16th January 2007

Talking on a cellphone while driving–dangerous or not?

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Driver on cell phoneWithin the last five years I have seen several studies performed by researchers at various universities attempting to draw a correllation between bad driving and talking on the cell phone. Whlie I agree that there are many many people out there who can’t eat a donut, shave, drink coffee, put on makeup, read the paper, or follow their GPS and drive while performing any combination or even one of the aforementioned tasks, I believe that their driving skills are generally flawed even if they were driving only and not performing any other task. So to all of you University Professors and research assistants, I am throwing down the proverbial gauntlet. I think your research methods are fundamentally flawed because you are making the presumption that people are good drivers before you put a cell phone in their hands. How wrong you are. I would venture to say that if you found good drivers and put them through the same driving conditions your experiments call for, they would do just fine with or without a cell phone. So here’s my challenge. Call me up and put me in your driving simulator and subject me to even more rigorous driving conditions than you did your other test subjects, and I promise you that I will out perform all your other test subjects. Wait, let me clarify here. Whatever your conclusions were about their driving without cell phone in hand, I will beat those results while talking on a cell phone.

I don’t mean to sound arrogant here. In fact I only want to do this to prove a point. That point being that there are more bad drivers on the roads than not. Most people do not have the ability to concentrate while in traffic and anticipate what other drivers may do before they do it. Just for an example, I never get caught behind a slow moving vehicle or in merging traffic when the left lanes are flowing smoothly because I see those traffic hazards long before most people do and I adjust before they impede me and cause me to slow down (which as you know has an according effect on the cars behind you who also didn’t adjust). So put me in your simulators professors, and I’ll school you on how you should really be conducting your experiements for more accurate data. That is unless you’ve already formulated your hypothesis and are simply constructing an experiement simply to prove your hypothesis. If, on the other hand, it’s truth your after, then get a hold of me and I’ll be there.

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There are currently 2 responses to “Talking on a cellphone while driving–dangerous or not?”

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  1. 1 On February 18th, 2007, Adam C said:

    I would never write back on a blog but I had to respond to your opinion on cell phone drivers. First of all, you didn’t read the studies. Every study tested people without cell phone and then with. so doesn’t matter if they were a crappy driver before, they were a lot, A LOT crappier after. (In fact, Mythbusters on Discovery channel did their own little study…they found it a lot harder to drive on cell then drunk!)
    But the best test I think is this: get on a bike, or a vespa (which I drive) and then re-write your email. Every single, EVERY SINGLE time a tremendously dangerous or stupid event happens while I am driving occurs because the driver is over 70 or 80% of the time, they are on a cell. So please, wherever you are, get on a bike for a week and write back. It is incredible.

  2. 2 On February 18th, 2007, monte said:

    Adam, thanks for your comment. While I may sound arrogant and cavalier, I stand by my statements. I think the experiments are setup to support their empirical arguments, hence the skewed (my opinion of course) results. I ride a motorcycle AND a bicycle on a regular basis, and I agree there are a lot of moronic drivers out there regardless of what you are driving (in truth, drivers will have a more difficult time seeing you on a Vespa with or without a cell phone in their hands), but so many drivers put their brains on autopilot and really aren’t paying attention to their driving, therefore any small additional task will really trip them up. Take a good driver like myself and subject me to the same conditions in the studies and I guarantee different results.

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