The history of talking while driving
The New York Times has a lengthy article chronicling the history of talking while driving. Critics of the practice say the wireless industry has long known of the dangers, noting that cellphone pioneers testified before a government commission in the early 1960s, saying, “There should be a lock on the dial so that you couldn’t dial while driving.” Nevertheless, the Times article says, the industry aggressively marketed the technology to drivers, and the federal government estimates that at any given time, 11% of drivers are talking on their phones. The article says that the industry’s marketing success has come at a cost: “Researchers at Harvard have estimated that, even seven years ago, drivers using cell phones were causing 2600 fatal crashes a year in the United States and 570,000 accidents that resulted in a range of injuries, from minor to serious.”
The industry seems to be slowly getting the message. The article says the CTIA supports legislation banning texting while driving and is now neutral on legislation banning talking while driving.
The article quotes Bob Lucky, formerly of Bell Labsas saying he knew that drivers talking on cellphones were not focused fully on the road. But he said the issue was not discussed much in the engineering community: “If you’re an engineer, you don’t want to outlaw the great technology you’ve been working on, If you’re a marketing person, you don’t want to outlaw the thing you’ve been trying to sell. If you’re a CEO., you don’t want to outlaw the thing that’s been making a lot of money.”
The article notes that despite the safety concerns, the wireless industry is developing a new generation of technology, including in-car WiFi and GPS applications for cell phones.
There is certainly cause for concern and no easy answers. Despite any legislation, drivers will keep using their mobile devices. Perhaps a bright spot is that more GPS applications may help reduce accidents, eliminating the need to fumble with paper maps or printed directions and cutting down on the time spent circling around, looking for your destination.
By the way, you might want to check out this mobile accessory.
elx9030 commented:
All we need it to take the course that law enforsement takes to make them a better driver while talking on there cell phones and typing on there laptops while driving then the world will be a safer place to drive
tarno_inz commented:
Just curious: does anyone know what the statistics were for distracted driving accidents in the late 1970's when CB radios were in vogue ?
The differences -- if any -- would be interesting to research.
Glen C commented:
Andy T,
Many die in car accidents because the OTHER driver was on the cell phone.
Dave and Dave S,
GPS disable while in motion (except for 911 emergency calls) is a good idea, passengers and mass transit riders would just have to deal with it. These passengers would benefit in that their ride becomes safer. There are certain other activities also currently disallowed for passengers for safety reasons(think controlled substances) and not much complaint is raised over those laws.
The downside is that it would take time to implement, considering that today's devices without GPS still have a few operational years left in them. An interim solution would be to place the onus on the network providers to detect motion and disable received and placed (911 excepted) calls. Motion detection could be done using Doppler frequency shift measurement, rate of cell handoff, signal strength flutter and averaged stength changes among towers, and changes in triangulation timing. An interesting engineering challenge...
An incentive for the network providers to consider implementing this feature even without legislation will be the first lawsuit for failing to do so. All it would take is a traffic death or maiming due to cell phone use, a determined plaintiff, and a hungry lawyer. If sucessful all network providers would have to consider the degree of customer pique (there are many superhumans who are convinced they can safely multitask while driving) versus the lawsuit potential.
Sounds ridiculous? A few years ago a provider of hot coffee was sued for enabling a woman to burn herself when she spilled it while driving. In the eyes of the legal profession and a jury, a network provider enabling one to use a distracting device while driving is not much different.
CEH commented:
The scary thought is that if 11% of drivers are talking on their cell phone at a given time, and you, I and a good share of my friends seldom if ever do (or pull over to talk), there are a significant number of people out there who are talking almost continually while driving. But in the long run, cell phone users are probably no more distracted than those putting on makeup, listening to kids fighting or the crying baby in the car seat in back, their favorite (or most hated) song on the radio, etc. Like the man said, there are those who will allow themselves to be distracted, or will permit distractions who shouldn't be driving. I think there are some who are distracted by the windshield wipers.
Probably the only recourse is to make it too expensive or painful to use the cell phone. How about something like the mandatory sentencing requirements for committing a crime with a gun. If you are found to have been talking on the cell phone and causing an injury accident, mandatory 6M jail time. If you are involved in a vehicular fatality, mandatory 2 years jail time over and above any other sentence.
AlexPA commented:
The same problems may be traced to the radio in the cars.
Dave S commented:
Dave, I had the same thought about using the GPS in phones but then you would affect passengers or riders of mass transit also.
John F. commented:
I have never heard of any study, with a control group of non-talkers, that has been undertaken to verify that talking on a phone (of course not texting, dialing or e-mailing which divert the sight of a driver) causes bad driving. The anecdotal evidence that x number of fatal accidents was poor driving caused by conversational phone use is no more than a potentially flawed conclusion drawn from random raw data. I have always felt that the bad driving was an inherent characteristic of an incompetent driver (of which there are far too many), and that any phone conversation at the time of an accident was likely, a non factor without any correlation between the phone conversation and the accident. In short, most if not all of these accidents would have occurred even if the (incompetent) driver had not been conversing on a cell phone. Anecdotally, the drivers that I have observed are typically less aggressive, more alert and more carefully when engaged in a phone conversation than when they are simply driving. Ultimately, what needs to happen is adding a test of driving competence while engaged in a phone conversation added to every state’s driving test. Let’s face facts; breathing is the only skill that everyone can master (some by the nose and some by the mouth). It is a travesty that breathing seems to be about the only skill required for getting a driver’s license in most states. As many as four of every ten licensed drivers will never, ever, be competent drivers and have no business being licensed or being behind the wheel.
Just as when drunken driving is policed better and reduced accidents as a result are reduced, getting bad drivers off of the road is the only real way to drastically reduce the number of traffic accidents. If the continually incompetent drivers were removed from the roads, conversational phone use while driving would become a non-issue.
Dave commented:
Actually, putting GPS on the phones *might* make them safer - use the GPS circuitry to render the phone inoperable at speeds over 10mph...
Andy T commented:
We need to ensure that those who die in car accidents while talking on cellphones have not had the chance to reproduce - this means allowing it from a young age, and only banning those with offspring from doing so.
In mere generations, we'll have adept drivers and no need for such legislation.
Meanwhile, shaddap and get outa the left lane.
