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Cellphone Drivers Drive Like Drunks
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Feb 02, 2005 01:21 PM
from the cut-me-off-right-there-in-the-left-lane dept.
from the cut-me-off-right-there-in-the-left-lane dept.
TDavid writes "A University of Utah study claims that drivers who use a cell phone will be 'more impaired than drunken drivers with blood alcohol levels exceeding 0.08.' The study also says that use will turn a driver who is age 20 into age 70. Hands-free systems apparently don't help much either as they still require a driver to 'actively be part of a conversation.' What about in vehicle systems like OnStar?"
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Cellphone Drivers Drive Like Drunk (Score:4, Funny)
Not to mention (Score:5, Funny)
They have no skills for paraphrasing. If the blurb was true I'd never drink alcohol again for fear of instant wrinkled skin, white hair, and random cancer.
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And edit like? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:And edit like? (Score:5, Informative)
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Old People (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Old People (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Old People (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't have competency testing for the elderly in the states? It's standard practice here in Finland. If the doctor says you're not fit to drive your licence is taken away. There are periodic checkups, and they are mandatory.
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Re:Old People (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of the problem is that here in the U.S., in many areas it is very difficult to live indepentently without a car. I don't just mean rural areas, I mean cities like my hometown of Baltimore with suck-ass mass transit. (Though some U.S. cities are great in this respect - I just got back from San Francisco with it's excellent Muni and BART systems.)
Take someone's licence away, and thanks to our automobile-centric planning they quite possibly can't even get to the grocery store anymore.
If the AARP was smart, they'd be lobbying for good public transportation - it would be a great benefit for senior citizens who can't drive safely.
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Re:Old People (Score:5, Informative)
As far as having elderly people drive... my Grandmother is already at the point where I consider her a hazard to public safety, even though she's convinced that she's a good driver. My Aunts and Uncles are afraid to pressure her into quitting driving (they might make her MAD or something! the horror!). I told them that I would talk to her about it, because her independance is not worth the lives of the family that she might kill because she got distracted at the wrong time or couldn't react quickly enough in an emergency.
I've already told my own mother that I'm taking the keys away when she gets too old. If her reaction is any indication as to how it will go when I actually try, then I'm sure to be in for a fight on that one...
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Re:Old People (Score:5, Funny)
Which is quite ironic, considering who we're talking about here
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Re:Old People (Score:5, Insightful)
Politicians care about one thing more than any other - getting rellected. If you look at all the lobbying groups that are successfull it is for two reasons - they have a large influence on a large voting block, or they make large contributions to the politician's campain funds. One of these is mostly good, as it represents the (politically active) people through proxy (and in a populace this large, it is impossible to get attention any other way). The other is mostly bad, as it only represents the will of a few wealthy contributers. Not all lobbying is equal.
In this case it is simply democracy in action - the majority of voters think that old people should be allowed to drive, so they are.
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Why Old People Rule (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they control the government: police, courts, armed forces, etc.
Because they run the economy -- banks, corporate boards, regulations. (Alan Greenspan is no spring chicken [google.com].)
Because they can -- or think they can -- continue to drive forever, and they don't want to stop.
I remember one old guy who'd been in an accident, mainly because his driving skills had eroded badly. When challenged, he stated that he would give it up when he killed somebody
-kgj
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Re:Old People (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a news-documentary a few years ago about this elderly guy wearing a neck brace. He was totally unable to move his head to the left, at all. The reporter was in the car with him, and he asked her to check left. She asked what he does when hes alone in the car, and he replied that he just listens and hopes for the best.
I also witnessed an elderly woman who was standing in front of me at the BMV line fail her eye test 14 times (I counted) before she finally passed. I took my eye test, filled out my paperwork, and started pulling out of my car before she even finished getting IN her car.
The problem is, no legislation will ever pass to restrict this, for two reasons:
1) Most of congress would probably fall into this category
2) The highest percent of voters is the elderly. They would never vote to have their own licenses put in jeopardy.
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Re:Old People (Score:4, Funny)
I think Dennis Miller summed it up best years ago..."I don't think people should be allowed to drive if they're old enough to remember when there weren't any cars..."
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Re:Old People (Score:5, Interesting)
My favorite one was on a "Bingo" night...
I was at an intersection that also happened to be a railroad crossing (the pattern was like an astrix; 2 streets crossing at a right angle, with a railroad going through at 45 degrees). The train was coming through, so obviously both streets had the red light. When the train finally passed, it was me one 1 street, and a cadillac on the other.
My light turns green (that street always turns green after the train, and I had a witness to back me up). So I go, and almost get T-Boned by the cadillac full of elderly men and women. They got all angry and rolled down the windows to yell at the "young-en." Meanwhile, I turn my head and see that I was correct, I had the green and they had the red. There was no arguing with them, so I said to hell with it and drove off.
Even the other person in the car said we had the green, and the lights are so long at that intersection it's sickening... so it's not like it could have changed while they were yelling at us.
I have great respect for the elderly; my grandparents lived with me for most of my life (until I was 20). And I'm not saying all elderly are bad drivers as I've driven with some that were good, but there are a lot out there that aren't great at all, and god forbid anyone tell them that maybe they shouldn't be driving. The worst part is, they don't realize it and nobody in their family has "the heart" to say that it's dangerous for others when they're on the road.
Things I often witness
- A granny will just drift to the other lane even if someone's next to her. No turn signal either.
- Running a stop sign (not a rolling stop, but just go through like it was nothing).
- Flying (fast) through a parking lot, while not using the lanes. Just going through the parking spaces the entire length of the lot at like 25 MPH.
- STOP in the middle of a busy street for no reason so they can put on their glasses.
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Re:Old People (Score:5, Informative)
I had an old guy slam the brakes to a FULL STOP in the MIDDLE lane of an Interstate (I-15 to be exact) because he missed his exit. This was 65-0 with tires locked up. I damn near rear-ended him and I had about 5 seconds between us. They car behined me almost hit me, etc.. It was damn near a chain-reaction accident. As it was, we had about 1/4 mile worth of cars backed up while he made a hard right to get on the off-ramp. I just about got out of my car to kick his ass for that one. Could have killed any number of people if everyone else on the road hadn't been paying attention.
Competency testing should be REQUIRED for ALL ages. I don't care if you're 16 or 90, if you can't drive safely, get the hell off the road! If we had cops watching more for this kind of shit and less sitting around eating donuts with thier radar on, perhaps the roads would get a little safer.
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Re:Old People (Score:4, Insightful)
Thats why Ford spent so much money lobbying to stop public transportation development in LA and Chicago.
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Difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Difference (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Difference (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, if a truck suddenly pulls out in front of you, you will suddenly focus on it; your passenger will tend to notice this and stop talking. Someone on the other end of a phone won't.
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Re:Difference (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Difference (Score:5, Funny)
You're obviously not married.
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Re:Difference (Score:5, Funny)
Chop
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Re:Difference (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently you've never experienced small children in the back seat; a situation that can be as bad, or worse than a driver on the phone.
The real issue is not that people drive poorly when they're on the phone, the issue is that people are allowed to drive at all without better training and testing. Being slightly impared wouldn't be such a big deal if you could drive properly in the first place. Not only that, but if you were better trained and a better driver you would potentially be able to deal with the phone conversation in a way that wouldn't impair your driving.
Instead of driving test focusing on worthless crap like how many points you get on your license for passing a school bus, you should be forced to prove you can handle a variety of traffic situations, and you should have to get a perfect score. Once you've passed the test, traffic law enforcement needs to stop focusing on the easily prosecutable offences like speeding and start giving tickets for failure to signal, following too close, incorrect yielding of the right of way, blocking traffic because you never learned how to parallel park correctly, etc. Additionally, instead of just a vision test when you go to get your license renewed, you should have to prove that you retained some of those skills in order to retain permission to use the roads.
Taking the cell phones away from drivers is a symptom fix. We should attack the root of the problem.
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Scientific Evidence (Score:4, Interesting)
Strayer, D. L., Drews, F. A., & Johnston, W. A. (2003). Cell phone-induced failures of visual attention during simulated driving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 9(1), 23-32.
These papers are generally accepted as showing that talking on a cell phone (hands-free or not) decreases driving ability, and that conversing with an occupant does not have nearly the same impact. I should note that I believe that there are major flaws in both studies.
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Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Difference (Score:5, Insightful)
A passenger is aware of the traffic situation. If you suddenly stop talking to a passenger, they'll look and see it is because a bunch of brake lights just came on up ahead, you need to pay attention to traffic, and the passenger should just sit quietly until it's smooth sailing again.
In a cell phone conversation, the person you're talking to has no awareness of what traffic conditions are like. You, the driver, could suddenly need to jam the brakes and swerve to avoid somebody drifting into your lane--and the person on the phone would just keep on chirping away about how "so anyway, then I said that there's no way my card is overdrawn because you paid those bills, right, and so..."
It may not command all of your attention, but in an emergency traffic situation, every slightest bit of attention that gets pulled away from the road can make the difference. A cell phone conversation can make the difference between missing that other guy's bumper by inches and getting clipped into an uncontrolled spin at 60 miles per hour.
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Re:Difference (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll bite. "A combination of shared situational awareness and greatly increased audio bandwidth".
Shared situational awareness: If I'm talking to a driver and I see a hazard, I'll either STFU if it appears the driver has noticed the hazard, or I'll road hazard: tire fragment ahead on left mention it in midsentence if it looks like it's something out of the driver's field of view.
Increased audio bandwidth in meatspace relative to cellphonespace: When I'm talking to someone in meatspace, I'm getting a full uncompressed analog signal of that person's voice. Real easy for my brain to parse that into words, because that's what my ears evolved to receive, and what my brain evolved to parse.
When I'm talking on the cellphone, I'm getting the analog voice, downsampled to 8 KHz analog bandwidth for the POTS connection, and then digitized and recompressed to what sounds like a swishy watery-sounding MP3 at 16 Kb/s (with squelch/dropouts for near-silent bits of the conversation, to save the phone company even more bandwidth). Ugh.
Even off the road, my brain has to work a lot harder to reconstruct that into human speech than it does in meatspace. A fraction of a second pause, a few milliseconds of a breath that don't make it past the squelch, all of those things make a difference. Was that stunned silence? Was it "whoa?" [as in whoa, that's stupid], or was it "whoa!" [as in whoa, that's brilliant].
Our brains evolved to detect those nuances in meatspace speech. The nuances can sruvive text transmissions like email, because we've trained ourselves (unless we're insensitive clods!) to manually reinsert them. It all gets stripped out at downsampled, 16 KHz compressed audio, with bandwidth-saving squelch.
And that's why your driving-brain runs out of CPU cycles more quickly when talking on a cellphone than when talking to a passenger.
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turn SOME drivers (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's be fair here, cell phones turn SOME drivers into worse-than-drunk drivers. ANYONE with a .08 BAC is going to drive poorly, only some folks who talk on a cell phone while they drive will drive poorly.
I'm going to be preemptive here, the solution lies in education, training and responsibility, not prohibition.
Hands free systems (Score:5, Funny)
OnStar (Score:3, Insightful)
-b0lt
Order today (Score:5, Funny)
I scared the CRUD out of myself last night (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm usually a very good driver. On the cell phone though.... Ok... From now on, no more talking and driving.
Pull 'em over! (Score:5, Insightful)
Inevitably, anyone on a cell phone is breaking about 15 other driving laws because they can't concentrate. The drunkenness or cell-phone conversation is not the problem -- the swerving and going 20 miles an hour under the speed limit in the passing lane is. Pull them over for those things, and the idiot cell phone holding driver would quickly become a thing of the past.
Re:Pull 'em over! (Score:5, Interesting)
The phrasing of the results suggested that the impairment is only slightly more than a
While I was handling DUI cases, the BAL was
The weavers that are pulled over for DUI are in the
hawk, esq.
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Here is a practical test (Score:5, Interesting)
Try this easy test... during the superbowl, call someone up on your phone (with headset or without, doesn't matter). During the conversation, after every play, write down the number of yards gained/lost and the number on the jersey of the player that gained/lost them. You'll probably experience "slave can't serve two masters" syndrome and have to dedicate more attention to one or the other, either by having to say "hold on" or "um, what was that?" to whoever you are talking to or missing play stats to keep up with the conversation. Unfortunately, priority in a car most often goes to the conversation.
Utah?? (Score:5, Funny)
Common sense (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're in a situation where you can't talk and drive at the same time, don't make phone calls and don't answer the phone. Your phone has voicemail and caller ID for a reason.
You are not available 24/7. If someone can't understand this, this is their problem. If it's your job to be available 24/7, get a hands free device or something.
If you have a passenger, have them make phone calls if possible.
Avoid lane changes while on the phone (unless you have tons of room). Even if it means following that truck at 60mph for a minute or two.
If you suddenly need to pay full attention to driving, do so. Being impolite is better than totalling your car.
If you were in a traffic jam, but aren't anymore, it's OK to tell the person on the other end of the line and say you need to hang up.
DRIVING WHILE NOT ME (Score:4, Funny)
No Kidding (Score:5, Funny)
The only thing missing is public urination, but I'm sure that's an add-on service.
A bit of research and reason show it to be BS (Score:5, Insightful)
A rant... (mainly cause it seems like they keep re-publishing this identical article every 3 months, and it gets annoying)
"If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell phone, his reaction times are the same as a 70-year-old driver," said David Strayer, a University of Utah psychology professor and principal author of the study. "It's like instant aging."
In fact, motorists who talk on cell phones are more impaired than drunk drivers with blood-alcohol levels exceeding
What this really says article says...
Is that Elderly are a helluva a lot more dangerous than drunk drivers and should really be taken off the road.
Secondly, there is much question as to the validity of the tests.
"The study found that drivers who talked on cell phones were 18 percent slower in braking and took 17 percent longer to regain the speed they lost when they braked."
The first part is in deed a concern. The second is not. The 17% increase length to regain speed is most likely due to a cell phone user being extra cautious after such an ordeal and double-checking before they regain speed. This is NOT a bad thing.
Anyways, how much time are we talking here?
"The numbers....come down to milliseconds"
"The new research questions the effectiveness of cell phone usage laws in states such as New York and New Jersey, which only ban the use of hand-held cell phones while driving. It's not so much the handling of a phone, Strayer said, but the fact that having a conversation is a mental process that can drain concentration."
First off, we have to start admitting that not everyone can multi-task. We also need to see the statistics on an individual level. If 1/3 showed minimal impairment, and 1/3 showed no impairment, and 1/3 showed dramatic impairment. What is the breakdown?
I know plenty of drivers who are often 'distracted drivers'. Particularly when they have people in the car. How do these statistics compare to the same driver with a passenger? with four passengers? And I am sorry....a cell phone user is NOT more impaired than a drunk driver. It is political BS. I refuse to buy it and no statistic will prove it to me. Simply put...I see tons of people driving on the cell phones - and driving fine. Sometimes a momentary reaction issue...yes. But when I see a drunk driver they are all over 2 or three lanes. They nearly hit everyone. They often run off the road. Somehow it is hard for me to accept that I can see a 100+ cell phone users who are supposedly "more impaired" and they don't perform as poorly as drunk drivers.
So let's look at the truth instead of the non-stop media propaganda bullcrap.
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According to the American Automobile Association, wireless phones were not among the top five contributing factors in auto accidents. From the more than 32,000 accidents analyzed, wireless phones contributed to 1.5 percent of accidents, according to the AAA research published in May.
The most distracting was an outside object, person or event, which contributed to 29.4 percent of accidents analyzed. AAA also determined that cassette or CD players were more distracting than cell phones, resulting in 11.4 percent of accidents analyzed.
Distractions from another occupant in the vehicle, such as a chatty passenger or baby, contributed to 10.9 percent of accidents. Eating or drinking contributed to 1.7 percent, according to the AAA study.
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Well, 1.5% compared 11.4% for CD players. Sure seems like car CD players should be banned before cell phones does it not. Let's ban whiny babies from cars as well.
In truth, I spend much of my time driving on the cell phone. And drive much better than most of my local area residents. Furthermore, it has helped me remain awake and vibrant on long road trips.
In truth, I've been bitched out on a few
Re:A bit of research and reason show it to be BS (Score:4, Interesting)
Dangerous drivers--be they drunk, elderly, or just distracted by their phones--should all be off the streets. I don't see any reason to privilege one group of dangerous drivers over another. The fact that drunk and dangerous elderly drivers still seem to be on the road doesn't support the notion that other dangerous drivers should be ignored.
Simply put...I see tons of people driving on the cell phones - and driving fine. Sometimes a momentary reaction issue...yes. But when I see a drunk driver they are all over 2 or three lanes. They nearly hit everyone. They often run off the road. Somehow it is hard for me to accept that I can see a 100+ cell phone users who are supposedly "more impaired" and they don't perform as poorly as drunk drivers.
As another poster has already asked--how do you know that you didn't pass hundreds of drunk drivers who were staying in their lanes, driving along, but with much slower reaction times? Unless they're actually holding up flasks, you can't measure blood alcohol remotely. As a frequent pedestrian in a large city, I will gladly submit my own (subjective and anecdotal) opinion that drivers on cell phones are less aware of their surroundings.
And I am sorry....a cell phone user is NOT more impaired than a drunk driver. It is political BS. I refuse to buy it and no statistic will prove it to me.
And I am sorry...tobacco use is NOT more likely to kill me than the local nuclear plant. It is political BS. I refuse to buy it and no statistic will prove it to me.
Seriously--people are really bad at assessing risks. This is the type of question that statistics are designed for. Relative risks, odds ratios, confidence intervals. Feel free to provide specific criticism of the study methodology, and note where errors or biases may have been introduced. Don't try to tell me that anecdotal evidence is inherently more reliable for risk assessment than large-scale statistical analysis.
"The numbers....come down to milliseconds"
If you pull the study (it's online here [utah.edu] in PDF format) then the total difference is reaction time is on average 130 ms, or about 12 feet at 60 mph (3.5 m at 100 km/h).
The key? is to know if you can multi-task or not. If you can't multi-task than DON'T USE A CELL PHONE AND DRIVE AT THE SAME TIME unless it's an emergency. A little common sense, and a little less stupidity will bring the human race a long way!
The problem is that people tend to be very poor judges of their own abilities. Ask anybody--they will tell you that they are an above average driver, but that there sure are a lot of idiots out on the road. People don't notice their own bad habits, unless and until they actually hit somebody. That's the whole point of a distraction--it means that you don't notice when you're making mistakes. I'm not saying that the parent poster is a bad driver, but that I don't trust people in general to be able to make that assessment.
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Treo 650 and driving (Score:5, Funny)
I see it a lot (Score:5, Insightful)
It used to be you'd see people reading, brushing their teeth, checking their hair or even dancing. Now all the drunk looking drivers are on cell phones, except the very rare very extreme alcoholics (I hope they die alone).
I drive a long distance on a nasty interstate, through a couple of major cities, so I've seen all kind of driving styles (even seen a drunk hit someone) and cell phone problems are getting worse and worse. I don't think this problem will solve itself without some kind of government involvement. I wish we had a hand signal for "hang up and drive, you look drunk."
I admit I have my own problem, but I've finally convinced my wife that just because she wants to have a fight over the cell phone and I hang up, it isn't personal, since if she wants me to live long enough to fight again, I need to hang up and drive. I've exaggerating, I've never really had a girlfriend.
20 vs. 70 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:THIS AFFECTS YOUR CHILDREN! (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, I love the word "likely" which means that they really don't know.
Actually, it's very possible that they are using the word "likely" to refer to the probabilistic nature of the data they have. You can't say that everytime you are involved in a conversation there is a 100% chance that that you will be a poorer driver. "Likely" refers to "likelihood".
GMD
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Why is this modded troll? (Score:5, Interesting)
"This supports the suggestion by Storie (1977) that men are more at risk from accidents involving high speed while women are at more likely to be involved in accidents resulting from perceptual judgement errors."
Social Research Centre Study [sirc.org]
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Re:After almost getting hit this morning... (Score:5, Interesting)
You know? I've always wondered about that...especially growing up in the highest insurance category (young male, unmarried, 2 seat sports car)...I'd ride with women, and be scared to death by the time I got out of the car...they drove faster and more recklessly than I did...and I drove pretty fast....but, they'd take chances turning sharp and in front of people I'd never try...
That, and I've never figured why they drop your rates if you get married. Frankly, the ones I see are so pissed when they leave they house, they floor it to get away as fast as possible...
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Re:I don't understand... (Score:4, Insightful)
When someone else is physically present, they are aware of what else is going on; they will make allowances for this in the conversation. It's naturally what we do.
Yesterday, for example, I was in a restraurant and there was a loud crashing noise from the kitchen. There was a group of guys at the table next to me, and one was talking. He paused for the sound, then resumed talking when it was over. Everyone understood what he said fine. It was an automatic thing.
If you're talking to someone on a cell phone in a car, they aren't aware, for example, if you're in heavy traffic and maybe they should let you focus on the driving. Compare car conversations to normal conversations the next chance you get.
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