I carpool to work most days with a coworker who has similarly chosen to remove 2.5 hours from each of his weekdays for the privilege of not having to live in the pathetic town where we work. He and I regularly save the world during these not-short commutes, with the talk frequently becoming quite animated and occasionally heated. We are polite occupiers of opposite ends of the political spectrum, and sometimes if I’m getting sleepy I’ll contend something outrageous, like the fact that I think the president is doing a great job, simply to stimulate an argument with him that will wake me up.
On days when he’s not in the car, I’ll frequently call my mom using Voice Dial, hold the phone to my ear, and chat with her to while the time away.
Somedays when neither of the above occurs, I’ll pop an audiobook into my tape player and listen to a human voice read me a fascinating story.
My question is, are these activities markedly different? Is an animated conversation with a passenger different from a telephone conversation different from listening to an audiobook?
Popular in the media right now is raising the question of whether cell phone use while driving should become illegal. I’m fine with looking at that question, but whenever I hear the statistics they always compare a driver’s perform while UICP (Under the Influence of a Cell Phone, ha ha!) to a driver totally focused on the road. My contention is that this is not a true comparison. Drivers are almost never totally focused on the road, unless adverse conditions compel total focus (snow, heavy traffic.) We eat, we listen to music, we change the CD, we daydream. How many times have you gotten home after a familiar drive and not been able to remember the route at all?
Now, if we’re to discover that there is no difference, that animated conversation, audiobook listening, eating a cheeseburger, changing the radio station, making googly eyes at your baby in the rearview mirror, or talking on a cell phone are all similarly distracting, there still may be a compelling argument for making cell phone use while driving illegal. I’d be interested in road accident statistics since the rise of cell phone use, controlled for the growing safety features in cars. It may be that though all of these activities are equally distracting, cell phone use and conversations with passengers are the two that distract for the longest periods of time, and therefore the rise in popularity of cell phones has led to a rise in accidents because it added large chunks of Distraction Time. You can’t outlaw talking to your passengers, but it may be worth the loss in convenience to remove the distraction of cell phone use.
The reason I find this especially interesting now is because of this new study that says that hands-free is just as distracting as holding the phone to your ear. The problem, therefore, is not with removing your hands from the good old 10 and 2 spots on the wheel – the problem is the conversation itself. I find very little difference between talking to a person you don’t look at on the phone, and talking to a person you don’t look at sitting next to you.
Anyone else see this? Anyone else think it’s a good idea to examine this, or is it missing the point?
i like my Bluetooth…it is handy…but you are right…it isn\’t much different for the focusing part of it…you are still either paying attention to the road or not…~*:.♥.:*~ because you shared a smile :o) someone\’s day got brighter… ~*:.♥.:*~
I actually participated in a study during college on this very topic. They had a headset strapped to our, well, heads, a pedal pad with two pedals, and a steering wheel. If this set-up is what they are using globally to gather these statistics, they are crap. I got dinged for hitting a person while talking on the cell phone. The "computer generated child" walked THROUGH the "computer generated parked car" and the break pedal did not work. Additionally, the "conversations" we were having on the phone conversations included requests for us to figure math problems, something I cannot do without a calculator anyway. We were not permitted to say "hold on a minute I have to merge" or "traffic is rediculous I\’ll call you right back". I too would be interested in real life, day-to-day stats instead of these manufactured imitations. The problem there is. . .how do you determine if the individual had activated the cell phone for a call, a text, to check e-mail, etc. etc. I can see where the difference in passenger conversations lie. The passenger is in the car, they have access to view the roads right along with you, can call attention to soemthing walking or pulling out in front if the driver has turned his/her head to drive home a point. It\’s not a huge advantage, and not saying that one set of eyes would always be one the road ahead, but that is the general argument. A cell phone conversationalist cannot see the traffic on the other side of their conversation, thus badgering someone who is trying to shift lanes.One would hope that other drivers would be responsible like us 🙂 and terminate a call, or through the phone down for a sec when things get too sticky to continue talking. However, if our jobs tell us anything, people are not like us.How\’s that for a comment sista!
1) Sorry for the craptastic spelling in that last comment. 2) I forgot to mention that the computer graphics on the program they had me set up in front of were terrible. They were very 80\’s computer game. Boxes straight lines. I made the comment on my post-study evaluation that we could probably get more accurate information from Need for Speed!