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New Zealand too. If you want to make calls while driving, you have to have a hands-free system. It baffles my mind that there are countries in which people can

New Zealand too. If you want to make calls while driving, you have to have a hands-free system. It baffles my mind that there are countries in which people can legally interact with their phone while driving.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
I'm surprised people are allowed to use their phones at all; there is a study showing talking on a hands free causes the same attention impairment level as someone under the influence of alcohol.
- miaumiau2 10y ago
  So you are saying, talking to a passenger "causes the same attention impairment level as someone under the influence of alcohol."? For sure there is a distraction, but it is definitely not on the level you described.
  - tajen 10y ago
    Mythbusters tested it! http://news.stanford.edu/thedish/2015/08/21/mythbusters-tests-the-myth-of-hands-free-driving-at-stanfords-automotive-facility/ http://news.stanford.edu/thedish/2015/08/21/mythbusters-test... and https://youtu.be/t8LuM92Twm8?t=210 https://youtu.be/t8LuM92Twm8?t=210 (see the conclusion at 3:28). Result: Driving drunk, with a cellphone or with a hands-free phone were all equally dangerous. I'm as surprised as you must be. They didn't test talking to a passenger, but I'm of the opinion that laws don't forbid what is de-facto considered as normal by most people. Besides, talking to a passenger isn't verifiable. Last thing, I sure remember unfolding my map over the wheel on the highways, so despite what the police says about vocal GPS apps, they're still 100% better for me.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - tbrownaw 10y ago
      Result: Driving drunk, with a cellphone or with a hands-free phone were all equally dangerous. Also driving while short on sleep. IIRC it's something like ~20 hours awake approximately matches .08 BAC, not sure offhand how chronic sleep deprivation (like most adults have) factors in. (My conclusion from all this is that alcohol should not be treated as a special case: if you can't drive safely, proving that it must be for some other reason shouldn't get you out of trouble.)
      - hvidgaard 10y ago
        In Denmark you can legally drive with under 0.05 BAC. If you're involved in any accidents, you automatically get some blame, even if you wouldn't had you had 0 BAC. It's equvivalent to saying: "You can drive home if you've had one beer, but you ought to drive cautiously".
  - ddeck 10y ago
    >So you are saying, talking to a passenger "causes the same attention impairment level as someone under the influence of alcohol."? That is not what they said at all. They are correct in pointing out that there is a great deal of evidence that conversing on a cell phone (even hands free) while driving is as dangerous as being intoxicated while driving. There have also been studies that investigated why talking hands free on a cell phone is more dangerous than conversing with a passenger. For example: From "Passenger and cell phone conversations in simulated driving" [1]: "The results show that the number of driving errors was highest in the cell phone condition; in passenger conversations more references were made to traffic, and the production rate of the driver and the complexity of speech of both interlocutors dropped in response to an increase in the demand of the traffic. The results indicate that passenger conversations differ from cell phone conversations because the surrounding traffic not only becomes a topic of the conversation, helping driver and passenger to share situation awareness, but the driving condition also has a direct influence on the complexity of the conversation, thereby mitigating the potential negative effects of a conversation on driving." [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19102621 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19102621
    - miaumiau2 10y ago
      Interesting and valid point, thanks for providing the link!
    - flukus 10y ago
      I wonder how it'd work out with talking to or screaming at kids, who have no awareness of what's going on.
    - Freak_NL 10y ago
      Exactly. With a passenger you share the same locality and when traffic gets tricky, the passenger tends to focus on the situation at hand as well and won't expect immediate responses. With a remote conversation the other side is completely unaware of your local situation; the conversation takes places in some sort of blank virtual shared reality where only the participants and their conversation topic reside — your brain ends up needing to be in two places at once. We're just not very good at that.
- JauntyHatAngle 10y ago
  We should also ban people talking to their passengers.
  - tzs 10y ago
    Talking to passengers is not the same as talking to someone on a phone when it comes to distraction, because passengers are in the car with you. The conversation with a passenger adjusts to take into account driving conditions.
  - Glide 10y ago
    I remember there were recommendations for new teen drivers to not have passengers.
    - nommm-nommm 10y ago
      Not only recommendations but actual laws banning teen drivers from having some number of passengers under 21 or some such.
  - scelerat 10y ago
    We do, for professional drivers. Next time you're on a bus, look around; there's usually a sign saying something like "please don't make conversation with the driver." This isn't because municipalities want their drivers to be lonely! It is because carrying on a conversation while driving is distracting.
- closeparen 10y ago
  I'd be interested to see the impairment caused by looking at a paper map :). I'll be very surprised if it's less than Google Maps.
- dsfyu404ed 10y ago
  I'm sure studies funded by the tobacco companies in the 1960s had equally believable outcomes.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
s_q_b 10y ago
In many states it's illegal to interact with your phone while driving, but there's no technological enforcement mechanism, or federal law.
galago 10y ago
I commute partially on foot in Massachusetts, and it can be terrifying to see people making turns with the phone held up to the side of their face.
- GrinningFool 10y ago
  Far more terrifying are the ones you can't see doing it due to handsfree. Even better is what I'm increasingly seeing in states that have made texting/hands-on phone use illegal. Of course people still do it - except now they hold the phone down low so they don't get caught. Of course, that means that they can't keep the road in line of sight for however long it takes to finish their business. Best of all [1]: in cases where this leads to an accident, phones are hidden more quickly than they were since usage is against the law - which means phone usage will get underreported in accidents. That'll create a nice echo effect where it looks like the law is helping. The apparent number of phone-related accidents will drop - while total incidents will remain the same or increase. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4001674/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4001674/ - or so some of the numbers here can be interpreted. As the authors repeatedly point out, though - there are so many variables that it's difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions.
tzs 10y ago
Hands free doesn't really offer an advantage over hands on as far as distractions go: https://www.distraction.gov/downloads/pdfs/the-impact-of-hand-held-and-hands-free-cell-phone-use-on-driving-performance-and-safety-critical-event-risk.pdf https://www.distraction.gov/downloads/pdfs/the-impact-of-han... http://www.nsc.org/DistractedDrivingDocuments/Cognitive-Distraction-White-Paper.pdf http://www.nsc.org/DistractedDrivingDocuments/Cognitive-Dist... http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36475180 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36475180 http://www.nsc.org/learn/NSC-Initiatives/Pages/distracted-driving-hands-free-is-not-risk-free-infographic.aspx http://www.nsc.org/learn/NSC-Initiatives/Pages/distracted-dr...

toomuchtodo 10y ago

I'm surprised people are allowed to use their phones at all; there is a study showing talking on a hands free causes the same attention impairment level as someone under the influence of alcohol.

miaumiau2 10y ago
So you are saying, talking to a passenger "causes the same attention impairment level as someone under the influence of alcohol."? For sure there is a distraction, but it is definitely not on the level you described.
- tajen 10y ago
  Mythbusters tested it! http://news.stanford.edu/thedish/2015/08/21/mythbusters-tests-the-myth-of-hands-free-driving-at-stanfords-automotive-facility/ http://news.stanford.edu/thedish/2015/08/21/mythbusters-test... and https://youtu.be/t8LuM92Twm8?t=210 https://youtu.be/t8LuM92Twm8?t=210 (see the conclusion at 3:28). Result: Driving drunk, with a cellphone or with a hands-free phone were all equally dangerous. I'm as surprised as you must be. They didn't test talking to a passenger, but I'm of the opinion that laws don't forbid what is de-facto considered as normal by most people. Besides, talking to a passenger isn't verifiable. Last thing, I sure remember unfolding my map over the wheel on the highways, so despite what the police says about vocal GPS apps, they're still 100% better for me.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - tbrownaw 10y ago
    Result: Driving drunk, with a cellphone or with a hands-free phone were all equally dangerous. Also driving while short on sleep. IIRC it's something like ~20 hours awake approximately matches .08 BAC, not sure offhand how chronic sleep deprivation (like most adults have) factors in. (My conclusion from all this is that alcohol should not be treated as a special case: if you can't drive safely, proving that it must be for some other reason shouldn't get you out of trouble.)
    - hvidgaard 10y ago
      In Denmark you can legally drive with under 0.05 BAC. If you're involved in any accidents, you automatically get some blame, even if you wouldn't had you had 0 BAC. It's equvivalent to saying: "You can drive home if you've had one beer, but you ought to drive cautiously".
- ddeck 10y ago
  >So you are saying, talking to a passenger "causes the same attention impairment level as someone under the influence of alcohol."? That is not what they said at all. They are correct in pointing out that there is a great deal of evidence that conversing on a cell phone (even hands free) while driving is as dangerous as being intoxicated while driving. There have also been studies that investigated why talking hands free on a cell phone is more dangerous than conversing with a passenger. For example: From "Passenger and cell phone conversations in simulated driving" [1]: "The results show that the number of driving errors was highest in the cell phone condition; in passenger conversations more references were made to traffic, and the production rate of the driver and the complexity of speech of both interlocutors dropped in response to an increase in the demand of the traffic. The results indicate that passenger conversations differ from cell phone conversations because the surrounding traffic not only becomes a topic of the conversation, helping driver and passenger to share situation awareness, but the driving condition also has a direct influence on the complexity of the conversation, thereby mitigating the potential negative effects of a conversation on driving." [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19102621 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19102621
  - miaumiau2 10y ago
    Interesting and valid point, thanks for providing the link!
  - flukus 10y ago
    I wonder how it'd work out with talking to or screaming at kids, who have no awareness of what's going on.
  - Freak_NL 10y ago
    Exactly. With a passenger you share the same locality and when traffic gets tricky, the passenger tends to focus on the situation at hand as well and won't expect immediate responses. With a remote conversation the other side is completely unaware of your local situation; the conversation takes places in some sort of blank virtual shared reality where only the participants and their conversation topic reside — your brain ends up needing to be in two places at once. We're just not very good at that.
JauntyHatAngle 10y ago
We should also ban people talking to their passengers.
- tzs 10y ago
  Talking to passengers is not the same as talking to someone on a phone when it comes to distraction, because passengers are in the car with you. The conversation with a passenger adjusts to take into account driving conditions.
- Glide 10y ago
  I remember there were recommendations for new teen drivers to not have passengers.
  - nommm-nommm 10y ago
    Not only recommendations but actual laws banning teen drivers from having some number of passengers under 21 or some such.
- scelerat 10y ago
  We do, for professional drivers. Next time you're on a bus, look around; there's usually a sign saying something like "please don't make conversation with the driver." This isn't because municipalities want their drivers to be lonely! It is because carrying on a conversation while driving is distracting.
closeparen 10y ago
I'd be interested to see the impairment caused by looking at a paper map :). I'll be very surprised if it's less than Google Maps.
dsfyu404ed 10y ago
I'm sure studies funded by the tobacco companies in the 1960s had equally believable outcomes.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

s_q_b 10y ago

In many states it's illegal to interact with your phone while driving, but there's no technological enforcement mechanism, or federal law.

galago 10y ago

I commute partially on foot in Massachusetts, and it can be terrifying to see people making turns with the phone held up to the side of their face.

GrinningFool 10y ago
Far more terrifying are the ones you can't see doing it due to handsfree. Even better is what I'm increasingly seeing in states that have made texting/hands-on phone use illegal. Of course people still do it - except now they hold the phone down low so they don't get caught. Of course, that means that they can't keep the road in line of sight for however long it takes to finish their business. Best of all [1]: in cases where this leads to an accident, phones are hidden more quickly than they were since usage is against the law - which means phone usage will get underreported in accidents. That'll create a nice echo effect where it looks like the law is helping. The apparent number of phone-related accidents will drop - while total incidents will remain the same or increase. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4001674/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4001674/ - or so some of the numbers here can be interpreted. As the authors repeatedly point out, though - there are so many variables that it's difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions.

tzs 10y ago

Hands free doesn't really offer an advantage over hands on as far as distractions go: https://www.distraction.gov/downloads/pdfs/the-impact-of-hand-held-and-hands-free-cell-phone-use-on-driving-performance-and-safety-critical-event-risk.pdf https://www.distraction.gov/downloads/pdfs/the-impact-of-han... http://www.nsc.org/DistractedDrivingDocuments/Cognitive-Distraction-White-Paper.pdf http://www.nsc.org/DistractedDrivingDocuments/Cognitive-Dist... http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36475180 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36475180 http://www.nsc.org/learn/NSC-Initiatives/Pages/distracted-driving-hands-free-is-not-risk-free-infographic.aspx http://www.nsc.org/learn/NSC-Initiatives/Pages/distracted-dr...