There's so much emphasis on using your hands with the phone or not and with most laws that allow hands-free usage, people think that's completely safe; but it's not. No one talks about how distracting it is simply having a conversation on the phone while driving. The hands really aren't the most dangerous part of the equation.
Obviously, looking at the phone rather than the road is the worst part, but no one seems to be talking about how hands-free systems aren't helping either and are probably hurting by making people think they are being safe.
I also don't understand why the laws regarding cell phones and even drunk driving are so lax. Any of these should result in an immediate ban on your license for a long time. If I had a gun license and walked around shooting it, I would lose that license as well as I proved I am not responsible enough to operate it and that could result in death.
> Any of these should result in an immediate ban on your license for a long time.
Although I agree the reason this has (and may never) happen is that (atleast in America) we have been forced in a world where cars are basically required due to car-first development, so to take away someones license basically takes away employment opportunities, friends, and other basic necessities. People will spend a lot of time and money fighting traffic offenses, just so they don't lose there ability to drive due to the detrimental effects it has.
We have to make it stupid simple to drive because we have basically made that a requirement to function in normal society.
The only alternative (which I think we need to do) is to transform our transportation and development policies to make cars either optional or not needed at all.
Drunk driving laws are far from lax. In fact, my state puts of signs bragging about how bad you're fucked if you're caught driving drunk. Twenty thousand dollars in fines and court costs plus two years in jail, inability to legally drive for several more years plus the fact you can probably never afford insurance again, is plenty harsh enough to convince rational people not to drink and drive.
But, turns out alcoholics aren't rational people. So after they get out, they drive drunk, but this time they don't have insurance (and they're too broke to sue) so when they do cause an accident next time, the victim ends up needing to pony up the cash to pay for it.
I have several drunk family members who've been caught drunk driving multiple times. They've been to jail, and they don't have a license, but they still drive. This is not a problem you solve by making laws harsher (unless maybe you go to Sharia law levels of harsh and execute people after some number of offenses). You have to tackle alcoholism.
That's lax as hell. You kill someone with a car, you better not ever be able to use a car again. Mandatory to sell your car, license revoked, ankle monitor or something if needed to keep you out of your car. Don't play with people's lives.
>but no one seems to be talking about how hands-free systems aren't helping either and are probably hurting by making people think they are being safe.
If anything it can lead to worse behavior where people that are trying to text keep their phone below window level requiring them to take their eyes further off the road. I realize it's an attentional issue and that having the phone up higher won't resolve that component, but if you don't even have peripheral vision of the road for seconds at a time because you're looking down, you've got no hope of having your brain send you a danger signal to visual input.
Yes. The key difference is that the person in the passenger seat is there. They can see when you are doing something that requires more attention, and stop talking, and also even help with whatever it is that requires your attention. Conversations between people in the car naturally adapt to conditions. Conversations with someone not there do not.
I think once we're to the level of criticizing talking, a behavior that has been concurrent with driving the whole time driving has existed, we're close to demonizing devices [0] rather than poor behavior.
I don't see a problem with talking to close friends, holding the phone to my ear with one arm, on a highway in low traffic conditions (eg long drives at night). But any time I come up on a situation (passing a meandering car, heavy traffic passing me, construction zone, car stopped in breakdown lane [1]), I abruptly say "hold on", and take the phone away from my head. I probably laid the foundations for this behavior driving stick (where you want your second arm back to be able to shift etc). Most situations I also take the vehicle out of cruise control so that keeping speed has to be done with intent.
I can see the temptation to make the opposite choice - assume that everything will be fine, keeping some attention on the conversation. Meaning that if something unexpected occurs, I wouldn't be fully primed to deal and the problems multiply.
But I admit that this is all modulo the same bias of personal perception that makes many people think it's fine to stare at their phone half the time while driving. So perhaps data would disagree with me. But it takes more nuanced data than a simplistic division between "talking on phone" and "not talking on phone".
[0] There is a small possibility here that the DSP involved in making mobile calls sound reasonable only changes perception and still requires much more brainpower to process the audio.
[1] And because it doesn't seem universal: if someone - anyone - is stopped in the breakdown lane, move to the left even if you aren't in the right lane, to facilitate people in the right lane also moving over. The less "serious" a situation on the side of the road looks, the more likely it is that said people are amateurs unaccustomed to being pedestrians near the highway.
Yet there were many PSAs showing teens hanging out in a car, having a good time, distracting the driver with peer pressure, and causing a crash. And somehow we seemed to get past that.
But yes, that is why I said "good friends" - if you're talking to someone non-understanding where you're trying to "keep up" and can't just interrupt and ignore them at a moments notice, then the temptation is to modify your driving to suit the conversation.
I reckon there is a similar dynamic around texting (dopamine from the social interaction), where if everyone were capable of holding themselves to say one letter every 30 seconds we wouldn't have this epidemic at all. Although to be clear I'm certainly not condoning any sort of texting or app use, they are too compelling.
Obviously, looking at the phone rather than the road is the worst part, but no one seems to be talking about how hands-free systems aren't helping either and are probably hurting by making people think they are being safe.
I also don't understand why the laws regarding cell phones and even drunk driving are so lax. Any of these should result in an immediate ban on your license for a long time. If I had a gun license and walked around shooting it, I would lose that license as well as I proved I am not responsible enough to operate it and that could result in death.