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Comments
I've been pointing this out for awhile here, namely that the study claims a significant variance (and by default, standard deviation) around the mean.
The fact that the variance is large would make it appear that there may not be much correlation between phone usage and delayed reaction time. The fact that there is a large variance would indicate that using a phone is, by itself, NOT a good predictor of driver behavior.
The real math here is not 0.13 Seconds = Drunk Driver, but Big Variance = Not Much Correlation. Next formula: Lack of Correlation = Something Else Is Going On Here.
Which brings us back to the question: Why do some people manage to drive quite successfully with a phone, while others can't? That's the question that the anti-phone folks can't seem to answer, but it's what the whole debate is all about.
I'm inclined to agree, it sounds like hype meant to raise emotions and get peoples' attentions. But we can't (or at least shouldn't) make laws based upon good soundbites.
There are currently no laws against smoking in bars where I live but most smokers are considerate enough to try and minimize their impact on the non-smokers. Of course some aren't but a law isn't going to change the fundamental problem that these people are inconsiderate. Its like gun laws. You can attempt to get rid of guns but the real issue is that there are people with the desire and willingness to kill others. In the case of cell phones there are some bad drivers that don't grasp that some situations require more of their attention. The cell phone just happens to be their weapon of choice. Take away these cell phones and the bad driver still exists and will find some other way to divert his attention. IMO, most drivers have the skills and judgement to operate their cell phones in a safe and responsible manner while driving and shouldn't be penalized by the very visible few.
That's right, it has to do with distraction TIME. Most people I see walking around talking on their cell phone are in their own little world. No idea what is going on around them. That is why they do not belong behind the wheel of a car.
The term for that is situational awareness
Situational Awareness Defn
How do you propose to cite those that are a detriment without a law against using a cell phone while driving?
Easy, just ticket those people when they happen to break an existing law, such as going below a minimum safe speed, improper lane change, weaving, failure to yield right-of-way, running a red light/stop sign, and in places where they have the sense to make it a ticketable offense: left lane camping.
And if they get into an accident and it can be proven that the cell phone contributed to it, slap another fine on then.
One problem is that law enforcement focuses its efforts on the easy stuff, i.e. exceeding what is often an arbitrary speed limit. Since giving out tickets for something so easily measured as is speeding is like catching fish in a barrel, that's what they spend a lot of their time doing. That's a profitable activity, and the cops get to meet their quotas...uh, I mean "performance standards."
Instead, they should be focused on weeding out erratic behavior, which is really what causes accidents. When your erratic behavior comes close to my car or wanders into my lane, that's when we are more likely to collide.
Another change that I would make would be to attach real penalties for causing accidents. If everyone who caused a fender bender had to do several weekends of community service, we could have cleaner parks and increase the consciousness of drivers by linking consequences to their actions.
We all know the old "80/20 rule", namely that 20% of the people seem to cause 80% of the problems. (It's probably more like a "90/10" rule, but you get the idea.) You'll find drivers such as myself, who are rarely in accidents and never cause them, while you get some others who seem to get into fender benders every year or so. Why are people in the latter group largely being treated the same as the rest of us?
How about this idea: What if the law was passed such that the officer could only cite the driver for the cell phone violation if there was another moving violation or a crash? That way the officers could pull over the crazys and (betting that the crazys can't handle cell phones and driving) ticket them for the cell phone offense too.
It's kind of like seatbelt laws here in AZ. Passengers can't be cited for not wearing a seatbelt unless there is another moving violation.
EDIT: Sorry Andre, I thought this idea sounded familiar.
By the way, this is not my definition, this is simply what the definition of tailgating happens to be. I didn't make it up myself.
But people's reaction times change from one moment to the next. They have a base reaction time, that is their best reaction time under optimal conditions. Then you start adding for:
- Stress
- Tiredness
- Passengers
- Etc.
So if the person doesn't measure their reaction time every time they get in the car, they won't know until a crash does or doesn't occur if they are following too close.
I think the 2 second rule is pretty handy and the everyday use of the word tailgating implies that the car behind you is less than that, or less than 1 second behind you. If I'm going 75 MPH and I can't see the lights of the car behind me, then they are obviously tailgating (by which I mean following too closely, the alternate definition of the word).
Just thought I would chime in with my 2 cents. Multi-tasking is really a misnomer. What we are really concerned with is sequential-tasking(or sequential processing). The variable that may be more relevant for some drivers than others is their ability to cycle through these sequential tasks (switch from thinking about tonight's dinjner to assessing how fast the person is braking in front of them). As others have pointed out, there are many factors involved and the "distraction quotient" is no doubt cumulative.
So, I may be able to talk on my phone in most situtaions, but in heavy traffic, when I am tired and after having a fight with co-worker or spouse I may be even more distracted and take longer to "switch gears" to pay attention to the task of driving if needed. Phones are just one more variable to add to the equation and it is no wonder that the studies cited have inconclusive results.
Bottom-line, if something has the potential to distract you (whether that is phone, food or fantasy), then it can contribute to a slower reaction time.
Safe driving!
M~
He had an interesting suggestion for getting rid of our Trooper. Drive around one of the circles and wait for a cell phone user to fail to yield the right of way. Hit them or let them hit you and, bingo, new car at their expense. Although he was joking a bit, he indicated that in at least 20% of the vehicle/pedestrian accidents he investiged in DC, the driver was on a cell phone. If it were up to him, cell phone use wouldn't just result in a ticket, but immediate confiscation and jail time for a second offense.
Back nearly 20 years ago, I went on a golf outing to Pinehurst with 15+/- friends that were middle to upper level corporate executives. I fell in the lower end of that range. As one of the guys teed off on the first hole, a cell phone rang in the middle of his swing. He calmly went over to the offending player and asked to see the phone. He then asked who else had a cell phone that was turned on. He collected about 6-7 (impressive in those days), lined them up along the cart path and ran over them with his cart. Before doing so, he agreed to pay for the replacements, which at that time, probably averaged about $1,000 each. He did spare one of the guys who had an 8+ month preganant wife at the time.
His comment was that if he - as CFO of a well known public company - wasn't so important that he couldn't take 4 hours off to play a round of golf with friends without gabbing on the phone, no one else was so important to not do the same.
That particular indiviual is now well positioned in the upper half of the Frobes 400 list. I saw him last spring. He has bluetooth in his sedan, but not his sports car and does not answer or use his cell phone while driving it. We joked about the Pinehurst event but, as he still believes, most people can't focus well enough to do one thing properly, let alone "multi-task". Otherwise, they'd be on the Forbes 400 list as well (or winning a Nobel prize, as his brother did). He has a pretty good point.
That brother of a Nobel winner (LOL) is lucky he hasn't been put in a coma or graveyard via his ego and bluster. There's always hope.
It's probably a bit both actually. Have you ever noticed a car about to hit you out of your peripheral vision? That's multitasking right there.
All of those things can distract a person from putting their full attention to the road.
So one bad thing justifies another. Hmmmm...I smell a logical fallacy...
Maybe you want to go explain why jail time is insane and a little hard to swallow in this "great country" to that girl's parents? Or why they should feel any less grief because it was an idiot with a cell phone that nearly killed their daughter rather than a drunk?
Jails are hilariously overcrowded as it is...wasting space that could hold real criminals for a meaningless and easily challenged 24 hours would be simply irresponsible. If you want it, open your wallet, as more facilities will need to be built.
And it's amusing you can demand clarification in such self-righteous terms...you sound like that egomaniacal corporate coward you describe earlier. Please...
http://www.iii.org/media/hottopics/insurance/cellphones/
These states that come up with policies like, 3-strikes your out, or the death penalty for capital crimes don't show a reduced incidence of the behaviors they were trying to deter. I'm reluctant to agree with dorsalhead but these knee jerk legislative actions are an effort to assuage the masses. They don't make economic sense and they don't benefit society.
It's probably a bit both actually. Have you ever noticed a car about to hit you out of your peripheral vision? That's multitasking right there.
This is not-multi tasking; this is a single purpose, adrenaline induced, totally focused response in self preservation. No one will be talking on their cell phones, eating, shaving, or doing power point as the airbags go off and the car spins uncontrollably.
Strictly speaking, people attempting to do "multi-tasking" have a whole range of neuro-chemical actions going on that other drivers, already in a high stress state from driving, do not. Multi -taskers are driving in a mental state that is quite different from the other drivers. That mental state, like drunk driving, can and does injure and kill people.
I don't know why the phone is such a critical item for you. If someone is tailgating, cutting people off, etc., I don't really care whether or not they were on the phone, I just want them stopped.
Here's my suggestion: For a driver who causes a first accident (or at least the first within a given timeframe,let's say within the last five years), that person has to pay a fine, plus spend a Saturday night in a busy emergency room so they can see firsthand what victims of car accidents can experience.
A second accident at fault: 30-day license suspension, a much bigger fine, community service at the hospital, plus a tour of a wrecking yard where the errant driver gets to see what cars involved in fatal accidents can look like.
Third accident: Use your imagination. (Let's just say that the hospital ward is going to [non-permissible content removed] and span for a verrrry long time, and s/he'll be taking the bus to get there.)
Again, why not target the real problem -- accidents, and the people who cause them -- rather than play around with superfluous stuff that dances around the issue? I don't really care if you use your phone if you can drive reasonably well. I don't want you colliding with me or cutting me off, no matter what.
I wonder whether he felt the same way about the hand-held mic of his police radio, or his patrol car laptop. Can we make citizens' arrests of cops who are using their radios while they are driving?
The safest drivers in the country are in the 40-50 age group. These drivers don't have the reaction time that they had when they were 20 so how do you explain this? Pretty simple. It turns out judgment can compensate for a lot of things, among them being the extra 1-2 tenths of a second that it might take you to react when you are using a cell phone.
Your response actually supports my statement: Reaction time is not a skill. Diminished reaction time is compensated for by intuitively increasing the following distances from the car ahead of you. The equation remains the same - speed, reaction time, distance from the car ahead of you - and is not altered in any way by "skill". Adding a cell phone to the diminished reaction time could not possibly be construed as a safety enhancement.
I wonder whether he felt the same way about the hand-held mic of his police radio, or his patrol car laptop. Can we make citizens' arrests of cops who are using their radios while they are driving?
I hope we all get the answer to this correct. All emergency responders are prone to accidents. We accept their high degree of susceptibility because 1) it is unavoidable as it is necessary to their job of providing us with safety, in contrast say, to making an appointment with your barber/stylist. 2) the additional accident pronness (sic) is understood as an acceptable trade off for the irreplaceable service they perform, in contrast say, to getting reservations at Mikey's for drinks.
The statistics would refute that notion. People with the best reaction time -- young people -- are some of the worst drivers.
Good driving requires a lot more than just reaction time. If it was just about reaction time, we'd have a lot of teenage bus drivers.
You are more transparent than you think you are. You have all the attributes to be a slick politician. Or an attorney. No offense intended.
Crash a car because of phone yapping, get in trouble. Crash a car because you dropped your cig or coffee, get in trouble. And so on. Automatic jail sentences for phone yapping while ignoring the other evils is the stupidest thing I've heard in some time.
I, and I think most of us, share your interest in enforcing distraction laws across the board. Automatic jail sentences seems to me, an avid proponent of cell phone restrictions, too severe a response to the offense. I think the emphasis here has been on cell phones because the site was set up with that question. I don't think I have heard anyone actually say that other distractions should be ignored, but that cell phone drivers are becoming a relatively large, and growing, part of the distraction equation and deserve special attention because of that.
As the CHP has determined in their study on accidents related to driver distractions, eating while driving is the number one distraction, with cell phones a close second. With cell phone users on a rapid increase they will soon become the number one cause of accidents due to distractions.
In California, not having complete control of your vehicle is a citeabel offense. It is not as strictly enforced as it should be and this may have a number of causes that can be addressed rather than ignored. I think we can all remember when it was thought by many that the seat belt laws could not be enforced.
If we are able to focus on the whole range of options addressing control of one's vehicle that have been broached here, including education, training, more stringent licensure requirements, impressing that driving is not a right, that considering the safety of others with whom you share the road is a responsibility, better law enforcement, and more we can take a big chunk out of the highway carnage that, while it may be declining due largely to safer cars and better roads, is still very high.
If the question is "should cell phone users be singled out" - I have to say yes in the short term as it is a relatively new and particularly obvious phenomenon responsible for many accidents. Should other distractions be ignored - no, they should also be part of the enforcement process, but they represent an older set of phenomena that needs more emphasis place on them.
The real question may be, as I think other posters have suggested or stated, is the additive effect of the cell phones, plus any other gadgets being added to cars, along with the whole existing range of "historical" distraction like eating (increasing), smoking (declining), children (now in car seats), pets, applying make up, and more reaching a "tipping point" where special, focussed enforcement of the whole range of distractions becomes a priority?
You may not have seen the whole statement. The equation is not just reaction time and I did not state that it was. It is; speed, (young drivers speed more than older drivers), reaction time (young drivers think that their quicker reactions will save them), distance from the car ahead of them (younger drivers love to tail gate, feeling immortal and all), and of course the vehicles fixed stopping ability.
Again, the response was to your statement that skill played a part in avoiding accidents while following too closely. As skill can not be shown to affect the stopping distance equation, it can have no effect on accident avoidance.
And it's amusing you can demand clarification in such self-righteous terms...you sound like that egomaniacal corporate coward you describe earlier. Please...
A pretty severe response there fintail! These incidents abound and are reported out by everyone from cops to emergency workers to citizens stopping to help. Cell phones are a recent and growing phenomena and in California the second most frequent cause of accidents just behind eating while driving. With cell phone usage increasing significantly and soon to eclipse eating while driving it does require special emphasis to draw peoples attention to their danger and harm. Expand enforcement to all aspects of accident causing distraction if you like - I will support that action. I will also support more taxes to support life saving enforcement.
Stopping distance is not the only component of driving safety. It's important in the context of tailgating, but it's by no means the only thing.
Much of good driving is about avoiding stupid maneouvers that can set one up for trouble, reading and anticipating the actions of others, and driving in a transparent fashion so that others can anticipate what you are doing.
That's precisely how middle-aged people with inferior reaction times can be vastly superior drivers to teenagers who excel in rapid reaction. And that clearly translates into accident rates, as we all know that it is the very young and the very old who have the highest accident rates.
Stopping distance is not the only component of driving safety. It's important in the context of tailgating, but it's by no means the only thing.
You may not have read the posts completely. The initial response was to the idea that superior driving skills could affect the accident rates of tailgating.
You are discussing another issue not mentioned in your original posts or in mine and not part of the subject "skill and tailgating".
My response remains to your statement that tailgating accident rates are affected by skill. This clearly is not a factor in the fixed equation; speed, reaction time, distance from the car ahead of you, and stopping ability of the vehicle.
A discussion of "skill", however defined, as it affects other overall driving and accident rates is a separate and more general discussion which could be very broad.
This has not been proven, and the data on the subject is not "obvious", but inconclusive at best.
If you look at Table 2 in this report from the National Conference of State Legislatures, it would not support the position that phones are a real problem. This is the percentage of accidents that these states claim include phones as a contributing factor:
California - 0.1%
Florida - 0.2%
Michigan - 0.2%
Minnesota - 0.2%
Montana - 0.4%
Nebraska - 0.2%
New York - 0.1%
Oklahoma - 0.5%
Pennsylvania - 0.1%
Tennessee - 0.02%
Texas - 0.3%
Wisconsin - 0.9%
Not a single state claims that this exceeds 1%.
Yet NHTSA is telling us that during roughly the same period of time, 5-6% of drivers are on a handheld phone at any given time.
Which tell us, confusingly enough, that people driving without the phone are actually crashing at higher rates than those who are. (The 5-6% have fewer than 1% of the crashes.) You have to have a lot of wishful thinking to see how a figure such as 0.1% (1 out of 1,000) signfies such an "obvious" problem.
Actually, it's the point that I've been making all along -- that superior driving is most closely related not to physical skills, such as reaction time, but attitude.
The person with superior driving skills is a better driver because s/he knows that s/he should avoid tailgating in the first place. This is true whether or not s/he has a phone in the car, or not.
No one in the anti-phone crowd has been able to explain the signficant variance evidenced in the studies, of why some people seem to use phones safely while others do not.
To me, it's fairly obvious -- because the phone isn't truly the issue. Some people exercise good judgment when behind the wheel, and will moderate their driving styles to accomodate safe usage of the phone. (For example, if they need more reaction time, then they get in a slower lane and allow more distance to accomodate any delays in reaction time.) Other drivers have poor judgment, and can't be trusted with a set of keys, regardless.
I am questioning why the latter group is driving without sanction. The anti-phone crowd seems to think that they can save themselves the burden of the heavy lifting by treating everyone the same, instead of getting down to root causes and finding the drivers who cause accidents. As we can see from the numbers above, enough of us do a fine job of colliding into one another without having a phone to blame for it.
Again, we see you avoid your original position which is that skill can affect the closed equation in tailgating accidents - essentially because the extraneous items you introduced left you still in a corner with no way to explain how skill affects reaction time, speed, distance from the car ahead of you, and stopping ability of the vehicle.
As to Distraction Contributors, you may want to take a look at the Calif. HP study.
As an aside, you may want to talk to city bus drivers who deal with this disregard of others each day for a real world view of the cell phone driver syndrome. And for a real show, ride a bus when an errant bus driver is also on the cell phone missing stops, leaving passengers behind, nearly missing other vehicles, and having a great time driving while essentially not there.
I think we have heard similar positions taken in response to drunk driver punishments and how some drinkers are so superior to the rest of the world in driving skills that they can drive at our expense.
Actually, it's the point that I've been making all along -- that superior driving is most closely related not to physical skills, such as reaction time, but attitude.
We see you have now avoided the subject entirely as well as your original statement that superior skill, which you seem to feel you somehow possess, can affect a closed equation of factors in tailgating accidents.
Probably a wise move as you had painted yourself into an indefensible position and then attempted to introduce other discussions to derail the obvious. The most interesting development is to have you change from being a highly skilled tailgater to being highly skilled at avoiding tailgating - quite a different subject.
And then to further distance yourself from your own statements you now state that it is not superior skills at all but a superior attitude – I have to say that we expect at any moment to hear the Horst Wessel song in the background!
Since your have now substituted superior attitude for superior skills are we to now assume that having the proper attitude will affect the closed equation of tailgating and stopping distances?
While cell phones may be relatively new I suspect that their use is no longer growing significantly. Once you've hit saturation there isn't much room left for growth. I also believe there is a sizeable percentage of cell phone users that have become more aware of the potential distraction and as a result now use greater discretion while driving.
Is there a law against eating while driving? To the best of my knowledge there isn't, at least not in my state. If that is indeed the number one cause of accidents why would we focus on the number 2 cause first? I think the person eating while driving is just as easy to identify as the person on the phone. Is it possible that some of the anti-cell phone crowd occasionally eats while they drive? Hmmm...
It's not that people thought seat belt laws couldn't be enforced. A lot of people felt that they shouldn't be enforced. Driving without a seatbelt is a lot safer than riding a motorcycle. I'm not sure why our government believes that riding a motorcycle is an acceptable risk for an individual to take but driving unbelted isn't. And I'm really not sure why it is any of the government's business what risks an individual exposes himself to.
There is no way to collect data without an eye witness that someone was on the phone when an accident occurs. There are also very few states that even have a box to check for cell phone use on the accident report. I call bullpucky on this study.
Quote from the report:
Even where states track cell phone involvement in motor vehicle crashes, the statistics are controversial. Although the existing state data seem to indicate that mobile phones are a factor in less than 1 percent of motor vehicle crashes, critics have argued that the published statistics are not truly indicative of the problem. Compared with other factors in motor vehicle crashes such as alcohol or seatbelts, wireless phone use is difficult to detect. Phones leave no physical indicators at the crash scene, and investigators often must rely on witness or self-reporting to determine whether a phone was in use at the time of the crash, thus jeopardizing the reliability of the data.
Several states have explicitly acknowledged difficulties tracking cell phone involvement in motor vehicle crashes. Oklahoma, for example, recognized in its crash statistics for 2003 that "cell phone use may be under reported." Similarly, in the section related to cell phone involvement in motor vehicle crashes, Michigan's 2003 Traffic Crash Facts state that, " these are driver conditions that, in the opinion of the investigating officer, were involved in the crash. While some conditions may be evident, others (such as distraction) will only be known if the driver admits the condition, thus leading to possible under-reporting." New York's statistics acknowledge that, because some law enforcement officers are using older versions of crash report forms, driver distraction crashes in the state are under reported. Statistics published by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles noted that, although the total number of cell phone related crashes was relatively low, distractions were " identified by staff from law enforcement crash reports, which are dependent in part upon driver and witness accounts of the respective crash, as well as the investigating officer's interpretation and documentation of the crash."
In 2002, the California Highway Patrol (CHP) withdrew an initial draft of a report to the Legislature after a closer look at crash data indicated that some law enforcement agencies may have under reported the number of traffic crashes in their jurisdictions that involved cell phone use. The original report found that, during the final nine months of 2001, investigating officers determined that 913 accidents were directly linked to the driver's use of a mobile phone. Of those, 423 crashes resulted in injuries, and three involved a fatality. Before the final report was released, however, a study of the same crash data by the Los Angeles Times found that, during the same period, driver use of a mobile phone was linked to nearly 4,700 crashes. A subsequent report by the CHP showed that, from January 1 through June 30, 2002, inattentive driving was cited as a factor in 5,677 of the 491,083 crashes reported throughout the state. Cell phones were cited as a factor in 11 percent of inattention-related crashes, more than any other single factor.
Because society had to pay the price of a person's poor decisions.
Hmm yeah no need for legislation here, we will just let Darwinism take its path, except they will probably just mow eachother over, not run into a wall by themselves.
However, if a cop sees one person driving while talking on a cell phone, but that person is still driving safely...changing lanes properly, not weaving, tailgating, speeding, or doing anything else dangerous, but then sees another person wolfing down a Triple Whopper with cheese and is swerving all over the place and driving dangerously, I'd rather see the cop go after the real threat...the person who is driving impaired. Which in this case is NOT the cell phone user!
I don't care what the impairment is. If a cop sees a mother driving suddenly reach over her shoulder to smack her kids in the back seat, and that causes her to swerve and start driving erratically, then nab her too.
And while we're at it, let's nab the cops who put on their sirens to run a red light and then turn them off once they've cleared it. :mad: