Cell phone bans while driving may not reduce accidents after all
Supposedly the danger had been proven, and that’s why a lot of states had banned cell phone use while driving. So, the accident rate went down as the phone use declined, right?
And no one knows why. Observers notice that “visible cellphone use drops about 50 percent when a state begins its ban.” But it doesn’t seem to matter all that much. Is it because riskier people don’t stop using cell phones while driving, they just get sneaky about it? Or do they do something else for fun and driving distraction, like putting on their makeup (there’s a surprising amount of that)? Or lighting a cigarette or drinking a Coke or operating an iPod? Or maybe people have just gotten really really good at double-tasking, and when they go back to single-tasking it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference?
This isn’t just a new finding, or an outlier. Research generally shows that although texting and cell-phone use increases accidents, banning them doesn’t decrease accidents.
“Supposedly the danger had been proven, and that’s why a lot of states had banned cell phone use while driving. So, the accident rate went down as the phone use declined, right? Wrong.”
You mean *that* wasn’t “settled science” either??
I don’t know about drivers, but in South Philly there’s a real problem with pedestrians and cell phones or other handheld devices. I swear the damn things turn them into zombies, and the only reason they don’t try to eat your brains is because they’re too busy with their toy. They don’t even look up at intersections, and earbuds probably mean that they can’t even hear you. That level of distraction and obliviousness in an urban environment has to have Darwin doing a facepalm….
Jenk,
Most of the cell phone zombies are young, although there are zombies of all ages. I am too old to understand why people are so addicted to cell phones and ipods that they pay little or no attention to their surroundings.
A few years ago a young math teacher was robbed and murdered here near the Italian Market–not exactly the “bad” part of South Philly. He was walking along listening to his ipod and probably never noticed his killer until it was too late; the killer wanted–you guessed it–his ipod….
I see that Dr. Kent Brantly is determined to bring ebola to the First World.
He still lives in that magical world where everything is possible.
It has not dawned on him that the entire First World can’t begin to produce enough medicine to deal with ebola as it stands — right now.
We’re right back to the 14th Century: “… we can handle it… we can handle it…”
Nope.
That train left the station — probably from the outset. Ebola had jumped to too many carriers before ANY medical expert realized what was up.
Sending Americans into the fray merely assures us that 3,000 vectors will be bringing an incurable, lethal, disease to every corner of America before the year is out.
There is no Haz Mat suit that can be worn in west Africa. Scaling up current designs is futile.
Drudge has a classic snap: a totally exposed worker is washing down another in a full ebola Haz Mat suit.
The folly is not instantly apparent to all.
We’ve got fools in charge of everything.
About half the time I’m in a position to see some moron blow a light or stop sign, said moron is on the phone.
Perhaps the bans mean the phones are on the seat switched to “speaker” and the conversation continues. So, unless the moron who caused the accident fesses up to being on the phone, the phone didn’t cause it. ‘course, said moron is probably dumb enough to fess up.
It would be an interesting study to trace the behavior of humans over the decades, or even centuries, as related to communications technology. I believe there would be some psychological insights.
Just one person’s off the cuff analysis.
During the days of sail and wagon trains, subordinates or loved ones would be out of contact for years. There was obviously a premium put on self-reliance and independent action.
Then came the telegraph, and the short wave radio. Although communication was still too expensive for most private individuals, executive oversight began to intrude on distant activities.
The telephone increased the sense of urgency among private folk. “Call when you get there”; and if the call did not come when expected the level of nervousness increased.
Now, with satellite communications tying the world together, and the ubiquitous cell phone always at hand (although people really don’t understand why mine isn’t), communication must be constant. There is a dynamic at work that makes it essential to respond to every chirp; and report every thought or move–to someone. Even if there is no meaningful exchange of thought.
So? What does it mean? Maybe we have a very limited degree of free will–psychologically. We are absolute slaves to technology.
Government should do something. Or maybe government is content that folks are losing the ability for meaningful interaction, as they are isolated in their individual cyber spheres, or completely absorbed with exchanging meaningless minutiae.
Having written all of the above, I wonder why I did. Still. Suffice to say that one rather ironical result of our technological advance has been to shorten attention spans to the point that we now need driverless car technology to be safe on the highways.
I recall recently reading a story in which a teen was injured after walking into an open manhole; he was texting as he walked and didn’t notice it until he fell. Id like to think that as he fell he was still texting; the screen would read “OM…..” Yeah, I’m a stinker that way….
Jenk…LOL..! Me too. I tell whole meeting rooms to, “..all together now, Kiddies…Press the ‘Put it the F*** Away app’ NOW..”
Just think how it’s gonna be with the soon to be released i-Wrist Watch. Binker and Buzzy and bobby and Buffy ALL pounding on their little wristies to Tweety some Facey to Gram some Insta.
If you turn off something and become instantly sober, there would be a lot fewer drunk driving accidents too.
That’s the thing, stop texting, it’s like the effect of instant sobriety.
Regardless of the stats, if you ever take your eyes of the road for a few seconds while you’re cruising along at a decent speed, sooner or later you will probably notice that things can change fast sometimes. (not quoting all that stuff about how many feet traveled).
I’m not as clear as the effect of taking your mind off events, but the more passionate the conversation, the more likely your mind is removed from driving. By passionate, I just mean consumed by the topic.
Of course, JMO.
Blert,
I agree the bho response to the ebola epidemic is dangerous folly. There is only one solution total quarantine backed up by lethal force. The same goes for the borders. If we were willing to shoot on sight anyone crossing illegally illegal border crossings would cease after the first few hundreds are dead, and I don’t care if they are ‘children’. In order to be kind we must first be cruel.
In order to be secure we must be willing to recognize threats for what they are and give no quarter and collateral damage be damned.
It’s against the law to use a cell phone while driving in Washington State. Yet it continues almost unabated. There aren’t enough police to enforce the law. So many are violating it that it’s obvious no one worries about being caught. Maybe that’s why the accident rate hasn’t decreased. Passing a law doesn’t insure that people will observe it.
Dr. Kent Brantly, for those unaware, was an early infectee.
So, we’re getting management advice from a doctor who couldn’t maintain protocols, himself.
Further, he can’t accept, won’t accept, that state of the art Haz Mat suits can’t be tolerated in the west African climate.
Any such attempt results in heat stroke – itself a prompt killer.
Why does it take me to see that we don’t have the capacity to deal with ebola?
We may reduce the global population by 85% in less than a few years by letting this nightmare out of the bottle.
It’s bad enough that the Africans are dying. Why extend that misery planet wide?
In the 14th Century it took a total breakdown in civil order before the brainiacs figured out the obvious: we can’t handle a truly horrific disease.
Nature is bigger than us.
JJ, here in SoCal I don’t believe that any traffic laws are enforced.
I was critical of CHP for not patrolling the freeways, until it dawned on me that there was no way to patrol ten lanes, no shoulders to speak of, that are saturated with traffic. Unless of course, the ubiquitous traffic cameras were adapted and also used for enforcement.
Every municipality I know of has either rejected or abandoned red light cameras. Yet there are so few traffic patrols that folks run lights with reckless abandon (no pun).
Back when I regularly visited England, municipalities made wide use of speed cameras. They didn’t seem to worry about infringing on “rights”. If your car was speeding, you were responsible. That may have changed in the new, multi-cultural England.
We are very ambivalent about priorities.
Neo needs to start a series of essays on Ebola and its handling. “The Great Unraveling” is a good place to start.
I have been incensed at the BS dispensed by the medically empowered, particularly Dr. Frieden of the CDC and Dr. Fauci of NIH, over the past few weeks. Frieden is worse, with his insistence of “Not to worry, Ebola is not airborne.” Brantly is brought back “Because he is an American citizen” and we must recognize his Right of Return a la Gazans and Israel. Never mind the risk, however small, but not zero, of injecting Ebola into the USA. Then Frieden goes to Liberia, puts on his biowarfare suit for some photo-ops, and comes back saying, in effect, “Holy shit. This is baaad.”
The Obama administration sure hasn’t shown similar concerns about endangered, nay, now dead, Americans elsewhere. The difference may be Brantly was caring for the wretched blacks of West Africa, a more noble calling than defending the consulate in Benghazi or taking a wrong turn and thus languishing in a Tijuana jail while on active duty.
I saw some of the Senate hearing on Ebola last night, and it was enough to make one puke. The junior GOP senator from Kansas is a stupid worm and he gets to decide about this stuff. No one asked meaningful questions or offered meaningful thoughts. Standard epidemiology was invoked, e.g. the need to identify and track down all contacts of the infected during the prior 21 days, as if every Liberian has an address and photo ID. In Liberia. Where they slaughtered one another during their stupid conflicts just a decade ago. When I was a kid, they were not called jungle bunnies without a reason.
Oh yeah, Ebola is not airborne….as if there are viruses with winglets, a flying wee tiny nano particle of nucleic acid that exists only to replicate itself. Last I looked, no virus had winglets.
We can add “Delusional Stupidity with Momentarily Deep Pockets” to the list of defects of the Great Unraveling. Obama has called for a coalition of the willing to join in; if heeded, that will generate an Ebola-centered Fustercluck. But it will not, at least not as far as the Powers are concerned. Only the USA will commit suicide via Political (of which Brown Awareness and Love is a part) Correctness.
Info I trust Brantly got, via WHO:
“People are infectious as long as their blood and secretions contain the virus. Ebola virus was isolated from semen 61 days after onset of illness in a man who was infected in a laboratory.
The incubation period, that is, the time interval from infection with the virus to onset of symptoms, is 2 to 21 days.”
ttp://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/
Incubation plus post-illness thus spans a potential 82 days. Not good news.
Oldflyer, you’re right about traffic enforcement. Too many drivers, not enough highway patrol. Driving laws are notable mostly because they are so hard to enforce. Washington State does it by swarming certain areas for a few days and giving out massive numbers of tickets. Then they move on to another section of freeway. It is meant to deincentivize speeding, but only works with maybe 50% of the drivers. I’m kind of tight fisted. A $200 speeding ticket is not something I sneeze at, so I drive the limit. Cars pass me like I’m standing still. We don’t have the volumes of freeway traffic as southern California, yet. Only four or five lanes at most and not bumper to bumper at 70 miles per hour. So, a tad easier to patrol. Even so, 50% seem to be betting they won’t get caught.
The 3,000 souls are a suicide regiment.
We have already proven we can’t stop the experts from becoming infected.
Ask anyone asked these troops if they’re ready to throw their lives away?
Has anyone…
Anything that distracts you from driving is dangerous. I think there have been studies, for example, that indicate that hands-free cellphones are no safer than handheld devices. It’s the content that distracts. Listening to the radio–perhaps an especially thoughtful piece on NPR–can be dangerous too.
Roc, maybe that’s the problem – we’ve gone from being distracted drivers with cellphones to distracted drivers without cellphones. If you’ve gotten used to paying 50% of your attention to the road, maybe it takes you a couple of years to get back in the habit of full attention. Then again, maybe we’re just out of the habit of paying full attention to anything.