Gamers Better at Driving w/ Cell Phones?

sl4shd0rk writes "A lot of people think talking on the cell phone while driving is natural, but each time someone asks a question or changes the subject, it's like taking on a new task, Psychologists who study multi-tasking have argued for years about whether these "information bottlenecks" occur because people are inherently lazy, or because they have a fundamental inability to switch from one task to another. Mei-Ching Lien, an assistant professor of psychology at Oregon State University. "Even with a seemingly simple task, structural cognitive limitations can prevent you from efficiently switching to a new task." I have to say that the best ones are those who play a lot of video games," she pointed out. "Those are lab studies, however, and not driving tests." " All I know is that I could get where I was going better if I could shoot turtles at others on the highway.

It's fun actually!

[Anonymous Coward]

Like a game! Fifty fifty chances you either crash or get a chance to live another day!:)

Natural? No.

[DikSeaCup]

"A lot of people think talking on the cell phone while driving is natural ..."

And a lot of people (including many gamers) think it is not natural.

GET OFF THE PHONE AND DRIVE.

No.

[bwd]

Just because you're good with multitasking with your hands doesn't mean you're inherently better than other people at multitasking in a car. With one, there are no consequences for failure. When you're driving a car, serious injury or death is the result of failure.

It's just this kind of superiority BS by gamers that will get them killed in a car. There's a difference between games and real life.

Well...

[Sv-Manowar]

I think driving with any kind of distraction will always make driving more dangerous, even hands-free kits, because you are trying to think about the conversation you are having whilst focusing on driving. Holding a phone up to your face might mean you lose the use of one your hands for driving, but it's what is going on that is taking you attention away.

Gamers are most probably more used to multitasking while doing activities, I can't count how many times I've had a conversation while play Gran Turismo 4 only to crash because of it, but as you do it more you get better.

Driving while talking

[quokkapox]

I don't care if you're some kind of whiz-bang gamer, if you are the only person responsible for the safe operation of a huge chunk of fast moving metal, shouldn't you be concentrating overwhelmingly on that task alone? You owe it to the dumb pedestrians out there, who do not deserve to be Darwinized for making a simple mistake that ends up getting them killed because you're paying less attention than you could be.

Relatedly, and I know this is anecdotal, but I try to conscientiously observe the driver when I see someone make a mistake at an intersection (when it is safe for *me* to do so, such as when I'm already *STOPPED* and some bloody fool runs a stale yellow/red light from the lane next to me.) More often than not, they are talking on a cellphone. Or eating, or drinking.

WTF

[Turn-X Alphonse]

I can multitask fine. I'm often doing 3-4 things at once (playing games while watching TV and talking on IM for example), but this is ridiclous and should NOT be encouraged. Almost every time I see a bad driver they're either talking on the phone or they're some asshole 20 year old with daddie's money paying for his new car, who just happens to have a death wish.

I don't care if you play games, play golf or play with yourself. You can't control a car with one hand (unless specially adapted), let alone control it with one hand while you focus on going "oh really? Yes? wow? cool!" over and over down a phone. If the call is THAT important then you can pull over and answer it, you'll take 5 minutes longer to get there but you arn't endangering my life.

I just don't see it.

[bsartist]

I know a lot of gamers who multitask incredibly poorly when playing games. There's a "zone" they get into, where distractions just don't get through - telephone, household pets, noise outside, a bomb in the next room, etc., none of it gets noticed.

Some folks might point out that a lot of modern games have in-game voice chat, but there's a key difference there - the players are generally talking about the game. So it's not really multitasking, it's just another piece of the single task they're involved in and focusing on.

Re:Natural? No.

[oberondarksoul]

Mod parent up. When you're driving a huge lump of metal with the ability to very, very easily end someone else's (or your own) life, you should be concentrating on one thing and one thing only: ensuring that you don't.

Re:Natural? No.

[MurphyZero]

Then we should make all cars single passenger vehicles, because I for one am more distracted by passengers talking in the car than by a conversation on a cell phone. For one, the social interaction habits tend to make the driver want to look at the other speaker. A cell phone does not. Likewise, instead of a child seat, maybe a muzzle would provide them better protection. I do have two children, and those two are much greater distractions than any cell phone will ever be.

Can people learn to drive with a cellphone, safely

[mindstrm]

Sure they can.
Can they learn to drive faster than the speed limit, safely? Sure they can.
Can they learn to drive safely while intoxicated? Sure they can. (think, drive slower, etc)

Does that mean we should encourage these things? Of course not.

The fact is, most people think they are better than average drivers. Given that you are piloting a few thousand pounds of steel and gasoline around, your focus should primarily be on doing that safely, not on doing your makeup/talking on the phone/rolling that joint/whatever.

Re:Not really scary..

[quokkapox]

I've read about studies (cant reproduce them, sorry, but they sounded reasonable) that when something unexpected happens, the reaction between ppl on the phone and normal people is basically identical. People just drop the phone (literally) and do what they have to do. Also reaction times are pretty equal, and people don't really swerve etc.

I can assure you based on personal experience that you would think differently if you are ever actually involved in an pedestrian accident. Getting hit by a car (even one moving at only ~10mph) is an experience that *immediately* makes you a much safer driver in lots of ways. I'm just glad the dude that hit me was not talking on his cell phone or I might have also been run over too.

The Driver is supposed to operate the car safely. Period.

Thank goodness...

[Aphrika]

...that this is illegal in the UK. I still see people on phones when driving and there is no way they can give attention to both the call and the road. If I'm at a pedestrian crossing I'll give drivers a wide berth if they're on the phone - all too often they'll just sail through a red light.

In all honesty, I don't like surveys like this as they seem to justify to some people that they are superhuman and do have the ability to do things that are just plain dangerous. Sure, some people may be able to drive and phone, but it's clear that you're obviously not giving the road 100% attention. It's not like there's a video chip and a sound chip in there and they work independently. People also have the ability to over-estimate their own skills and cause problems for others - drink driving for example. So for the love of God if you're in the UK, don't start using your phone just because you're a gamer...

Also a quick point; to those people who have hands-free headsets. It does not help if you do not wear them, then fumble to put on the sodding thing when a call comes in! That's just as dangerous, especially if - like they guy I saw drive into a tree at 30 mph - you were under the dash getting it out of the glovebox...

Gamers Better at Driving w/ Cell Phones?

[digitalsushi]

Gamers Better at Driving w/ Cell Phones?

"Those are lab studies, however, and not driving tests."

Wow.

Let's face it....

[Jace of Fuse!]

Let's face it, some people are just better driver with or without cell phones.

Re:Cell Phones vs. Passenger

[Hope Thelps]

Honestly, how is talking on a cell phone much more distracting than talking to a passenger in your car?

Because the people in the car with you react to the context you're in. Liking shutting up when you stop paying attention to them rather than saying "are you still there? hello? hello? I can't hear you... hello? are you okay...".

Re:Not really scary..

[ivan256]

Things that ARE dangerous are things like trying to operate a complex(ish) thing like a car stereo, GPS navigator, audio players etc.
...dealing with misbehaved children in the back seat...

The worst drivers by far are the ones that can't ignore a crying child in the back seat. You never hear complaining about that though, because it's trendy to hate cell phones, and it's taboo to say anything bad about mothers or children.

The fact of the matter is that most people who are bad drivers while talking on a cell phone are bad drivers when they're not too. (Usually because they don't care about what they're doing, so if they're not on the phone they'll be grooming, eating, racing, etc..) If you're driving recklessly, you should be removed from the road in a permanant fashion, regardless of the cause. Reckless driving is already illegal, and stupid sub-rules are just that: stupid.

Is this really true?

[SmallFurryCreature]

F1 and other motor sports absolutly leaped on the capabilty of modern communication to allow the driver to communicate with the pit crew. At speeds your average street car could only reach by being dropped from a plane.

Then their is motor cycle riding course. How do you communicate with your instructor? Two way radio. This in a vehicle that requires and extra task namely of keeping upright. With the extra handicap that by the difinition of driving instruction that you are not very good at it yet.

Police motor cycle cops also use two way radio to communicate during high speed pursuits.

So basically a lot of people drive and talk at the same time. From trained proffesionals who should know about road safety to the most elite drivers in the world to newbies.

Personally I think it depends on the person. I seen people drive that shouldn't be allowed to even if their eyes were glued to the windscreen and others who can do a myriad of tasks and still be full aware of everything on the road and more important perhaps, the side of the road. If you ever road shotgun on a truck in the innercity you will know how important it is to keep track of kids playing in gardens. Trucks seem to have a magnetic field that pulls everyone in.

Re:Natural? No.

[antifoidulus]

Yes, but a passenger is MUCH more likely to alert you of an impending danger(they can see where you are, and of course don't want to die) than a person on a cell phone. Not to mention that even on hands free sets talking on a cellphone is less natural, and thus takes more concentration than talking to someone next to you.

Re:Natural? No.

[psycln]

Then what is the difference between talking to someone in your car, and talking to someone on a hands free headset?

MythBusters

[MrShaggy]

There was an episode that was done a while that addressed this same problem. They had a gentleman from the DMV perform a driving test. Two of them had to take the test as a baaseline.Things like driving through pylons, and accelerating and stopping. All of these were low speed tests. They then did the test on their cell phones. They had to answer a bunch of different questiions, like "What colour is your hair, ' other questions to see if they could understand a series of questions. And different sets of demands on the phone. They then had to do the test again, but drunk. They had a couple of cops, doing a brythaliser test. They flunked both road test preatty mush the same. They were surpisred that the phone and the alcohol would affect them the same way. Of course lots of people would say ' well there isnt enough data to make that work.' But that is a good way to start. If you were to test 100 people in the same manner, I think that it would be surprisig. Shaggy

Re:Natural? No.

[StarvingSE]

Agreed. Nov. 15th, I was sitting at a red light with 2 other cars in front of me, and all of a sudden I get rear ended by an F150 at 45mph. My car and the car in front of me ended up totalled. The reason he wasn't paying attention to the red light...... HE WAS ON THE CELL PHONE.

I don't care how good people think they are at multitasking, driving requires 100% of your attention. You could be good at it 99% of the time, but then there's that one time your trying to dial someone's number and you accidentally veer into that kid on a bike.

Re:Not really scary..

[nolife]

I agree with your reaction time statement but not the overall assumption that the result would be the same.

In the example you site, all things are assumed to be equal up to the point that an immediate action has to be taken. Look at the two different situations a little deeper or back up in time about 15 seconds before the situation.
If you are aware of your surroundings, you can make a more logical choice or possibly see a potential hazard and prepare for it. Assume a dog running down the side of the street or even a person on a bicycle. You should notice this well before reaching that hazard by the reaction of others ahead of you. Cars slowing down, people moving slightly to the left to go around something should set of a flag in your mind that something is not right up ahead. You can adjust your driving prior to getting to the dog and be preparded just in case it darts out in front of you. Have you even been in the slow lane and notice the driver ahead of you in the fast line suddenly hits the brakes? Chances are, something is not right ahead and you should proceed with caution. Another obviously one that I have seen many times is the obvious break in traffic near an intersection. You know, the ones where cars waiting in multilane traffic leave a gap so others can get waved across through them to get to a side street? How often does someone come flying up that third lane and suddenly a car pops out of "no where" in front of them and gets t-boned. All of these examples are things you should expect but talking on the cell phone might prevent you from thinking about it. Sure, given equal reaction time, cell phone or not, you would react the same. Without the cell phone, there is a chance you could have indenified the potential hazard BEFORE you got there.

I'm pulling a theory out of my ass here and there is no real way to test these numbers but I'd wager that a much larger percentage of drivers not talking on a cell phone can tell you at any given time if there is a car riding next to them, behind them, or at an intersection ahead of them waiting to pull out compared to someone not on a cell phone. Your surroundings play a role in what action you should take if an emergency situation comes up. Waiting until the emergency situation to survey your surroundings and then react accordingly can not be as safe.

Re:I just don't see it.

[bsartist]

Example of multitasking in games. I have a Healer in the Midgard realm in Dark Age of Camelot. In a group, I might have to be monitoring the health and situation of up to 7 other people, prioritize their healing needs, pick what healing spells to use on them, and heal them. Meanwhile, if any extra monsters show up, I have to mesmerize them if the rest of the group is not ready to immediately deal with them. I've also got a spell that slows monster attack speed for 20 seconds. I need to be using that and renewing it on monsters that are taking a long time to kill. I've got a limited amount of power for all this, so I have to keep close watch on my power level.

That's not the same kind of multitasking. Everything you mentioned is one aspect of the larger task of "playing the game" - a thread, as it were, not a full task. Switching from one thread to another isn't a change in context, because they're all closely related to one another. Driving has many such threads as well - monitoring the gauges, the road ahead, the mirrors, etc.

The kind of multitasking that causes problems is when it's two or more entirely unrelated tasks.

But.

[TheLink]

The thing is - most of those cases the driver is talking about something fairly related to the situation he needs to concentrate on.

Not something totally unrelated.

The cop probably looking at the vehicle he's chasing, describing it, saying where it's going. I'd find that not so hard to do that myself.

He's not trying to think of whether his girlfriend's maroon skirt (gf: "Not the red one, _maroon_") will go fine with her new top, or whether what he says next will get him in trouble with her...

As for F1 drivers, they are drivers who are highly coordinated and can probably multitask and drive at highspeeds. At least the top ones should be able to practically drive around tracks in their sleep ;).

Apparently when the F1 racers were made to race in go-karts years ago, Ayrton Senna apparently was driving whilst tweaking the fuel-air mix on his kart's engine at the same time.

Rally drivers might even better at these sort of situations.

Re:Cell Phones vs. Passenger

[Anonymous Coward]

If the situation has gotten that serious, I've likely already dropped the phone.

It's a hell of a lot easier to squelch a phone than one or more passengers who aren't paying attention or may be inebriated. Kids and pets don't understand road context at all, and the radio never stops, regardless. All of those should probably be outlawed as well.

Re:Bandwidth

[fwitness]

Like my sibling poster commented, your passenger reacts to your environment as you do. However, another important problem is the communication itself. Depending on who you talk to, most communication is 20-30% nonverbal. When you talk on the phone, you try to make up for this with more words and different inflections. Essentially, you try to make up for the lack of a face and hands by variations of voice.

Don't believe me? The next time you're talking with a friend, just tell them "bye" in the middle of a conversation, wave and walk away. They'll be a bit miffed/confused, but with the wave and you moving away they get the idea, especially if you have a stern look on your face implying anger. Contrast this to phone conversations. How many times have you said "bye" to each other on the same phone conversation, waiting for someone to hang up first?

maybe that's because...

[Infonaut]

Gamers are used to having their hands on the joystick, so they don't *TALK WITH THEIR HANDS* which is the single most annoying thing to watch when you're cycling along on a narrow shoulder. You look over and see some idiot gesticulating as they drive, whether talking on a hands-free set or to another person in the car. Meanwhile, you're thinking, "Great, if this guy forgets to put his hands back on the wheel, or if he has to react suddenly, I'll wind up as road pizza."

As others have mentioned, when you're driving, you're taking control of a weapon. Even a small amount of carelessness when driving can kill one or more people. I find it mind-boggling how so many people have become anesthetized to the fact that they're actually driving a vehicle. Automatic transmissions, cush interiors, shock absorbtion that cushions the road, and other modern enhancements to automobiles make people remove the sense of inherent danger that makes people pay attention.

It's great that cars are safer and more comfortable than they used to be, but the number of near-accidents I see on a daily basis makes me think that we'd better hurry up with self-driving automobiles. The actual driving part of driving a car has become so secondary that we may as well remove it from human control altogether.

Re:WTF

[syukton]

This is a lot for anyone to handle.

Um, what? Seriously, WHAT? Did you fail the licensing exam a few times or what? You might just be kind of slow, you know.

Maybe you don't possess the skill to drive, but I sure do and I loathe your generalization.

Anybody with a measurable level of driving skill doesn't even need their speedometer because they can judge how fast they're going. And in traffic, generally, your speed is less important than it is to just maintain a speed with the flow of traffic. Reading road signs is a pretty minor thing. Each sign takes a small fraction of a second to read (at least for me) and unless you're in unfamiliar territory you should already know what all the signs say. Yeah, you're watching for things approaching the road from either side, certainly, but a simple glance in either direction without even moving your head is all that takes. I use my side mirrors to check behind me because I have a darkly tinted rear window. I have blind-spot mirrors so I don't have to physically turn my head to check either blind spot; a simple glance is all it takes. Anything that I need to see on my console will have my attention drawn to it with a bright orange or red light. Overheating, battery problems, engine needing service, etc, they've all got a bright red or orange light which tells me what's up. And there's only one time when you need to monitor the situation behind you, and that's when you're slowing or stopping when travelling forwards, and whenever you're backing up. If you think driving is hard, you shouldn't be doing it.

I can talk on the phone and drive at the same time no sweat. I've got this skill known as "priorities" and from the sound of your comment and the comments of others, you all totally lack this skill.

Do you know what I do when I'm on my phone and I'm about to conduct a high-speed merge onto the freeway? "Hold on for a sec."
Pulling out of a parking space? "Hang on a sec."
In heavy traffic with a lot of stop-and-go and drivers not using their turn signals and cutting me off? "I'll call you back in five minutes."
Cruisin' down the highway at sixty miles per hour at 4am without a single other car on the road? I conduct my goddamn conversation without any problems what-so-ever.
If I'm in a new city, I'll not talk on the phone unless I'm talking on the phone to get directions.

It's all about priorities. I would drop my phone, my drink, my food, my anything if I ascertained the presence of a challenge or threat in my surroundings. It's about judgement, threat assessment, prioritization and survival instinct. They are completely right that gamers are better at talking on the phone while driving, because gamers have these skills, and then some.

It's when peoples' priorities are all fucked up that cellphones become a problem. Driving is the PRIMARY task, all others are secondary, tertiary, etc. One time some dumb broad almost merged right into my passenger side because she was on her phone not paying attention. She prioritized the call with whomever she was talking ahead of driving, and that's a no-no. Driving comes first, the conversations come second. Ask them to hold for a minute, tell them you'll call them back, but put driving first. If you can do that, everything else is cake.

The problem isn't cellphones, the problem is shitty drivers.

Re:There is a way...

[roman_mir]

Let me explain something to you, buddy, I don't know where and how you live, but where I live, everyone has got a phone and almost everyone drives. Given that people drive at least 2 hours every day of their lives, don't tell me that making or accepting phone calls while driving can actually be constantly avoided. The problem with your argument is that you believe that people can be changed from their ways, but this is false. People don't change their ways, they do what is the most convenient and comfortable and accessible thing. Whether it is downloading mp3s over p2p networks (which I don't do,) listenning to their music in the car (which I don't do, but I listen to talk-shows,) or anything else. You can't change people but the problem needs to be addressed, so what I am suggesting is that the problem needs to be properly addressed from a different angle. People won't give up driving and they won't give up their cell-phones. Even making it illegal to use a cell without a hands-free set in the car will not solve the problem of not paying enough attention to the road. So the people must be taught how not to get into trouble while talking on the phone and driving. That looks like the only feasible way of really addressing the problem. It maybe the longer and the more difficult way but it is the only real way.

Good luck.