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Topic: Drunken driving safer than chatting on a cellphone (Read 970 times) |
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Hermit
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Drunken driving safer than chatting on a cellphone
« on: 2009-09-05 21:58:32 » |
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Distracted Driving: Should Talking, Texting Be Banned?
Source: Time.com
Authors: Gilbert Cruz and Kristi Oloffson
Dated: 2009-08-24
Most of us are neither pilots nor astronauts. We are not trained to steer large, hurtling hulks of steel and gasoline while manipulating small computers. So there's something blindingly obvious about the risks of texting while driving. Yet research is beginning to show that driving while simply talking on a cell phone — including using hands-free technology — can prove dangerous, even deadly.
In late July, the Center for Auto Safety (CAS) released hundreds of pages of a previously buried 2003 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) study that identified the cell phone as a serious safety hazard when used on the road. A bill introduced last month in the Senate would require all states to impose a ban on texting while driving; 17 states (including, most recently, Illinois, on Aug. 6) and the District of Columbia have passed such a ban, and seven states have outlawed driver use of handheld communication devices altogether. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood considers cell phones such a problem that he is planning a summit next month to discuss the dangers of driving while distracted. And though it's impossible to accurately gauge how many car accidents nationwide are cell phone related, David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, estimates that only 2% of people are able to safely multitask while driving. (Read "Text-Messaging Behind the Wheel.")
Strayer, who for more than a decade has been studying the effects driving and cell-phone use have on the brain, says those 2% are probably the same people who would be really good fighter pilots. [ Hermit : Since the 1940s, when studies showed how easy it was to fail simple tasks like completing clipboard driven check lists, all British and commonwealth military (and CA) pilots have been taught to prioritise rather than to attempt and fail at multitasking with the simple rule, "Aviate! Navigate! Communicate!" In other words, do things one at a time and in order of importance. Drivers would do well to learn the same thing - but looking at American drivers, it seems that it has to be taught and isn't. ] Rarities. Some of Strayer's other findings show that most drivers tend to stare straight ahead while using a cell phone and are less influenced by peripheral vision. In other words, "cell phones," he says, "make you blind to your own bad driving."
And even though the common assumption is that hands-free technology has mitigated the more dangerous side effects of cell-phone use — it's just like talking to someone sitting next to you, isn't it? — a series of 2007 simulator tests conducted by Strayer seems to indicate the opposite. A passenger acted as another set of eyes for the driver in the test and even stopped or started talking depending on the difficulty of conditions outside the car. Meanwhile, half the drivers talking on a hands-free phone failed, bypassing the rest area the test had called for them to stop at.
Part of the problem may be that when people direct their attention to sound, the visual capacity of their brain decreases, says Steven Yantis, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University. It can be as if a driver is seeing the image in her head of the person she is talking to, thereby decreasing her ability to see what's actually in front of her. "When people are listening to a cell-phone conversation, they're slower to respond to things they're looking at," Yantis says. "It requires you to select one thing at the cost of being less able to respond to other things."
This may explain why participants in one of Strayer's simulator studies were faster to brake and caused fewer crashes when they had a .08% blood-alcohol content than while sober and talking on a cell phone.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Blunderov
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Re:Drunken driving safer than chatting on a cellphone
« Reply #1 on: 2009-09-06 07:18:06 » |
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[Blunderov] in South Africa talking on cellphones (or texting) whilst driving is illegal except with a hands free device. Almost needless to say, the legislation is widely ignored and inconsistently enforced.
I'm not quite sure how our law stands with regards to GPS units. I have one upon which I am heavily dependent. It is mounted on the dashboard and is visible just above the steering wheel. The traverse that my eyes must perform from GPS to the road or vise versa is less than the distance that my eyes must move in order to consult other instrumentation; speedometer, fuel gauge, thermometer and oil pressure. Nevertheless, I have had to firmly resolve to never consult the GPS for too long. The attention deficit, if I can put it that way, is much greater than a quick glance at, say, the speedometer.
I think people are becoming used to consulting multiple sources of simultaneous information in general life and I've been wondering how much of this is due to the advent of the much reviled Microsoft Windows? Or was Windows simply the harbinger of the multiplex culture? Soon, or so it seems to me, after Windows became ubiquitous, TV broadcasts began to follow suit. Scrolling text at the bottom of the screen dealing with information quite other than that which was been presented on the main screen became common. Advertisements were played in 'squeeze back frames' simultaneously with live events and their attendant commentary. Picture within picture editing techniques have become widespread in both video and film. And now the swathes of additional real estate available in the modern 16/9 screen format cry out to be occupied and that call is not going unanswered.
People are learning to deal with this barrage of communication IMO. Five and six year old children are emerging from the games arcades with the reaction times of trained fighter pilots. But not all people are coping. Is it fanciful to suppose that these unfortunates will be gradually weened from the gene pool by means of not only motor accidents but many and various other catastrophic events including poverty and social decline? Will we evolve into superhumans in order to keep pace with our own technology? The transhumanist project is well ahead of the times in its consideration of this subject matter and is deserving of great attention.
Best Regards.
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Hermit
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Re:Drunken driving safer than chatting on a cellphone
« Reply #2 on: 2009-09-06 11:43:11 » |
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The problems here are varied.
The increased danger of a collision or near collision through talking on a cell phone is simply a matter of CPU cycles. As the article explains, when you talk to a person you can't see, your visual centre works overtime visualizing the person on the other end, and things that either of you mention. This means that your brain suppresses local visual cues. This is not something you can program for and why, most of the time a person talking on a phone won't even realize when they have had a near miss, and cannot explain why they have had an accident when they are involved in one. While it is true that driving can become a largely automatic function, that takes the same kind of mind, training and exercise as learning to control a high performance aircraft with response times close to the limits of human time awareness, and even once trained in advanced driving (which is largely a matter of learning to project ones attention further from the vehicle than usual to be better able to predict and so avoid needing to take emergency action), it still takes CPU time to register (300 to 1200 ms) and react (300 to 1200 ms) to traffic conditions when not distracted, and milliseconds mean metres. This is why the normal reaction time for driving is 2 seconds over the base braking distance. I suggest doubling this if on the phone.
Introducing in-car screens is a different problem to paying attention to multiple activities on the same plane, or suppression of visual information due to auditory distraction, as the human eye is far slower than our already pathetically slow brains, and it takes time to shift our focus between near and far. Usually about 2 seconds - which is several lifetimes at jet speeds. This is why we invented the HUD for military pilots allowing them to maintain their attention where it needs to be, outside the cockpit. Race drivers know this too, which is why they have a big bright light on their rev counters, to signal shift points via the peripheral vision field, without having to shift attention inside the vehicle.
Once we have HUDs for cars we should be able to follow a GPS safely while driving, but until then, be aware that you need about 640 ms to shift focus from far to near and 560ms to shift it back, or about 1.2 seconds, without the 300-600ms cognitive delay as you process and recognize the information on the display, bringing the time needed to do something as simple as looking at a rev counter to about 1.8 seconds. Or about 30 to 60m, or double the normal recognition and reaction time and half the braking latency and distance again, at around 30 m.s-1 (100 km/h). Add to this the normal 600 to 2400 ms of human latency for another 30 to 60m at 30m.s-1 and you need 60 to 120 m plus the normal braking distance, taking you to 90m to 180m in total, if emergency braking becomes necessary while looking at the GPS. Which is an awful lot of braking distance not usually available in city driving conditions.
Because of this, I use the pilot's "Plan the flight, fly the plan" approach to safe driving. Whether a human or a GPS is telling me where to go, if I don't know where I am going to turn at least 12 seconds before the turn is due, and I count the seconds off backwards to myself from each turn point, to establish a decision point, I will bypass any action and return to it after replanning the approach. So we have a GPS that has a nice audible annunciator that gives multiple alerts approaching a turn, and have it set for a heading up 3D display with bloody great arrows showing turns to minimize recognition time. When I get the first annunciator, I glimpse at the image when traffic conditions allow the 2 seconds needed to look at it, process the information, prepare for action and return my attention to the road, positioning the vehicle for the action. If I miss a turn, which happens more often in city conditions due to the canyon effect slowing the GPS (they don't generally have inertial compensation to help them yet), heavier traffic conditions making finding 2 seconds more challenging and distances shorter between turns making timing more critical, I will find a safe place to stop and reestablish the route in my mind before attempting it. And I usually tell any passengers to stop talking to me and always stop talking to them as I approach a decision point. And loving life, except on a freeway, I won't talk on a phone - or use a dictaphone, hands-free or not, at all while driving - or ride with somebody who does.
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Hermit
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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