There's a big misconception about mobile phones and driving, and it's putting us at risk
There's a big misconception about mobile phones and driving, and it's putting us at risk
A road toll rise in parts of Australia has experts worried that we are going backwards on road safety.
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Mr White says part of the problem is there are still many public misunderstandings around phones and driving.
"A good example is the view that if you're using a hands-free phone — if you've got it in a cradle — then that's taking the risk away. And that's not true," he says.
"There's plenty of scientific evidence that says the level of distraction, using a phone hands-free or hand-held, is exactly the same. It doesn't change."
But one of these is legal and the other is not, why is that?
Big Hands Free doesn’t like it when you ask questions.
The level of distraction is one thing, but the level of dexterity is different. It's a lot easier to drive straight looking at a phone (or even interacting with one) that's in a cradle.
How would you police it? Can't know if someone is using their device if they're not holding it, they could be singing to the radio or talking to themselves.
Wait, so with that mindset, it's talking to your passenger an ever greater risk, as you might glance over at them while talking? I mean hands free phone seems like less of a distraction than a passenger, no?
I know intuitively this seems logical but research seems to suggest using hands-free devices while driving can actually be more distracting than talking to a passenger. The main reason is that you don't have the same visual and verbal interaction with the phone, which can lead to cognitive distraction. Cognitive distraction is when your mind isn't fully focused on the road, even if your eyes are on the road and your hands are on the wheel. A study from the University of Utah found that it takes up to 27 seconds to regain full attention after issuing voice commands to a hands-free device. The study also showed that using hands-free voice commands to dial phone numbers, call contacts, change music, and send texts with personal assistants like Microsoft Cortana, Apple Siri, and Google Now can be highly distracting.
Another study by the National Safety Council found that handheld and hands-free cell phone use causes similar levels of impairment in driving performance. Drivers using hands-free phones tend to "look at" but not "see" objects, experiencing inattention blindness, which is similar to tunnel vision. This can lead to drivers missing important visual cues critical to safety and navigation.
On the other hand, when you're talking to a passenger, you have the advantage of visual and verbal interaction, which can help maintain your attention on the road. Passengers can also adjust their conversation based on the driving situation, whereas a hands-free device can't.
So yeah, hands-free devices can be more distracting than talking to a passenger because of the lack of visual and verbal interaction and the cognitive distraction they cause.
University of Utah study on hands-free devices and cognitive distraction: Strayer, D. L., Cooper, J. M., Turrill, J., Coleman, J., Medeiros-Ward, N., & Biondi, F. (2015). Measuring Cognitive Distraction in the Automobile. AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
National Safety Council study on handheld and hands-free cell phone use: National Safety Council. (2010). Understanding the Distracted Brain: Why Driving While Using Hands-Free Cell Phones is Risky Behavior.
The seatbelt people can kill themselves off, nothing to worry about there. Mobile phones definitely continue to be a big concern though. The number of people who are suspiciously glancing down at their lap every few seconds out on the road is pretty crazy.
I disagree with the first part of this take for a few reasons. Aside from not wanting people to die unnecessary, not wearing seat belts increases the chance of injury. If you're injured in a car accident, someone is probably going to call an ambulance. There are only so many of those to go around so not wearing a seatbelt does impact others as well. That said we already have laws around that so not much more we can do.
I can’t believe the amount of people who are arguing over this.
If you are in control of 1.5 tonnes of something travelling at 60km/h you should;
- concentrate on what you are doing, exclusively!
- not get into physical argument with someone else in control of 1.5 tonnes of something.
If you are emotionally unable to leave your fucking phone alone, you shouldn’t be fucking driving!
For sure, but also phone have been deliberately engineered on the hardware and software level to be as addicting and habit forming as possible.
From attention grabbing chimes (not insane, you want to know when you're messaged normally) to notification spam to superstimuli applications. We need to shift some responsibility on manufacturers for exploiting holes in human psychology.
Anti litter campaigns get you so far, putting bins everywhere gets you further. Work safety videos get you so far, lock out tag out systems take you further
The specific use of phones is barely discussed but worth doing so.
For example talking on a phone, or even in a car, is highly distracting and delays reactions. Passengers are generally more sensitive to context and weirdly somehow less distracting than phones. So that's something important to consider.
Listening to the radio is slightly distracting, and likewise listening to the radio played through the phone with notifications off. Doing this is probably fine and we should design roads and cars around the idea that people will listen to music, or sing, or whatever.
Fiddling with the radio is extremely dangerous, I'm sure we've all been rear ended or nearly so by someone doing it, and probably had a couple of "oops shouldn't have done that" moments ourselves. Likewise fiddling with phones.
The idea of banning all phone usage is a non starter, but we can probably introduce regulations like phones disabling certain features while cars are in motion but leaving them as useful for navigation and music etc.
phones disabling certain features while cars are in motion
A non-starter, unless it's an option made available to the user in the way that "car mode" already is. You can't just have it be automatic, because not everyone in a car is driving (even if the vast majority are). And if you were going purely on speed, you'd end up catching bus and train users too, which are almost entirely not driving.
Mmm you can definitely do stuff with pairing to a car disabling notifications etc.
if you want to send a text unpair as a passenger.
Shaping behaviour isn't about being flawless, it's about raising the barriers to antisocial behaviour.
The fact of the matter is that if we want to use heavy machinery we need to be willing to accept some restrictions for safety. you can't wear thongs in a machine shop and maybe you can't browse the web with your phone paired to the car.
introduce regulations like phones disabling certain features while cars are in motion but leaving them as useful for navigation and music etc.
my phone spotify goes into 'car mode' when driving, which is even more of a distraction to me, where the usual app i can operate almost in my sleep, the different layout means it takes me more concentration how to figure out how to change songs or whatever, despite all the icons being bigger and technically 'easier' to use.
not that im encouraging using it at all when in the car, im guilty and im sure a lot of people are too, but theres an example where the attempt to make something safer in my case actually made it more dangerous
sure, and people have made braking assist programs that are hypersensitive and get disabled.
Exactly because people going it alone make arse decisions is why guidlines and regulations would be a good thing to have.
It's a real show of how much road safety discussion is fixated on lowering speed limits when you've just talked about how significant numbers of people are now not wearing seatbelts and the topic you move straight into is decreasing speed limits and driving more slowly instead of how to increase the number of people wearing seatbelts...
We should start by having all learner drivers go through proper driving school taught by proper licensed instructors. Allowing a family member do the teaching just invites bad / dangerous habits to be taught / learned.
"road toll remains flat"
Fails to account for increasing population
The solution is not to chide people. Their behaviour is not gonna change. The solution is to urban plan the need for car use away for most people. Less urban sprawl. More urban centers. More medium-density housing. Better public transport. You name it.
In Victoria I’d be amazed if the terrible state of our road surfaces aren’t a contributing factor, particularly regionally. There’s a backlog of work that runs back before COVID because of changes to road maintenance funding and staffing.
The other grim factor is that with our mental health crisis, cost of living pressures etc. not all single vehicle accidents without seatbelts will be accidental.
There's also been a lot of substandard materials used by DoT contractors post Covid, which means that the project supervisors also really have to keep an eye on things as well
However all the good regional supervisors at the DoT have gone into consultancy, leaving their regional offices staffed with a lot of graduates.
I'm also going to say that intersection design is also a bigger factor than road surfaces. Especially as a now banned optical illusion causing intersection style is still rife across the regions. Drivers on the side road think that the intersection is a roundabout. But in fact they need to yield to the main road.
The Chiltern quadruple fatality was caused at one such intersection, and it's quite easy to see how the intersection can be perceived as a roundabout.
We're not gonna have the resources to replace every intersection. However it's almost negligent leaving that style of intersection on the main alternative route into Chiltern.
Damn. It looks really scary. 100% looks like roundabout, I would yeld to "give way" but it cost me some moment to realise that I need to yeld for any car.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
They would take hours to clean and suture," says Dr Crozier, who is a former head of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons' National Trauma Committee.
But a coalition of different parties was pushing for change — including many in the medical profession, like trauma surgeons who were witnessing the devastation firsthand.
"There were get-out clauses," says Mark King, an adjunct professor at QUT's Centre for Road Safety and Accident Research.
Terry Slevin, the CEO of the Public Health Association of Australia, says pubs and clubs argued random breath testing was "anti-business".
In 1982, for example, the NSW Australian Hotels Association president Barry McInerney called random breath testing "an imposition on the working class".
David Cliff, a former police officer and CEO of the Global Road Safety Partnership, says while it's not always popular, cutting speed limits has the ability to save lives in both regional and metropolitan Australia.
The original article contains 1,220 words, the summary contains 149 words. Saved 88%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Clickbait, no new info here. Driving the old "reduce speed limits" rhetoric again. As cars get safer speeds should be going up, especially on long roads where fatigue is the biggest cause of crashes
As cars get safer speeds should be going up
Unfortunately, cars are getting less safe, not safer.
For other road users, anyway.