March 13, 2006
Face-to-face & cellphone same for driving?
We all know that talking on a hand-held cellphone while driving is dangerous (OK, except for that guy in the SUV that cut you off this morning). Cognitive Daily has nice summaries of a couple recent studies suggesting that talking on hands-free cellphones while driving is also dangerous due to the higher cognitive load, and furthermore that talking to a passenger sitting in the car may be no better.
Posted by bug to Mind and Brain at March 13, 2006 5:18 PM | TrackBackTranslation: driving while distracted is bad. Duh!
Posted by: judith_s at March 15, 2006 6:36 AMYeah. Obviously driving in a state of total alert, completely focused on the task of driving and ready to instantly assess and react to any change, is safer than paying less attention to the road while you drive.
It also SUCKS, which is why people don't do it.
This strikes me as one of those situations where people tend to get stupid in pursuit of an impossible state of risklessness. If you're in a moving car, you are in danger, period. We have to do a complicated balancing act to trade off increased hazard for increased comfort and convenience in automobile travel. We already do it for a thousand other things; cellphones don't strike me as being any different in principle.
I think the core of the problem is that our generic sense of phone etiquette is tuned to a stationary piece of home machinery used for significant communications (because that's how it started out), and most people haven't yet figured out that they need to adjust their use patterns for different contexts...
(Though, it would be nice if we could get some technological assistance -- instead of just ringing, what phones ought to do is something like immediately connect you to a system that negotiates whether both parties are available for and interested in a synchronous conversation at that moment, or whether somebody needs to wait a minute or go to voicemail or whatever.)
Posted by: dr_tectonic at March 15, 2006 6:36 AMI've been waiting for someone to do that study for years. Thanks!
Posted by: dpolicar at March 15, 2006 6:37 AMPeople have often commented on how fierce I am about this. I figured out a long time ago that serious converstation require pulling over. If I'm at the wheel I know my driving suffers so I won't do it, or at least try to avoid it.
Posted by: japlady at March 15, 2006 6:37 AMWell, isn't this a bit over the top? I mean, driving is usually a no-brainer activity: follow the car in front of you for minutes at a time.
It can be a bit distracting, for example, when the conversation consists of your boss telling you are fired because he is marrying your girlfriend and it would be 'awkward'. Still, if you don't have to hold the handset while digesting this, you should be up to make a critical decision in less than .75 seconds, right?
Posted by: Charles at March 15, 2006 11:39 AMhttp://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2006/03/sleep_drug_causes_s.html
After all, can't we drive while asleep?