Cell Phones and Driving

The prevalence of cellular phones, research, and publicized crashes has started many debates related to the role cell phones play in driver distractions. Daniel Simons, a researcher at the University of Illinois, Urbana, says, “I suppose we can tune out a radio. But driving a car while talking on a cell phone or texting is different. They can seem really effortless but they both use your mind's limited attention resources. You can't do it. Your brain can't do it.” As attentional load increases, attentional capacity gradually diminishes. One frustrated psychologist has argued that the case for multitasking is on a par with 'urban legend', that is, it's a story we like the sound of but is really nonsense. ¹

Conversing with a passenger is different in that the passenger is there in the car, knows what is going on, and can even help the driver watch out for traffic hazards. The sudden ringing of the wireless phone is not just unexpected, it's more demanding. Phone calls are interactive and draw the driver's attention more aggressively away from the driving task. ² It isn't abut the phone –which is why hands-free sets won't help you. It's about the mental resources that are available to you at any one time. Frank Drews, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Utah, was part of a study that divided forty students into three teams. The first team operated a driving simulator; the second team drove on the simulator while talking on cell phones. The third team got to operate the simulator after drinking enough orange juice and vodka to take their blood alcohol limit to 0.08 percent, the legal limit for driving in the United States and United Kingdom. Comparing the three teams yielded surprises. The team using cell phones had more rear-end collisions and their braking time was slower. The intoxicated participants exhibited a more aggressive driving style, following the vehicle in front more closely and braking with greater force, but they had no accidents. Conclusion—When driving conditions and time on task were controlled for, the impairments associated with using a cell phone while driving can be as profound as those associated with driving while drunk. You should not take for this that it is better to drive drunk than while using a cell phone. What Drews and his colleagues concluded was that the drivers using cell phones were dangerous because they simply did not have enough attention to devote to their driving. ³ Canadian researchers have also shown that using a cell phone while driving poses the same relative risk as driving with a blood alcohol level at the legal limit. ⁴

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Australian scientists report that people who chat on their cell phones while driving are four times as likely to crash—even if they are using a hands-free system to talk. ⁵ A study from the Harvard Center for Risk analysis estimates that cell phone use while driving contributes to 6 percent of crashes, which means 636,000 crashes, 330,000 injuries, 12,000 serious injuries, and 2,600 deaths each year in the United States. Or $43 billion. When the National Safety Council asked its member businesses whether they had safety policies prohibiting on-road cell phone use, 45 percent said they did, but 85 percent said the policies made no difference.¹ The number of studies on cell phones and driving has more than tripled since the last meta-analysis was conducted in 2008. ⁶ Researchers examined 93 studies that were published between 1991 and 2015 and measured the effects of cell phone use on driving. The overall sample had 4,382 participants, with drivers' ages ranging from 14 to 84 years. The studies measured variables such as drivers' reaction time to hazards or emergency events, stimulus detection, lane positioning, speed, eye movements, and collisions. ⁷ Overall, the studies concluded that speaking on both hand-held and hands-free phones negatively impacted driving performance, and drivers who engaged in conversation with their passengers experienced similar negative effects. Moreover, dialing, like texting, requires drivers to look away from the road for an extended period of time and can result in even greater detriments to driving performance than conversation alone.

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So, how is this being handled?

• In the US a number of states have laws covering cell phone use and texting while driving.
• Hand-held cell phone use ban: 20 states, DC, Puerto Rico, Guam and the US Virgin Islands prohibit all drivers from using hand-held cell phones while driving.
• All cell phone ban: No state bans all cell phone use for all drivers, but 38 states and DC ban all cell phone use by novice or teen drivers, and 21 states and DC prohibit any cell phone use for school bus drivers.
• Text messaging ban: 48 states, DC, Puerto Rico, Guam and the US Virgin Islands ban text messaging by novice or teen drivers. ⁸

References

1. Margaret Heffernan, Willful Blindness, Walker & Co., New York, 2011
2. Kristin Dizon, “So you can phone and drive? Think again.” Seattle-Post Intelligencer, November 16, 2004
3. D. L. Strayer et al., “A comparison of the cell phone driver and the drunk driver,” Human Factors, 48(2), 381, 2006
4. Donald A. Redelmeir and Robert J. Tibshirani, “Association between cellular telephone calls and modern vehicle collisions,” The New England Journal of Medicine, 336, 453, February 13, 1997
5. “Don't talk, drive,” New Scientist, 187, 4, July 16, 2005
6. Lois Smith, “Don't talk and drive,” eurekalert.org, March 5 2018
7. Jeff K. Caird et al., “Does talking on a cell phone, with a passenger, or dialing affect driving performance? An updated systematic review and meta- analysis of experimental studies,” journals.sagepub.com, January 19, 2018
8. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety 2019, “Cellular phone use and texting while driving laws,” ncsl.org