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Automotive News & Views Should cell phone drivers be singled out?
3688 messages, Last post on Oct 27, 2009 at 11:39 AM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: xrunner2 (Mar 10, 2009 6:51 am) Opinion Very easy to observe this in every day driving. Anecdotal with additional self selection criteria...perhaps you seem to gravitate towards people on the phone, maybe tailgate a little, give them a little less room because you feel they are being "inconsiderate." |
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Replying to: kdshapiro (Mar 10, 2009 3:46 pm) My initial reply included takeoff, but you didn't mention it in this example so I didn't either. So okay, 30 minutes of a 7 hour flight are "peak workload." Can't put car on autosteer and autospeed. Cruise Control So there is your speed management system circa 1945. Were you concerned that would be the end of the world when it came out too? Steering you have to wait a little while longer, but Infiniti has the first, but poor system. Driving a car is peak workload at all times behind the wheel. I know from the literature you have no way to substantiate that, so I will just correct it for you. When the driver is are 15-18 (inexperienced) or over 68 or 69 (visual acuity and response time), driving a car is peak workload at all times behind the wheel. For everyone else, no. Although you can still end up in ditch or hit someone or something driving 25 mph, if you give up your control of the vehicle by swatting the kids, eating pizza or losing yourself in a conversation on the ol' cell phone. Oh my, I gotta sit down. You made my night. This little phrase if you give up your control of the vehicle; there is hope for mankind, there is hope for personal responsibility. When doing investigations or research and someone says "I lost control of the car" or something I just wanna smack them silly. BS, you don't lose control of a car, you, as you so elegantly stated, give up control of a car. Sure there are times when you can't get the car to do EXACTLY what you want (black ice, excessive standing water, etc) but you can usually get the car to do something better than mowing down kids at a bus stop or something. Okay whew. So yeah, if you aren't paying attention and something changes, it could be bad. Even when studies with drivers use a peripheral detection task (you get them doing something else - like dialing a phone using an upside-down keypad or something annoying like that) and when the get into the task, you do something in the road scene and see if they notice, or flash a light in the car. In some studies, reaction times seem to be statistically significant, but the time difference in real life isn't that significant.
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Replying to: lilengineerboy (Mar 10, 2009 6:14 pm) OK. Whatever. Actually I don't care about peakload. I care about the fact the studies have shown significant driver impairment while talking, drivers exhibit significant driver impairment while driving, and I have had to dodge more cell phone users than pizza eating, kid smacking parents. Common sense seems to have taken a back seat lately. Oh my, I gotta sit down. You made my night. This little phrase if you give up your control of the vehicle; there is hope for mankind, there is hope for personal responsibility Just because I believe it is not a right, but a privilege to drive your car (my state thinks the same), doesn't mean I don't want tough laws enforced for those who abuse given privilege. Giving up control of your vehicle via the cell phone is an example of a set if laws that I believe should be enforced with commesurate penalities and fines. Give someone a break for the first offense when the car is not under driver control, but then let the fines and points start piling up for subsequent offenses. I agree with previous poster, cops who catch people reading the paper, applying makeup, swatting the kids and the like, should automatically face tough penalities. Your discussion is a smokescreen because there is not one iota of proof, driving while taking/texting on the cell phone doesn't have a dramatic effect on the ability to drive effectively.
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Replying to: lilengineerboy (Mar 10, 2009 6:14 pm) We debated this issue in a discussion around here years ago. The example I gave was a bee sting. The context was whether people really had car "accidents" that weren't due to their own negligence somehow. I think there are situations where you can lose control of your car through no fault of your own - your car gets struck by lightning or you get a bee sting in your eyelid. This is distinguished from the situation where you are cruising around town and someone T-bones you out of the blue from a side alley hidden by parked cars because the driver of the other car was yakking on their cell phone. (There was no consensus on whether a driver can have an "accident" btw).
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Replying to: kdshapiro (Mar 10, 2009 6:31 pm) I totally agree, in fact, in my quickie google search, so does almost every state legilstature. I agree with previous poster, cops who catch people reading the paper, applying makeup, swatting the kids and the like, should automatically face tough penalties. Nope, gotta actually do something wrong first. If you are picking your nose and run a stop sign or red light, then yup, tie them up take them to the edge of the village and stone them, but I do feel they should commit a crime first. Secondary enforcement is important here...you make good decisions, you get left alone...you abuse the privilege, you get taken to task for it. Your discussion is a smokescreen because there is not one iota of proof, driving while taking/texting on the cell phone doesn't have a dramatic effect on the ability to drive effectively. First off, I didn't include texting, you did. Secondly, you are saying my discussion is bunk because I can't prove something isn't happening? I think you have a few too many negatives in there my friend. So, quick review...cell phone penetration at 950% over the last 10 years (that means more phones), number of vehicle miles traveled up (that means more cars on the road more often) every year except for this year (dang gas prices), Governor's Highway Safety Association says crashes and fatalities at their lowest point in recorded history (that "implies" roads are safer). Where is the crisis?
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Replying to: steve_ (Mar 10, 2009 6:49 pm) Yeah, I think that was me too. I get annoyed when people use the word "accident" as if it happened by chance (yet another way to walk away from personal responsibility). The word is CRASH. I think there are situations where you can lose control of your car through no fault of your own - your car gets struck by lightning or you get a bee sting in your eyelid. I will give "acts of GD" as "accidents," since they are by chance (or not, I suppose...). I am a pretty careful person, and I have a family, I wouldn't be all willy-nilly about something I didn't thing was an acceptable risk. The bad seeds need to get weeded out of the system, but that doesn't mean restrictions on the rest of us are the answer. |
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Replying to: lilengineerboy (Mar 10, 2009 7:01 pm) Problem is I believe more than 85% of all crashes and fatalities not explictly identified as vehicle malfunction or medical emergency can be averted if drivers got off their cell phones. In other words out of the 6 million police reported car crashes most of them can be avoided if people got off their cell phones. That's where the crisis is, the sheer number of car crashes, of which I believe is linked to the 950% increase in cell phone penetration. The country could save billions in property, casualty and medical if people got off their cell phones. People have migrated from eating pizza to eating pizza and talking on the cell phone while driving. They have migrated from putting on makeup to putting on makeup and talking on the cell phone while driving. They have migrated from reading the newspaper to reading the newspaper and talking on the cell phone while driving. They have migrated from driving the car to talking while driving. That's the crisis.
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A number of countries, apparently more enlightened than the US, have banned the use of cell phone by driver. Some of these: France, Finland, Denmark, Russia, Japan. We need a movement by responsible drivers and their US Reps to introduce a national law to ban cell phone use by drivers. Perhaps the IIHS and varous insurance companies can step forward and help in this regard. They could lobby in DC as well as tag messages onto their tv commercials.
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Replying to: kdshapiro (Mar 11, 2009 5:54 am) I fully agree, your undocumented, unsubstantiated beliefs are a big problem! As well, approximately 11% of all distraction-related crashes are attributed to adjusting theradio/cassette/CD (compared to 1.7% for talking/listening/dialling a cell phone). From Chisholm, Caird et. al., and also notice that 1.7 % lumps talking on and dialing (and hanging up and picking up) the phone together so with hands free devices for dialing, its even lower. That's where the crisis is, the sheer number of car crashes, of which I believe is linked to the 950% increase in cell phone penetration. And you can certainly believe anything you would like, but fear as a motivator really only works in mind control in institutionalized religions. People have migrated from eating pizza to eating pizza and talking on the cell phone while driving. They have migrated from putting on makeup to putting on makeup and talking on the cell phone while driving. They have migrated from reading the newspaper to reading the newspaper and talking on the cell phone while driving. Chicken little, you are very funny. So people stopped doing visual/manual intensive tasks like READING(!?) while driving (a task that is argued to be 90% visual, although no one will actually say they said that in the literature, they just all cite eacth other), with a hands free, hands on wheel eyes on road task, and you complain about this?
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Replying to: xrunner2 (Mar 11, 2009 6:29 am) And a number of posters apparently like to mislead the populace and misrepresent the facts, as those countries banned HAND HELD cellular phones, with an open exception to using a hands-free device. National and International Cell Phone Laws We need a movement by responsible drivers and their US Reps to introduce a national law to ban cell phone use by drivers What we need is less fear-mongering and more factual based decision making. So far, cool heads and science have prevailed. Perhaps the IIHS and various insurance companies can step forward and help in this regard. They could lobby in DC as well as tag messages onto their tv commercials Or they could use the time, money and resources for something that is actually in issue right now.
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