don't look away, and don't blink! Good luck.
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Which is one of the jokes of this kind of "study": failure to identify and properly control for intervening factors.
Younger people (well that and illegal aliens) are most likely to drive drunk.
Younger people are more likely to adopt new tech (cellphone texting, cell email, etc).
Younger people are more likely to be Doing Other Things while driving.
Now, this isn't a 100% certainty. Certainly there are the soccer mom bitches who put on their mascara while driving, and there are the subhuman PHB MBA types who a
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I have seen people drive and play a trumpet.. when driving 696 in Detroit, you see all kinds of crazy crap.. Seeing someone read a book and drive was so commonplace it was scary.
Re:Here come the "But not special *ME*!" posts (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get it... are you saying cellphone use should be allowed while driving because younger drivers will be distracted anyway?
Obviously you can't eliminate all distractions, but that doesn't mean we should make it easier to be distracted.
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Make it easier?
What? Huh? You think having a law against something makes it harder to do? The question is not "should we make it easier" or "should we make it harder" that option was never on the table...its mere fantasy.
The question is, should we authorize jack booted thugs to hunt down and persecute people, for no other reason, than (insert distraction source of the moment) while driving, regardless of whether they are otherwise displaying a problem controlling their vehicle. That is the ONLY question act
Re:Here come the "But not special *ME*!" posts (Score:5, Insightful)
If you insist on that kind of hyperbole, then I'll just leave it as is and answer "yes," seeing how "persecute people 'for no other reason'" means "persecute people for creating an even more dangerous situation than driving already is."
Re:Here come the "But not special *ME*!" posts (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that you see someone blah-blah-blahing on the phone; glancing in the back seat or pushing a preset button on the radio is distracting for a split second, chit-chatting on the phone is constant until the conversation is over.
Surely you guys whining that there are other distractions see a difference between a constant distraction and a momentary one? They can both cause accidents, but an accident is caused by a confluence of events... the car in front of you stops short, for example - but you're distracted 100% of the time you're on the phone, making it much more likely to affect your reactions at that "unlucky" moment.
Of course, being in a car at all (or riding a bike or being a pedestrian) is never 100% safe, you take that tiny, fractional risk for the sake of convenience all the time... glancing at junior in the backseat, or pushing a preset on the radio (something that doesn't even require looking away) is not comparable to being distracted for minutes (or more) at a time.
Getting close to the target. (Score:2)
Cops have a really thick book of possible tickets to write but if the infraction isn't exciting or "sexy". the cops aren't writing tickets. Far and away the most common root cause of accidents works out to failure to yield right-of-way. This can be from obliviousness (cells and whatnot), aggression, stupidity, ignorance, etc. When this driving behavior is witnessed
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are you saying cellphone use should be allowed while driving because younger drivers will be distracted anyway?
Not sure if he was saying that, but I would, out of agreement with this:
Obviously you can't eliminate all distractions.
I don't think that trying to come up with laws to cover every particular distraction is a good approach. We should through the education/licensing process encourage people to be more attentive drivers, and laws against distracted driving in general that can be applied whatever the distraction to reinforce this can be beneficial. But trying to single out some distractions (e.g. cell phone use) comes at the expense of others, implying tha
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But is it not obvious that certain distractions are worse? That certain distractions are more distracting?
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90% of all young driver accidents are due to lack of education, and lack of common sense. I can make it in front of the train... Smoosh.
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Nearly 100% of crashes are the result of somebody doing something they shouldn't be doing. Which is why most instructors have stopped using the term "accident." You might not be able to control what the person behind you is doing, but whenever there's an accident somebody could have done something about it.
The types of accidents where nobody is at fault are pretty rare. Usually it pretty much takes a gaping hole to open directly under the car for that to happen.
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Somebody could have been doing something, yes, but there are many accidents where neither of the vehicles involved would be at fault, but rather, a 3rd car.
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actually here comes the a: showing that cops have been encouraged to link electronic devices to accidents for the greater part of 10 years and b: the reality of "distractions cause accidents" which is not limited to cellphones and gps, the supposed demon in the situation. How did people ever have accidents before gps and cellphones? oh, right.
The reality is that even the radio can cause a distraction/accident. Yet when are we going to address having things we actually enjoy in our car? oh, right. I think th
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According to the report, drivers reported engaging in these other types of distracting behaviors:
81% talked to other passengers;
66% changed radio stations or looked for CDs or tapes;
49% ate or drank something;
24% dealt with children riding in the rear seat.
So we should probably ban all that, too.
Neither is hands-free calling (Score:3)
The hands-free issue is moot:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2008/10/17/cellphone-handsfree.html [www.cbc.ca]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2012393/Distracting-hands-free-devices-dangerous-mobile.html?ito=feeds-newsxml [dailymail.co.uk]
http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-features/57097-hands-free-calls-could-be-just-as-dangerous-on-the-roads [tgdaily.com]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/jun/30/mobilephones.uknews [guardian.co.uk]
http://socialtimes.com/distracted-driving-dangerous-but-no-evidence-hands-free-laws-help_b69790 [socialtimes.com]
http://www.digitaltrends.co [digitaltrends.com]
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Or maybe you have just been lucky so far.
Also, it is worth noting that accidents don't only happen because _you_ are doing something wrong. You could get into an accident because someone else does something stupid. Personally, I think that traffic safety is a game we play together, and you have to have a bit of margin for when other people mess up. I have never been in an accident while I was driving, but I have been in a couple of near accidents because people did stupid things, like changing lanes or cros
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Here's something for you. Overconfidence, is the cause of 99.9% of these accidents. The idiot who thinks "I can do it, it's all those idiots who can't control their cars that have crashes" who ends up pushing things too far and causing the crash. Well done for managing to fit the OP's stereotype so well though.
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And that has what to do with the price of tea in China? Remember, the drivers you'll meet on those courses are generally going to be much better than the ones you'll meet on the 405 during rush hour.
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No, you're a lucky dumbass with an entitlement complex. You think that, even though all the data shows otherwise, you're that one special anomaly that the rules don't apply to.
You're gonna get a shitstorm, but from people who have been involved with you. You're not as good a driver as you think you are, and odds are you have caused accidents even if you haven't been a part of them.
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The problem is the frequency with which they take out other drivers with them, so it doesn't really function as enough of a driving force for evolution to actually happen.
But has it increased by 25%? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does this mean that the number of car accidents has increased by 25? If not, what improvements have cancelled out the increase in accidents caused by cellphones and other gadgets? Are there fewer accidents caused by people fiddling for CDs in the glove compartment or trying to find a good AM channel? Are there fewer accidents caused by frustrated people trying to find their way on a fold-out map?
Re:But has it increased by 25%? (Score:4, Interesting)
Does this mean that the number of car accidents has increased by 25?
Maybe, but I have a feeling that what's happening is the number hasn't changed much, but before it was the radio and CD player. Something to consider: Cell phone bills will say very clearly whether or not it was involved, radios and CD players have no such tattling technology.
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I remember reading about how when cars were first getting radios, some people wanted them banned because they were a distraction and caused accidents. I guess it's only logical that the replacement and/or add-on devices would also receive the same stigma. That's not to say texting while driving isn't worse, but that any new gadget causes a bigger distraction when the operator isn't use to the unit.
An example is my old Motorola E815... with T9 and having used it enough, I could text (in any setting.. doesn't
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Re:But has it increased by 25%? (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife always wondered why I was so adamant about not talking to her when she'd call me while she was driving. About a year ago she was in some stop-and-go traffic next to a person who was both making calls and texting during the traffic jam. At one point the traffic picked up speed and then slowed again but they didn't notice as they were too busy pushing buttons. She watched as the person was decapitated during the impact. She doesn't call me while driving anymore.
It doesn't kill you 99.9% of the time but that one time is a doozy.
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I once phoned my GF while she was driving, and her brother was in the car, so she just passed the phone to him, and I gave him the message for her. Later, she apologized for not talking to me herself, and I told her no problem. I'd much rather she let her brother talk to me and keep her attention on the road.
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Actually, yes... I remember reading a report in the newspaper a number of years ago that indicated an unexpected and fairly rapid increase in the number of accidents that were happening as cell phone use started become quite popular, and that if one were to simply not count the accidents that were connected with cell phone use while driving, the number of remaining accidents were well within any increase that could be perceived of as typical. The actual percentage increase was not mentioned... only that i
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Well the study states that "Laws banning hand-held cell phone use reduced use by about half when they were first implemented. [...] the laws appear to have had some longterm effect." and "There is no evidence that cell phone or texting bans have reduced crashes."
So the bans have an effect (fewer people use cell phones while driving) but the crash rate is not noticeably reduced as a result. That suggest that there is not much of a connection between cell phone use and car crashes.
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Does this mean that the number of car accidents has increased by 25?
It means its more socially acceptable to tell people you were distracted by an incoming SMS message than you were scratching your itchy rear.
It means its more socially acceptable to tell people its a terrible shame that your boss requires you to carry and respond to a cellphone, than to say you were just plain ole spacing out or staring at a hottie on the sidewalk.
It means its more socially acceptable to tell people your cellphone ringtone startled you, than to admit you were driving sleepy and nodded off.
R
Re:But has it increased by 25%? (Score:5, Insightful)
With 32,708 deaths on US roads last year, word games won't solve the problem.
Obviously analysing the cause of every accident and endeavouring to eliminate the greatest causes by percentage will have the greatest impact upon reducing road tolls.
The the current generation of youth addicted to cell phones and texting, in fact taking priority over every other activity (they will practically stop anything they are doing to answer the phone and their use has to be actively banned to prevent this occurring).
Whilst the telecom and their marketdroids benefit by this action, this distraction at critical moments whilst driving causes problems, problem that lead to death and debilitating injury. Obviously ensuring people remain as focused as possible upon driving will reduce car accidents. Perhaps greater personal liability for causing an accident is warranted, some time cooling your lead foot in a low security detention facility (something that insurance won't cover). Perhaps further reductions to speed limits. Perhaps subsidised taxi's. Perhaps expanded, safer and cleaner public transport. Perhaps, lateral thinking, like easier access to 'quality' high density housing to promote foot traffic.
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Does this mean that the number of car accidents has increased by 25?
No - the only reasonable meaning one can put into it is that they went through the data for a number of accidents and found that gadget use was involved in 25% of them.
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[...] found that gadget use was involved in 25% of them.
Which doesn't necessarily mean a lot, if gadget use is widespread. E.g. if 50% of people have AC running in their cars, then you'd have to expect that in 50% of cars involved in a crash the AC would be turned on. Measuring these 50% would only lead to the conclusion that AC use has no impact on car safety.
Re:But has it increased by 25%? (Score:4, Informative)
Does this mean that the number of car accidents has increased by 25? If not, what improvements have cancelled out the increase in accidents caused by cellphones and other gadgets? Are there fewer accidents caused by people fiddling for CDs in the glove compartment or trying to find a good AM channel? Are there fewer accidents caused by frustrated people trying to find their way on a fold-out map?
Hi, it's my first day here, so I read TFA and TFP. The paper addresses these issues:
Wilson and Stimpson (2010) compared trends in distracted driving fatalities recorded in FARS with trends in cell phone subscriptions and text message volume. They observed that distracted driving fatalities and text messaging both increased substantially from 2005 to 2008. Their multivariate regression analysis estimated that increased texting since 2001 produced over 16,000 additional traffic fatalities.
Fowles et al. (2010) studied the effects of cell phones on fatality rates from a “classical econometric” and quite technical point of view. They considered the effects of broad social and economic variables such as beer consumption, proportion of young males, seat belt laws, and the number of cell phone subscribers on annual fatality rates from 1980 to 2004. They concluded that fatality rates increased as cell phones first began to be used, then decreased as cell phone use rose, and finally increased again more recently. They attributed the positive effect of cell phones in the middle period to their use to call for emergency assistance at a crash. Now that cell phones are almost universal, their negative effects in distracting drivers overcome these positive effects. “The bottom line is that cell phones now have an adverse effect on motor vehicle fatality rates.”
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It means that the submitter didn't appear to actually read the study.
From the study, page 26: "Flanagan and Sayer (2010) critiqued the National Safety Council’s study. They noted that NHTSA (2010a) estimates that 18-22% of all crashes are associated with (but not necessarily caused by) all forms of distraction while NSC estimates that 25% are caused by cell phone use alone. Using different values than NSC for the risk of cell phone use, the frequency of use while driving, the presence of multiple caus
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It would imply that they have increased by one third, not one quarter.
Yes, we all love Dilbert, too. Remember how he made himself unattractive to Alice with that comment?
If you include cars as devices (Score:4, Funny)
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Turn it off? (Score:3)
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Not if read by the robotic overload, but you probably shouldn't have posted while driving. ;-)
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No, it just means you shouldn't be posting... wait why is everyone going the wrong way on this highw-
Notice.... (Score:3)
How the highway safety folks....
A) Always lead with the high side number. 15-25% so its either this number, or as low as half that. Yes, clearly the high number is the one to report, alone.
B) do not even an attempt is made to distinguish which class of accidents these are. Does it cause more little heavy traffic bumps and scratches? Or does it account for many major accidents? Plan to tell us? not today clearly.
C) Mention that banning cell phones or texting doesn't change this, and fail to connect the dots to ask the question as to whether this has been true since the freaking radio was installed
Course, if they did any of that, it may not make their jobs sound very relevant.
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C) Mention that banning cell phones or texting doesn't change this, and fail to connect the dots to ask the question as to whether this has been true since the freaking radio was installed
Ironically, attention to What The Fuck They Are Doing While Driving has been going down since the automatic transmission was invented. People don't have to pay attention to the state of their car (speed AND tachometer reading and associated gear choice), they just go "ooh put it in drive, gas=go, vroom vroom."
Likewise, in
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Pretty sure George Carlin talked about having all safety devices removed and replaced with a huge metal spike in the middle of the steering wheel pointed right at the driver ;)
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How the highway safety folks....
B) do not even an attempt is made to distinguish which class of accidents these are. Does it cause more little heavy traffic bumps and scratches? Or does it account for many major accidents? Plan to tell us? not today clearly.
Actually, yes. From TFP:
NHTSA estimates that 16% of fatal crashes and 20% of injury crashes in 2009 involved at least one distracted driver (NHTSA, 2010a).
From a another study quoted in the paper:
Farmer et al. (2010) combined the fourfold increase in crash risk while using a cell phone from the McEvoy et al. and Redelmeier and Tibshirani studies with the 7% cell phone use rate while driving obtained in a telephone survey to conclude that cell phone use caused 1.3 million crashes in 2008, or about 22% of all crashes, 19% of all fatal crashes, and 23% of all injury crashes. The National Safety Council (NSC) (2010a, 2010b) used similar methods to produce a similar estimate: 25% of all crashes are caused by cell phones.
And as to the question (in a nearby thread) of additional accidents due to distraction by gadgets . . .
Wilson and Stimpson (2010) compared trends in distracted driving fatalities recorded in FARS with trends in cell phone subscriptions and text message volume. They observed that distracted driving fatalities and text messaging both increased substantially from 2005 to 2008. Their multivariate regression analysis estimated that increased texting since 2001 produced over 16,000 additional traffic fatalities.
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Where is it that the highway safety folks "lead with the high side number"? Or are you thinking of the Slashdot summary or the article (not the report) -- neither of which were written by "highway safety folks"?
Addressing the problem (Score:2)
Uh, stop using gadgets while driving?
Why do police get exempted then? (Score:2)
If it's so bad and causes so many accidents, why are police allowed to use their personal cellphone while driving?
Don't tell me it's their driver training, plenty of civilians can attend those classes and that doesn't exempt them.
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So cities do not have to pay out when pigs on cellphones hit people.
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"Don't tell me it's their driver training, plenty of civilians can attend those classes and that doesn't exempt them."
Really? lots of civilians attend police drivers training courses? I dont see many civillians taking training on skid pads or defensive driving.
I think you just have no clue as to what kind of training cops get.
Just like alcohol related accidents. (Score:2)
If anyone in the car has been drinking, or there's a 3 week old empty beer can in the bed of the truck -- It's an alcohol related accident; Even if the driver is sober/designated, and/or those open cans are in-route to the recyclers.
I was once made to perform a field sobriety check at a DUI checkpoint because a passenger, my brother, was intoxicated (I was assumed drunk by relation, I suppose) -- I noted the officer's mention of my Sansa Media player to another, apparently this was a Gadget related 4th a
Gadgets are not just cell phones (Score:2)
And gadgets have been around forever. How many accidents are caused by people messing with their radio? Touch screens are really, really a bad idea, and I'm always disappointed when there are so few, good head units that have physical knobs for adjusting playback and volume.
The article seems to be more focused on the even more general "distractions":
...distractions affect our driving performance and how drivers are typically distracted most of time. One thing that stood out of the report was the claim that being distracted was the cause of 15 to 25% of all accidents
Duh. Passengers talking, kids doing practically everything kids do, Billboards, airports (I fear for my life when my former Air Force father-in-law passes a
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Working in the field of transportation safety research (including distraction) my observation is that people over-estimate the control of the device as a problem (punching in the phone number), and under-estimate the mental resources dedicated to the task (the conversation). This is why radios, fast food, and other "distractions" don't generally produce the same level of effect as cell phones.
It doesn't make a lot of resources to push the button (assuming you already know how to operate the device) or sh
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"How many accidents are caused by people messing with their radio?"
Statistically, not as many as are caused by that as are by cell phone use.
Also... while it is true that the introduction of car radios resulted in an increase in accidents, this increase subsided when preprogrammed station buttons were invented, which made it possible for people to adjust their radio to their favorite stations wholly by tactile sensation, and they did not have to divert their eyes and attention from the road.
Of course
I always find it interesting.... (Score:2)
That even though I live in a 'hands free driving' state, that whenever I pass a police officer, they have a cell phone up to their ear. So there is a law in place and I don't think I've seen it enforced. Does talking on the cell phone or texting while driving affect the driver? For most folks, hell yes. I can't count the times that I've come up on a driver who's going too slow in the far left lane, or going outside their lane, and passing them only to see them talking on their phone.
But the true 'root' caus
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Cops are exempt from the law.
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Yes, I see cops violating the law all the time... speeding when they obviously are not on a call, failing to signal, tailgating... As for your last sentence, it's not "most follks," it's everybody .
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Bait and Switch study (Score:2)
Not just cellphones (Score:2)
FTA: "Distracted driving definitions. Distracted driving immediately brings to
mind cell phones and texting, and perhaps use of other electronic devices.
But there are many more driving distractions: activities like eating, changing
a CD, or talking to other passengers; billboards or other objects outside the
car; even planning the day’s work, rehashing an emotional moment from the
previous night, or just daydreaming. It is useful to begin by defining what
distracted driving means. "
Glad to see this study a
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Glad to see this study acknowledges that there are an awful lot of distractions other than cellphones, most of which can't reasonably be banned. It also mentions that there's no evidence that cellphone or texting bans have any effect on accident rate. So focussing all attention on banning cellphone usage is not the solution, or at least not the only solution. Personally thing most likely to distract me is incompetent drivers who don't know which lane they're supposed to be in, when to signal, or when to join a roundabout. Learn to drive, people.
I think you bring up a good point. More thorough driver training and testing could probably do a much better job at reducing accident than enacting a bunch of laws that may or may not work. I was fairly shocked at the contrast between motorcycle license exams and regular car exams, for instance- On my bike, I had to demonstrate my ability to do figure 8's, emergency stops, S-curves (with a stopwatch to make sure I didn't go too slowly) and a bunch of other stuff. When I got my regular car license all I h
Reading on a kindle while driving (Score:2)
A few days ago I over took another car on a high way and the driver had a kindel on his stearing wheel.
Obvioulsy he was driving and reading same time ...
Scary!
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Before kindles, idiots were trying to read newspapers or books while driving (I actually saw some of that).
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Before kindles, idiots were trying to read newspapers or books while driving (I actually saw some of that).
One memorable evening, my uncle saw a vehicle weaving across a multilane highway. He assumed that the driver was drunk, until he got close enough to discover that she was actually knitting.
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Just remember (Score:2)
People in cars cause accidents.
Accidents in cars cause people.
One more reason to ride public transportation (Score:2)
Summary is wrong (Score:2)
The actual study says that 25% of accidents are caused by distracted driving, not by gadgets per-se. Their list of distractions include (among other things):
1) Vehicle controls/displays.
2) Food.
3) Scenery / roadside features.
4) Daydreaming.
Smart Phones Vs. Stereos (Score:2)
When you look down at a smart phone and text somebody, looking up periodically for a moment is nearly useless. When you've broken the continuous processing of deltas in a scene, and you try to reestablish that understanding by looking up, the first few seconds are used by your brain to figure out what everything is and where it is... not "what's evolv
Two questions. (Score:2)
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Those people who distract themselves with gadgets and get into accidents are probably the bad drivers who would have managed to get into accidents anyway.
... by being distracted by hottie on sidewalk, by being distracted by billboard advertising their favorite TV show, by being distracted by screaming at their kids in the back seat, by being distracted by the music on the radio...
The problem isn't the good drivers are being distracted, the problem is bad drivers who can be distracted by ANYTHING. Take away the gadgets, they'll find another way to create mayhem on the roads.
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Those people who distract themselves with gadgets and get into accidents are probably the bad drivers who would have managed to get into accidents anyway.
I've found that a pretty good way to identify the "bad drivers" is by looking to see which ones are fiddling with their cell phones, Blackberries, or GPS receivers.
The drivers who use these devices but think they are driving well are generally just sufficiently distracted not to notice all the errors that they're making. I don't think anyone gets into their car in the morning and says "I'm going to do something dangerous today that might kill myself or others", and yet we still have thousands of people
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But GPSs make driving so easy. All your do is solve the maze puzzle on your screen, and you're there. It turns driving into a game, so much more fun than staring blankly out your windshield.
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>>>Talk to the person using your [hands-free] phone rather than texting
It's also more cost effective. 20 cents per minute of two-way conversation versus 15 cents for a short text. (Plus you get to hear her sexy voice.)
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Talk to the person using your phone rather than texting.
There are some times that you can't afford to talk and quick messages can be very useful, just as it was push-to-talk some time ago for me.
Independently, well, the fact that people try to do it, and worst of all, hiding because it's not legal, make them even more prone to mistakes for keeping their eyes off of the road.
Although I'm all for natural selection....
Yes, what about one of them crash into you and you die? So much for natural selection!
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Hands free is not good enough. The major problem is not that you're holding the phone, it's that your mind is on the call instead of the road - you're not distracted because you're holding something with your hand, you're distracted because you're concentrating on the call, and for a lot of reasons it's more distracting than merely having someone in the car that you're talking to.
Source: Study: More Dangerous to Drive on Cell Phone than Chat with Passenger [ergoweb.com]
Before you say you're capable of multi-tasking, se
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We obviously need to separate the driver from the passengers too- conversations with passengers is probably responsible for 60% of the other wrecks.
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You should try reading the link I gave before getting snarky about it.
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We obviously need to separate the driver from the passengers too- conversations with passengers is probably responsible for 60% of the other wrecks.
I don't drive, but I'm often a passenger. Since I was old enough to sit in the front seat I've somehow known when not to talk to the driver -- there are subtle (and less subtle) signals. A busy junction with the driver reading all the signs and working out what lane, or him pausing before replying, or just saying "hang on...".
There's also the second pair of eyes -- my shout when I was about 13 alerted my dad to a speeding (ridiculously) car as he was about to pull out of a junction.
Someone on the end of a
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Although I'm all for natural selection....
So am I. Now, if only there were a way to make it only apply to people doing stupid things ... The problem is, in traffic, it's common for innocent people to get harmed because others were being stupid.
I don't think natrual selection ever worked this way. I assume lots of the people over time who have been "unselected" took a bunch of others with them. Gotta take the good with the bad.
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Also, a lot of people think that they _can_ safely use their phones while driving. They know that accidents happen when people do that, but they always happen to _other_ people, you know.
Naah, its more of a slippery slope thing. The media pounds it into your head that its terrifying and you'll kill people. You start with texting perfectly safely while using the car as an expensive chair, sitting in a parking lot, engine off and transmission in park. Once your heart rate is normal in that situation, you try texting with the engine running, but still in "Park". After that hurdle, you're texting at stop lights. Then you only need to enter one more word when the light turns green, so why n
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My guess is that people are too cheap to buy the equipment that lets them use their phones hands-free.
The study is very clear that there is no statistical difference by using a cell phone hands-free. Hold it to your head, use a headset, or integrate it with your car, the risk is the same.
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I can use my phone safely while driving. But it is a mindset thing. The first thing you need to do is realize that driving is your first priority, period. A lot of people forget that because they're having a fight with someone on the phone, bored, distracted, thinking about what they want to do when they get to where they're going, anything but the driving itself.
Then, use the handy things about the technology. I dictate texts all the time with Google's voice recognition on my phone. Much safer, and actuall
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Great so now the driver opens their window and holds their cell phone out of it. That'll improve things.
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News Flash: 93% of Drunk Drivers get Home Just fine:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-93-of-drunk-drivers-get-home-just-fine,6250/ [theonion.com]
Aside from the fact that it's in the onion, this is almost certainly true. It's actually probably higher. There are high-functioning alcoholics who regularly commute while drunk, whose drunk driving likely is the majority of drunk driving.
The problem is that it's so easily for something to go horribly, horribly wrong. A high success percentage doesn't help if the low failure percentage has nasty consequences, like lots of death.
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If they stuck to weed, it be more like 99%.
Of course, it will take them 4 hours to get home as they creep along at 15 mph...
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You make a good point; I think that while a lot of us think driving while using a cellphone (either talking or texting) is just incredibly stupid, so many people from all walks of life are guilty, and they know they won't stop if penalties are increased, so don't want to make it potentially worse on themselves (as if killing someone isn't bad enough). I bet a lot of those MADD drivers use cellphones while driving, as do their husbands and older kids - but talking on a cellphone is also not morally objectio
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MADD doesn't need any more power. They're already a neo-prohibitionist organization. Even the founder quit because they started becoming nuts. The "war" against drunk driving has effectively been "won". Only the highly stupid do it, and they're typically punished fairly strongly.
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Translation: "As far as I'm concerned, the danger posed by a drunk/high driver are the same as any other driver, and the penalties should be equivalent. Needless to say, this would be a very unpopular ruling despite the fact that the dangers are equivalent."
It would be unpopular because they aren't comparable. When you are distracted while driving, you're distracted for a few seconds. An accident only occurs if something happens to occur during those few seconds. When you are drunk, you are incapacitate