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RE: more on more on Silliness in Action: California Poised for Cell Phone Ban
From: "Lin, Herb" <HLin () nas edu>
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2006 11:11:39 -0400
There's also an American study on this subject http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/WickensChapterFinal.pdf#se arch=%22frank%20drews%22 and a news article referencing the authors' work http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060630/NEWS07/60630045 3/1009 For me, the relevant question is "how does talking on a cell phone, either hands-free or hand-held, compare to a conversation with your front seat driving companion?" I talked with one of the authors, who said they've done some preliminary investigation on this question, and still find that cell phone usage - handsfree - is worse for safety than the in-person chat. Their postulated mechanism is that the *passenger* shares the local context with the driver and thus moderates his/her own conversation to adjust for critical times in driving, whereas the cellphone partner lacks the context. I don't know if this work has been published yet. herb -----Original Message----- From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net] Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 10:29 AM To: ip () v2 listbox com Subject: [IP] more on more on Silliness in Action: California Poised for Cell Phone Ban Begin forwarded message: From: patrick thibodeau <smoke_dc () yahoo com> Date: August 27, 2006 10:26:41 AM EDT To: dave () farber net Subject: Re: [IP] Silliness in Action: California Poised for Cell Phone Ban I'd love to see links to the science supporting this contention that the California's proposed cell phone restriction is silly. Connecticut adopted a similar law Oct. 1. A widely quoted British study summarized by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety seems to offer conditional support to the contention that hands-free will make little difference. http://www.iihs.org/news/2005/iihs_news_071205.pdf
Hands-free versus hand-held: The results suggest that
banning hand-held phone use won't necessarily enhance safety if drivers simply switch to hands-free phones. Injury crash risk didn't differ from one type of reported phone use to the other. "This isn't intuitive. You'd think using a hands-free phone would be less distracting, so it wouldn't increase crash risk as much as using a hand-held phone. But we found that either phone type increased the risk," McCartt says. "This could be because the so-called hands-free phones that are in common use today aren't really hands-free. We didn't have sufficient data to compare the different types of hands-free phones, such as those that are fully voice activated."< Maybe a restrictive law is needed: either ban cell phone use or stipulate the type of hands-free use that is acceptable. Perhaps the automotive industry, working with cell phone makers, can integrate hands free, voice activated systems into dashboards that not only allow users to answer calls by voice command but can read email as well. How difficult would it be to have users answer a call by flicking a dashboard switch? If the California law is silly, then what should be done to reduce cell phone related death and injury? Patrick Thibodeau Washington DC --- David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:
Begin forwarded message: From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com> Date: August 26, 2006 11:15:52 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Cc: lauren () vortex com Subject: Silliness in Action: California Poised for Cell Phone Ban Dave, As you know, I frequently speak out against what I view as silly laws that fly in the face of logic, science, or just plainly observable facts. In yet another proof that reality and politics often don't mix, lawmakers here in California are poised (after many years refusing to go along with the bill's main sponsor) to approve a ban on handheld cell phones when driving. This may happen as soon as next week. You can count on Arnold, desperate for popular actions he can take so close to election day, to sign the bill. All of us have been annoyed by the gabbing cell phone user who seems to be driving oblivious to everything around them. So without a doubt this law will have wide appeal. And if experience in other states holds, the law will have little or no long-term positive safety effects, and handheld cell phone use will quickly rise back to pre-law levels after a brief initial reduction. The reasons are obvious. Study after study shows that distracted driving of *any kind* is a key factor in accidents. While someone holding a cell phone clamped to their ear is easy to spot, we're less aware of the radio manipulators, people screaming at their children in the back seat, makeup applicators, food eaters, and any of a myriad number of other distracted drivers. In fact, studies have shown that the most common distractions leading to accidents when driving are other people inside the vehicle or things seen outside the vehicle. Even worse, research shows quite clearly that talking on hands-free cell phones (still permitted under the bill) is equally distracting as using a handheld device. It's the remote conversation itself that is the real distraction, not the act of holding the cell phone -- plus there's all the situations where people fumble around to answer or dial a call even on a hands-free cell phone. When proponents of this legislation are presented with these inconvenient facts, they tend to reply with, "Oh well, at least we're doing something..." "Something" isn't good enough when it's based on bad science. If you really want to remove cell phones as a distraction, you need to ban them totally when driving -- handheld or hands-free, as has been done in some other countries. I'm not advocating this, nor do I think that politicians here have the guts for such actions anyway. In fact, banning children from cars might be far more effective in terms of reducing accidents, however unlikely the prospect. To a certain extent this law will be a paper tiger. Major California cities don't have enough police to deal with serious crime, much less pulling over people for illegal cell phone use. And the bill's penalties -- $20 for first offense, $50 for subsequent, will hardly be seen as an onerous burden by most drivers in an era of $3+ gasoline. But this law itself is still primarily pandering to voters in a manner that flies in the face of science. Perhaps laws officially recognizing astrology will be next here in the Golden State. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein lauren () vortex com or lauren () pfir org Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 http://www.pfir.org/lauren Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org Co-Founder, IOIC - International Open Internet Coalition - http://www.ioic.net Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as smoke_dc () yahoo com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at:
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- RE: more on more on Silliness in Action: California Poised for Cell Phone Ban Lin, Herb (Aug 27)