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."
I have to disagree (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I have to disagree (Score:5, Funny)
and why did that laptop just come flying through the window?
cted
Re:I have to disagree (Score:5, Funny)
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Fixed that for you (if you live somewhere urban, at least).
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Re:I have to disagree (Score:5, Interesting)
I drove 3 hours a day for 4 years. About 6 months into this I started listening to books on tape, and I found my alertness level while driving was improved significantly. When I was just listening to the radio or my ipod, and it was the same stuff I've heard a thousand times before, my mind drifted. When I started keeping my mind awake and aware with audiobooks, I found I was surprised by traffic around me much less often.
I touted this to several coworkers who also had long drives, and collectively we all agreed: audiobooks keep your mind more active, and increase your overall awareness of arising traffic situations, we found ourselves in fewer close calls and surprised by things around us less often.
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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!
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Things which I couldn't have helped noticing before because they would have made themselves known to me eventually if I had missed them.
Re:I have to disagree (Score:5, Interesting)
I was once being driven by someone who turned her head directly at me and asked me "Why do you always criticize my driving?" *Boom* - she rearended the guy in front of her. Thank god it was low speed in a parking lot.
The precedent has been set. Nearly all people drive OK when they've been drinking, some don't with catastrophic consequences and now it's illegal for everyone. If you can justify criminal penalties when driving while drunk (which is reasonable, in my opinion, though not the way it's being enforced now), then similar distractions ought to bear the same penalties. Be consistent!
I lived near a women's college when I lived in Tokyo. The only time my health was in danger on the sidewalks was from students riding bicycles while talking on cell phones and smoking at the same time.
The only time I've ever been responsible for an accident was when I was driving with a Big Gulp between my legs and I squeezed the cup a bit too hard and soda spurted out over my lap. Dang. If it had been McDonald's coffee, I'd have been a millionaire.
While I'm happy that you think books on tape might have helped your driving, it's really the same confidence people have when driving drunk.
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.
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No, of course not. If it did, it'd be because you were concentrating on the words and not on driving, but because the book is providing enough 'background' distraction, you end up shutting it out and find that you stop distracting yourself.
An example: a student once walked into a professor's office and was made to wait, and he started fidgiting and fidgiting, barely unasble to stand still. The professor told him to count the books on
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Re:I have to disagree (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I have to disagree (Score:4, Interesting)
Speaking from experience... driving on most amphetamines is a REALLY bad idea. Overconfidence, other effects of the drug not directly related to the "pick me up" (e.g. the very minor hallucinogenic effects of MDMA), and physical jitteriness are all things that cause problems for operating a vehicle.
That said, it's still probably better than driving while extra-ordinarily tired (to the point that you're falling asleep at the wheel).
Oh, and as a tangent, also from experience, driving on actual hallucinogens is also REALLY REALLY bad (although I guess that's probably obvious).
I'm all for a certain amount of regulation... (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps what this really is is more evidence that we should automate as much about driving as is possible.
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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.
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.
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In that case, there should be no problem in passing a law requiring all calls to be fully automated like the DARPA Grand Challenge by the year 2018.
I'm just saying... If you really want to go safe that would be the way to go and not outlawing cell phones.
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I'm not too serious about passing laws requiring this, but the technology is IMO the best solution for the problem: The car has a build in cell phone and whenever you are in the car it utilizes the SIM card of your mobile phone to receive and make calls. From a safety standpoint it's great, because the user doesn't have to do anything after
Re:I'm all for a certain amount of regulation... (Score:4, Interesting)
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The ai
Re:I'm all for a certain amount of regulation... (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're living here in Germany, which I guess from your statements, I should point out that having lived in both Australia and Germany, you're right about the general skill of drivers, and the accident rates. However, while you're also right that it's far more expensive to get a license here in Germany (a process I'm going through at the moment, since Germany won't do an "exchange" of an Australian license), it's actually MUCH quicker. To go from "unlicensed" to "full license" in Australia takes around 3 and a half years with various restrictions at the different "levels" along the way.
The Australian system however does not make for better drivers - even after all the rigamarole, most of them are still pretty terrible. (although, it does vary a lot by city - Sydneysiders drive fast, and it scares people from elsewhere, but in general, I'd far rather drive in Sydney than Melbourne, where many people drive slower, but seem to have NO idea how to use their brakes properly, change lanes, or park.
An interesting tangent that I've noted is the relationship in countries between driving age and drinking age. In countries where you are allowed alcohol BEFORE you are allowed to operate a vehicle (e.g. Most of Europe), there seem to be a loss less alcohol related driving incidents than countries where you are allowed to drive well before you're allowed to drink (e.g. Australia or US). I put it down to the fact that young drivers in such countries become familiar with the effects of alcohol and are still not confident with driving, so are aware of how scary it would be to drive a car under the influence. But in the other countries (where you can drive first), young people think they are great drivers (having had a couple of years experience) and are not yet that familiar with the effects of alcohol, so are more likely to underestimate its effects when they get behind the wheel.
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Bingo! However, it wasn't really hard - I don't know of any other country featuring no general speed limit...
I wasn't aware that they are not interchangeable. I never had a problem but I was just driving in Australia as a tourist with an international license - and I was sweating blood and tears back then because I'm not used to drive on "the wrong side". Might be a different st
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I'm totally against (hands full) cellphone calls while driving.
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.
When on the road there is only one thing that is important and that is safety.
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.
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No everybody isn't. It's just that the people who are, are obnoxious asses about it, so they whine, complain and make a big scene about it.. If everybody was against it, there wouldn't be any complaining because nobody would be doing it.
The safest thing is not driving at all.
That is correct, and that is how you can tell that the vast majority of people complaining about cell phones in cars are hypocrates. If they really cared that much about safety, they wouldn't be d
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Figuring out where those few places are seems to have escaped most planners of transit systems. If public transit makes it possible to get from home to work in less time and at the same expense as a car, then it may be better. Any place where that is not the case will be where the majority of people will spurn public transit.
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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)
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Trying to turn corners with one hand while fiddling with the gear shifter is easily as dangerous as a phone.
That's... hilarious. I suppose you've never driven a stick. When turning left on a very large intersection, do you actually stay in first gear the entire duration of your turn? I don't believe it -- most cars would be red-lining by that point.
Shifting into second during a turn is perfectly normal. If you can't figure out how to do it, it means you suck at driving stick, not that it's an unsafe
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>
> Everybody is against that.
Definitely not everyone is where I live !!!
I live in Germany and cycle everyday to work. Handsfull car phones have been illegal for some time here. My favourite game whilst sitting at a junction waiting for the lights to change is to watch the cars on green going across the junction (I am usually at the head of the queue as I am in the cycle lane). More often than not I will see at least one phone use
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Re:I'm all for a certain amount of regulation... (Score:5, Interesting)
Banning regular cell-phone talk in cars is not going to do much to improve safety.
I'm blowing several moderations I've made to write this, but I think it has to be said: the research shows (beyond any reasonable doubt, and in plentiful quantities) that driving while using any mobile phone (hand-held or hands-free, the statistics are near-identical) is worse for safety than driving several times over the legal blood alcohol limit in most jurisdictions.
Now, you can act on this information in spectacularly the wrong way: the UK introduced a law to ban only hand-held phones, leading to the false impression that hands-free is safe and a rush of marketing implying that from hands-free vendors. The authorities then failed to enforce the new law anyway, to the extent that almost all drivers who admit to using a mobile illegally in studies also say it's because they don't think there's any serious risk of getting caught. That's hardly a deterrent, and in implicitly supporting the use of hands-free (which has near-identical danger stats, remember), if anything it has made things worse.
But there is no doubt that viewing use of a mobile phone while driving in the same socially unacceptable light as driving while drunk or high should be a good thing for road safety in the long run. Whether the correct answer to this is to make new laws, or simply to run a public awareness campaign to tell people the facts (how many people have you seen on Slashdot claiming, probably quite sincerely, that they can drive just fine while using a phone?), is open to debate.
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Why stop at cellphones (Score:2)
People rely on the crutch of the law, when such laws are rarely enforceable - how many people get pulled over for being on a cellphone?, and have marginal effectiveness
Re:I'm all for a certain amount of regulation... (Score:4, Informative)
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- RG>
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The only time that I occasionally do any minimal multitasking is when I am driving on rural highways or roads with light traffic and few stoplights. Whether I am multitasking or not, I nearly always leave plenty of room between me and the next car so that I have an extra second or two to react to things. In light traffic, I tend to leave even more distance between me and the next car, giving me even more time to react.
In such circumstances, I might occasionally eat an apple or sip some coffee, but never
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I accidentally hit "Submit" instead of "Preview" before I had a chance to finish checking for errors. I meant to say that I do not do that very often, even when driving in light traffic. I should also add that I am in my mid-50s and have never had an accident.
I do not like how many of the newer cars have complicated electronics which encourage me to take my eyes off the road when driving. Back in the 1970s, my cars few controls were all large easy to find knobs, buttons and levers. Of course, I could
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Oh, that one's easy: safer roads ! (speaking as a vulnerable road user)
bad drivers (Score:2, Insightful)
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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
Re:bad drivers (Score:4, Insightful)
2 things I noted. (Score:2, Funny)
Secondly, is the summary actually advocating driver's training before a kid even learns to talk?
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In the few times I had a conversation -handsfree of course- I forgot sometimes what we were talking about because I wasn't paying attention to the call.
I keep my attention on the road while driving, there's no other choice since there's a load of retards on it as well.
Multitasking test (Score:5, Interesting)
While I'm sure everyone's driving ability decreases when multitasking, I don't think it does at the same level.
They need to have a multitasking test to qualify drivers to do certain things, and everyone else be blocked. I mean this in a joking way, but if I ruled the world I'd make it that way
The biggest problem is enforcement. Of course, a police officer can always pull you over for unsafe driving, even if you're not multitasking. But there needs to be some sort of citizen-level enforcement.
Some way to point a radio-id-tag tracker and zap another car and comment on how it's driving (weaving in traffic, distracted while on the phone, going the limit in the fast lane with two other lanes open, etc.).
Don't take one person's word for it, wait for a couple dozen complaints - they'll come fast enough - and then yank all their driving privleges, or limit them to driving with no other multitasking going on.
Ah, only in Jason-land
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"But Mom! I swear it was johnny and the gang that zapped me as a bad driver! It was a joke!"
Re:Multitasking test (Score:5, Interesting)
So here she is... having everything her way (having to choose between Harvard and Yale) and suddenly she is facing the awesome responsibility of killing two individuals through neglect... something that was preventable.
Yeah... these stories are anecdotal... never-the-less one may learn from others bad judgments and experiences.
The couple are dead. She is brilliant having taken calculus in the 7th grade... and yet her cleverness can not restore these two humans back to life.
It will haunt her for her entire life.
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People like that are typically too self-absorbed to really care about others, even if they pretend to.
I could be wrong though.
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"Everything going her way" it says, that's a sign of someone who is self-absorbed (or focused, however you want to spin it) to ridiculous levels. Even if it comes naturally, it's still a lot of work that it takes a type-A personality to achieve.
Also, Valedictorian is not just about your grades, it's also a personality contest. That means she's likely an "in crowd" sort of person, which is also a sign of being self-absorbed.
Lots of people get 4.0 grade point averages,
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Like it or not, it takes a certain kind of person to be "popular" enough to be voted valedictorian. That type of person is often talking about how to save the world, and is a member of PETA, or whatever, but when it comes down to it, they view all that through their own self-a
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Sadly, many people don't have an idea how fast they're actually going when they're driving 120 kilometer/hour.
My driving instructor provided a few theory lessons for a small group of people (~ 10) in preparation for the theoretical exam required to obtain a drivers license.
At some moment he asked out of the blue: do any of you have a clue how fast you're going in meters per second i
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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, be
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First we need to test people for driving while incompetent. Perhaps with real simulators? I shouldn't have been able to learn things about driving from Gran Turismo AFTER having been driving for years.
I also think simulators are no replacement for the real thing. We're talking cars here, not 747s.
IMHO, very few people actually have a problem controlling their car. Some people do, and they should not be allowed to drive. The vast majority of people have a problem with FOCUS. Listening to music, talking to friends, eating, talking on their cell phones.
My cardinal rule of whom bad drivers are are if they have a "dangly" hanging from their rearview mirr
Some risks are manageable. (Score:4, Insightful)
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No (Score:2)
Duh.
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 think it's dependent on the level of experien (Score:4, Insightful)
Sound quality has an effect, yes/no? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I can testify (Score:5, Interesting)
When I'm driving with a passenger and conversing with them, I seem to only be able to actually focus on one of those tasks at a time.
If I am concentrating on the road, I've noticed that I tend to block out the passenger. Sometimes what the passenger says will get processed a good 5 seconds or so later when I'm in safer circumstances (straight driving in my lane). And if I'm instead thinking about what the occupant is saying, I will tend to miss turns that I know full well I need to take.
During any of this, however, I am driving fairly well. I have never had an accident in my 14 years on the road. But my brain is apparently focusing its full cognitive abilities on the road and traffic, but leaves little else to work with in that regard.
You can either tell me how your day went, or we can get to the restaurant. But they are somewhat mutually exclusive.
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I personally think there are two layers of processing for driving. Because if I'm distracted I will make navigation decisions automatically -- e.g. e.g.
Not completely straight-forward (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not completely straight-forward (Score:4, Interesting)
It gets so bad that sometimes I arrive at a destination I wasn't intending to simply because that's my most common route, and when on auto-pilot my brain just goes where it usually does.
I've done this during rush hour traffic even. Clearly, some part of my brain is able to function without much higher level control and avoid accidents, and pay attention to traffic, and signs and lights, and everything else. All while my conscious mind is somewhere else.
Is this unsafe? I don't know.. I've never been in an accident because of it. The few accidents i've had have been the fault of others (getting rear-ended while at a stop light, etc..)
I *DO* find my driving is worse when i'm talking to someone in the car, because this is not a common practice. Talking to someone on the Cell Phone, i'm typically more paranoid about my driving, over compensating even for my distractedness by ensuring to leave enough room at all times to react.
I think Most people who are distracted drives don't drive defensively (or offensively).
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I *DO* find my driving is worse when i'm talking to someone in the car, because this is not a common practice. Talking to someone on the Cell Phone, i'm typically more paranoid about my driving, over compensating even for my distractedness by ensuring to leave enough room at all times to react.
I think Most people who are distracted drives don't drive defensively (or offensively).
Honestly, the biggest problem with distracted drivers--and the way you describe yourself--is that they are so erratic! one minute they could be slowing down for no apparent reason, and then when attention ("paranoia" as you call it) snaps back, they speed up to the speed limit again, driving well once more. OR vice versa. Or they start floating over the middle line, only to jerk back, etc. It's the unpredictability of their actions that is the biggest problem for other drivers. You see this kind of behavio
Oversimplifying a complicated optimization space (Score:2)
I started to write a post on a similar topic and my draft was blown away by browser lossage, so I'm glad someone made this point in the interim.
This is probably a complicated optimization space involving multiple variables, of which this research only explores one, and one should be wary of premature conclusions because they will likely lead to overly political effects ... like someone claiming we would be safer if we all ro
Even just talking to a passenger? (Score:3, Informative)
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Well that answers the Atlanta question.... (Score:4, Funny)
Its must be like a domino effect, one person gets distracted via cell phone and a few others get distracted by the stupid pointless slowdown of the first on a cell phone, so they call traffic advisory... etc... or someone pulls off to the side of the road and causes the same domino effect. And then there are the instigators who have a bumper sticker that reads "I slow for tailgaters"
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In rush hour traffic, the worst thing that can happen is traffic halts entirely at any point. That halting means everyone has to slow down, the gaps between cars shrink to inches, and accelerating out of that will ripple, -slowly- down the road.
If you're being tailgated, not slowing down is a safety risk that can also put traff
Listening to audio books. (Score:5, Interesting)
So I certainly agree with TFA that we can't multitask listening to speech and driving. But I think they are 100% wrong to assume that the driving (being the "newer" skill) is the thing that suffers. To the contrary - I think we're sufficiently adaptable to drop out the least important task.
That may be different with live humans (eg a passenger or cellphone) - but for audio books, TFA is clearly wrong.
Driving is just dangerous in general (Score:3, Insightful)
Give it about 10 years.
Solution (Score:3, Funny)
Baby cars!
The future will make driving safer ... (Score:2)
Assuming that in the near future most people will not ever get a grip on a 'native language', their driving capability will not be impeded by their 'ingrained' language skills.
CC.
Even worse .... (Score:2)
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.
And yet... (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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The one on-road accident I've been in over my ten years of solo driving (not counting being bumper-dinged in parking lots) was caused by a teenager with five of his best buddies shoehorned into a Ford Escort (!), blaring the radio while eating Mickey D's while yakking on the cell phone. He pulled out of a subdivision at 35 MPH, swerved across two lanes of rush-hour
Highway hypnosis is even more dangerous (Score:5, Informative)
However, the OPPOSITE is true for driving long distances on relatively empty freeways in rural areas. Take, for example, the 600 mile stretch from El Paso, TX to San Antonio, TX which consists of an abundance of two things: diddly and squat. If drivers on this stretch has no other stimulus, they are in danger of entering the highly dangerous state of hypnotic disassociation (sometimes calls highway hypnosis or white line fever), where the conscious brain practically shuts down and you go into auto-pilot -- completely unable to react to anything quickly. If something does happen suddenly, the driver "snaps out" and is disoriented for a second. Usually by that point, its already far too late.
Keeping your mind alert through talking to a passenger or listening to heavy metal on the radio actually helps prevent this condition.
It's OK for me to multitask (Score:2)
The solution is obvious... (Score:2)
The answer is simple. We should teach people to drive at a much younger age, at the same time they learn to talk and walk, for instance.
not so, otherwise you'd couldn't talk and walk (Score:2)
clearly, once you've learned to to do anything physical, you shouldn't be over-focusing on what you are physically doing. The real zone is where the physical act happens faster than when you can think about it; just ask any martial artist or race car driver!
"Don't just think your faster, know you're faster!" ~ Morpheus
Modern Phrenology (Score:2)
Second, people do distracting things while driving. This was the case before cell phones, and this will be the case if cell phones where banned in cars. The whole cell phone in cars is simply a place where the neo-luddites feel they have found a chink in the armor of the evil tech using populace. If this where not the case, we would
Training required to deal with distractions (Score:3, Interesting)
Pilots manage a vehicle in 3 dimensions, with no marked paths or lanes. Their aircraft will fall out of the sky if speed is not managed. At the same time they need to make constant radio calls to inform tower, controller or circuit traffic of their position, and follow instructions or rules on where they should be. The difference is that they are trained to manage all the tasks much more thoroughly than drivers are. They're not taught to occassionally glance at their instruments the way a driver is. They're taught to scan them constantly. They're not taught nothing about how to communicate with the tower - they're taught to aviate, navigate and communicate prioritizing in that order.
What we need is to train drivers to handle the distraction. Want to see if the distraction is going to make them worse. Well first give them some experience dealing with the distraction and give them some guidelines on how to deal with it so they can practice. Only then should they be tested on how safe they are.
This idea that we can somehow eliminate all distractions and make driving safer and that we should all feel guilty otherwise is nonsense. In the real world, distractions will happen. Kids will fight in the back seat. (correctly dealt with by either pulling over or ignoring them). The radio, conversations, and books on tape are distractions that we need to teach drivers to deal with (it should be part of the practical driving exam). Other distractions are unacceptablet because they take full concentration and should be banned. Anything that takes your eyes off the road for more than a second would fall under this category. So changing a radio station should still be permitted but watching a dvd or texting should not.
The trouble is in this risk adverse society common sense has been thrown out the window and has been replace with scaremongering and guilt. Moronic!
Re:Training required to deal with distractions (Score:4, Interesting)
Think about driving on the highway. You're driving along at 75MPH at a minimal safe distance from the guy in front of you. He slams on his brakes. You have at best perhaps three or four seconds to slam on yours, and that's assuming that your minimal safe distance is larger than is typical and that your braking system is at least as powerful as his. There are many other situations when driving a car where you only have a second or two to react. A small twitch of the steering wheel can send your car straight into a concrete pillar.
Flying, on the other hand, is much slower and more cerebral. There are very few events which require immediate reactions. An engine failure on takeoff comes to mind, and other major mechanical failures, as well as suddenly spotting someone nearby on a collision course. But these are all extremely rare events. For most of the trip on most flights, nothing happens which the pilot can't stop and think about for ten seconds first. For the phases of the flight which are really critical in this respect, such as takeoff and landing, the FAA enforces a sterile cockpit rule which basically says that all non-essential communications should be avoided, precisely because of this problem.
Ultimately I don't think pilots deal with this particularly better than drivers do. It's just that if a pilot is distracted for five seconds it basically never matters, whereas a driver being distracted for five seconds is likely to kill a whole bunch of people.
One thing that pilots do better and are trained to do better is to actively eliminate distractions. If you ever fly in a small plane, try asking the pilot a bunch of inane questions during some important task, such as landing. If he's any good, he'll tell you to be quiet and ask him again on the ground. If this attitude carries over to driving then he will be a safer driver, not because he can deal with distractions but because he can prioritize and is willing to stop them when he's in a position where he can't deal with them.
And yes, I am a pilot. One of the things I love about flying is how it doesn't demand that twitchy reflexive on-top-of-my-game attitude that safe driving requires.
Re:Dear Slashdot readers (Score:4, Funny)
Or maybe you can tell her off yourself [platewire.com].
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
We love that one.
Did you hear the one about the sociopath who got cutoff by a soccermom on a cell phone? Yeah, seems he followed her home, waited outside her house until night, broke in and... well, I'm sure you can image the rest of the story. Goes without saying that duct tape, a baseball bat, and a few pairs of women underwear were involved.
Gruesome mess. Just awful.
When the cops finally arrived, the poor git - dressed in women's panties and covered in blood - was screaming "Can you hear me now, bitch?! Honk-honk!"
Re: (Score:2)
Ha! Methinks the lady doth protest too much.