Driving While Distracted More Dangerous Than Supposed 418
Science News reports on recent research indicating that any kind of multitasking while driving is dangerous. Not just the obvious distraction of juggling a cell phone, but even talking to a passenger or listening to a book on tape. The researchers used a driving simulator inside an MRI machine to measure brain activations. "Attending to what someone says galvanizes language-related brain areas while simultaneously reducing activity in spatial regions that coordinate driving behavior. This finding suggests that people who combine relatively automatic tasks, such as speech comprehension and car driving, exceed a biological limit on the amount of systematic brain activity they can accommodate at one time, the researchers propose. As a result, the less-ingrained skill — in this case, driving, which is learned long after a person grasps a native language — takes a neural hit."
bad drivers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'm all for a certain amount of regulation... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, even YOU, Mr. I'm-good-at-multitasking.
With automation, if you let people depend on those features, they'll just pay less attention to driving and the technology isn't good enough for a driver (and the public) to be both distracted and safe.
Some risks are manageable. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's dependent on the level of experience. (Score:2, Insightful)
All of the people in our organization are better drivers on the phone than most of the average public is otherwise. Why? Because we all have constant experience doing it.
Re:I'm all for a certain amount of regulation... (Score:4, Insightful)
When on the road there is only one thing that is important and that is safety.
Re:Some risks are manageable. (Score:2, Insightful)
Driving is just dangerous in general (Score:3, Insightful)
Give it about 10 years.
How does alertness factor in? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know about other drivers, but personally, I get BORED when I drive, especially on freeways (traffic or no traffic). And when I get bored, I get SLEEPY. Driving has to be one of the most complex yet automatic tasks that my brain does on a daily basis. So I have to find some way of keeping myself alert and occupied...and that might include listening to NPR (Republicans tend to piss me off, thereby keeping me alert). If I have a passenger in the car (especially a cute one!), I have no problem staying alert.
But anyway, the point is that I think making sweeping generalizations about the nature and complexity of the driving task is problematic not only from a scientific and cognitive point of view, but also from a social and legal standpoint. People have been driving for, well, since driving was INVENTED--with passengers in the vehicle, or with distractions present. You can't enforce drivers to focus solely on the driving task, and for the reasons described above, even if you did, you'd probably INCREASE the risk, because half of the population will fall asleep at the wheel from the sheer boredom of it.
But as for those drivers who I've seen sending TEXT MESSAGES while driving--argh, I just want to smack them. Seriously, they aren't even looking at the road. I've had to lay on the horn several times because they're weaving erratically, or stopped in traffic.
Re:I'm all for a certain amount of regulation... (Score:3, Insightful)
Everybody is against that. The only debate is whether or not it should be illegal, and you raise a valid point for making it illegal.
The safest thing is not driving at all. Clearly there are other important things, such as getting from point A to point B in a timely manner. I'm all for improving public transportation, which would help with a lot of problems, including road safety.
Can we outlaw Driving Under Influence of Children? (Score:3, Insightful)
At least, in most cases, the majority of other people on the road at the same time as the drunks are other boozers. I find myself having to dodge the Soccer Moms all day long.
Re:I'm all for a certain amount of regulation... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I think it's dependent on the level of experien (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:bad drivers (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree a hundred percent. Fortunately, most of the really bad ones eventually remove themselves from the gene pool. Unfortunately, for each one of them who does so, a new one is just finishing the license exam and getting behind the wheel of a new Tahoe or Yukon. Seriously, the number of mentally-challenged cell-phone-wielding SUV-driving all-wheel-drive-death-machine drivers on the road in my area is increasing exponentially. I wouldn't feel safe on the way to work each day if I was driving a Hummer: these people are dangerous.
And I don't care if I'm offending any of you death-machine owners: I got hit by one of you lunatics a couple months ago, and had to listen to the little bastard call me every name in the book ("Fuck you you motherfucking asshole!") then roaring off before the police arrived. My insurance agent had never even heard of his insurance company: she said it was probably some fly-by-night outfit and that it was likely all he could get. I'm not surprised, given his behavior and poor driving. I could tell he wanted to take a poke at me, but I'm about twice his size and I guess he figured that would be a bad idea. I will admit that after I took his insurance info and was walking back to my car, I said, "You're a dick." Yeah, he pissed me off.
In any event, here's a piece of advice to anyone that doesn't realize that a car can become a deadly weapon in instant. If you don't want to be considered part of the nation's burgeoning supply of sociopaths, get rid of the damned cell phone, drive a smaller car, or better yet learn how to drive. At the very least, accept that the cell phone you have continuously jammed into your ear is just making matters worse for everyone including yourself. If you can't do that, then for God's sake pop a Xanax before you hit the road.
Just a driving COMPETENCE test (Score:3, Insightful)
Parent seems to confuse being brilliant at calculus with being a good driver. Those are pretty much totally unrelated skills. At 18, she MUST be an inexperienced driver, because she couldn't have been driving very long - and because we don't use effective simulators to condense high risk driving situations, so you only get into them as a small fraction of your driving (unless you're very reckless)
The level of qualification that we apparently think is sufficient to let people drive is ridiculously low. They're not tested under even the tiniest of duress or stress, or in any sort of challenge that involves any real skill at driving or even having any reflexes at all. Even a 15 mph slalom would rule out SO many people, or force them to acquire greater skills.
We're getting in a giant death-machine here, people - we need to do a reasonably good job of knowing who is qualified.
I knew a case of an 80 year old man whose reflexes had clearly gone, but he wanted to keep driving. He rear ended someone with no extenuating factors whatsoever. Just up and drove into them, over a long lead distance.
To their credit the state made him take the driving test again... His family told everyone who would listen (his doctor, the DMV) that he shouldn't be driving. And he passed, and kept driving. (He passed the vision test, so apparently he could SEE what was going on, but he couldn't DO anything about it.) The family eventually prevailed on him to get rid of his car, but it was substantially later.
Also people who get _multiple_ DUI convictions... really? A serious DUI ought to be grounds for license suspension and ought to come with a stern warning - that if you drive on that suspended license you go to jail until you convince them you aren't going to wield any more implements of destruction.
I would be willing to wager that I could drive better in a manual transmission car after being awake for 30 hours while having a heated discussion on a cellphone, eating pasta, and/or changing my shoes than at least 10% of drivers, perhaps more. Note that I'm not saying I SHOULD do these things, or that I have a superhuman ability to multitask or drive, only that the state of things on the road is terrible.
The FUNDAMENTAL problem, of course, is that we treat driving more like a right than a privilege, which it needs to be since so many of our living spaces are designed to only work if you have a car. *sigh*
Re:I'm all for a certain amount of regulation... (Score:2, Insightful)
- RG>
Re:Sound quality has an effect, yes/no? (Score:4, Insightful)
Last year I visited some friends in the UK. English is my second language, and I've no trouble understanding any of them (various regional accents notwithstanding). But in a crowded restaurant, I found I could only understand half of what was being said.
Re:I have to disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
I do lots of observation while driving - frequent mirror checks at all 'hazards' (you should be checking your rearview mirror every 10 seconds anyway - that sounds like a lot but it isn't once you do it automatically, and it keeps you aware of what's going on around you in case you need to break suddenly or something like that). The checks are all pretty much built in now, I remember a few times that I've just stopped mid sentence while speaking to someone because I'm approaching a 'hazard' and need to concentrate more on my driving: I learned the police 'Roadcraft' System of Car Control on an advanced driving course a few months ago, and I highly recommend any such courses (mine included defensive driving, skid control and a more rigourous driving test than the standard UK driving test) to people to improve their driving and make even those times when you're driving on 'autopilot' safer.. though it's never really a good thing to let yourself drift into that kind of state while controlling over a ton of metal moving at speed!
Re:bad drivers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I have to disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Another way to look at this is to ask what was done in the study? Did they look at long trips, or just take short samples?
I was curious, so I went and read the article...
One minute trips!
Also take note of the fact that the participants were laying down and driving with a mouse. So pretty much this is nothing at all like driving.
After conducting a lame study like that, they concluded with some idle speculation:
Yeah - um. Probably.
This was at Carnegie Mellon, and it's reported in what looks to be a respectable science magazine. Worse yet, this is the kind of stuff that drives public policy.
What a joke. Sorry to rant - you can look at my history and see it's not my usual MO. But sheesh. Come on.
Re:I have to disagree (Score:2, Insightful)
Just because you 'feel' more aware or are doing something relaxing, this doesn't mean you are any safer. It's probably quite to the contrary.
Re:I have to disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Some people I've been passengers with brake really late and it does freak me out, it's leaving no room for the unexpected. People who drive like that all the time are just asking to lose control of their car when poor weather rolls around, since sudden acceleration, braking or steering is a big no no for slippery conditions. I'll admit I do enjoy the feeling of acceleration, and I tend to accelerate up to the limit as quick as I can on almost every occasion, but for braking I do slow down well in advance
I'd say the only 'performance' driver training I've had has been in computer games and reading about racing lines, though my driver training course did include collision avoidance training, how to properly counter oversteer and understeer, and I learned a technique to better judge the severity of corners on unfamiliar roads (sure wish I'd known that before when I had my motorbike! which got stolen..). The main bulk of the course was about observation though, which is far more important to safety than knowing how to correct a skid.. if you are keeping aware of what it happening around you then you shouldn't have to do any type of driving that would induce a skid in the first place, even in poor weather.
Obviously computer games are totally different from real life in that you can't feel the car reacting around you, although they are good for learning about certain elements of driving physics - RWD vs FWD vs 4WD and such. I used to be rubbish with RWD, but after learning basic stuff like braking before corners rather than on them and that kind of thing, I improved muchly. I've had a fair bit of practice at higher speeds irl too, though only in FWD vehicles (unless you include the Landrover Defender which only maxed out at about 90mph down hills! as well as having pretty chronic understeer).
My instructor noted that I had a good smooth driving style out on country roads (which will be because for my first few months of driving, most of it was out in the country, and as my dad used to be a police officer himself he showed me how to steer properly), which I was pretty happy about. The guy teaching my course has been a police driving instructor for over 30 years - we were in a Police Training car that was sponsored by the company I work for, and he was doing 110mph out in the countryside, pointing out that that is perfectly safe when the conditions are suitable (no traffic around, no pedestrians, good weather..) and you are observing ahead of yourself properly. There's a police driver training centre in the south of Scotland and apparently they have to be going as fast as is safe for the conditions all the time, which sometimes entails driving at 160mph on the motorways! So I've been feeling less guilty for travelling at high speed in certain situations since then, and stupidly ended up getting done for doing speeding on the motorway recently (at 10PM in the evening, there were no other cars around, although it was a bit damp). The only people that seem to judge me for the speeding are people who don't drive! I was feeling like a bit of a criminal for a while, but I told my instructor about it and he says "we've all done it before, just we didn't get caught", heh. I
Re:Multitasking test (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm all for a certain amount of regulation... (Score:4, Insightful)
Changing gear isn't much different from using your indicators once you are used to it - really. You don't have to look at the gearstick or even take your hand off of the wheel for more than half a second to a second. Sometimes I do rest my hand on the gearstick rather than keep both on the wheel, though that's just a bad habit, and I'm sure drivers of automatic cars don't keep both hands on the wheel at all times either.
If you had to answer general knowledge questions asked by your gearstick to get it to change gear then I could see it being a bit of a distraction, but in reality I, and probably most other drivers in the UK who have passed their test, move up through the gears literally without even thinking about it. If you're used to an automatic then obviously it will take quite an adjustment to drive 'stick', but in that case you just need practice. Don't forget that you have to use the clutch pedal at the same time as doing all this. But just the same as you don't have to think about where your feet are when accelerating and braking (at least I hope you don't otherwise your reactions in an emergency are going to be severely impaired), you don't think about the clutch or gear shift when changing a gear, so it isn't a distraction. There is a period of adjustment for using a different gearshift as the gating on each one can be pretty different, and some cars have a 6th gear where other cars would have reverse and stuff like that, but again that quickly just becomes second nature, like someone learning how to touch type in Dvorak instead of Qwerty, only a lot quicker and simpler!
I will however admit that I often change the volume on my stereo, though again I don't need to look at that, and most of the time I'd do it while stopped at lights anyway. There was one time about a year ago I was trying to find a track on a CD and realised I hadn't noticed a car coming over the ridge ahead of me - that was enough to scare me into being more sensible when it comes to in depth stereo fiddling (if I have a passenger I'd ask them to do it)