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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 distract

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.

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.