Mobile phone use while driving: the safest setup?

By: Dianne Haigney

Date: Monday, 14. December 2009

This study was carried out by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) and the Health and Safety Unit at Aston University, Birmingham, England. The study was presented as a paper at an ergonomics conference held at Leicester University, April 7-9, 1999.

For more information contact RoSPA Press Inquiries at Tel: 0121-248-2134/2135, or through the RoSPA web site.

Summary

This study looked at all of the research into whether mobile phone use affects a person's ability to drive an automobile. "It became obvious," the study states, that "there is very little agreement as to the potential effect of mobile phones while driving--including whether handfree phones are 'safer' than handheld."

The lack of clear data, says the report, is "due to a combination of factors: the complexity of assessing the effect of mobile phone use on driving, the wide range of ways it has been examined and the often poor standard of the research itself. "

Because of the ethics of testing drivers in actual traffic on public roads, the study was conducted on "an established and validated driving simulator." And since manual transmission cars are used widely in Britain, the manual transmission mode of the simulator was also included in the study. Thirty people took part in the study, each of whom had held a Great Britain manual transmission driving license for one year (in Britain, those who take their driving test only on an automatic transmission car are not licensed to drive manual transmission).

In the actual study, participants 'drove' the simulator along a simulated road. Other "intelligent" traffic were also driving on the road and other drivers were able to decide whether to pull out, overtake, etc. After 2.5 minutes of driving, a mobile phone mounted on the dashboard of the simulator would ring and participant would have to answer the phone and hold a conversation lasting 2.5 minutes. After the conversation was over they were required to drive for another 2.5 minutes. However, they were not told that the length of these periods would be 2.5 minutes.

There were four drivers for each participant, with various combinations of phone and transmission, handfree and handheld phones. Drivers were told which combination it would be and the order was randomized for each participant.

Results

In a process that is both conscious and unconscious, drivers adapt their speed to changing conditions in order to avoid conflicts of various kinds and collision risk. They study showed that, regardless of whether a manual or automatic transmission vehicle was being driven, and regardless of whether a handfree or handheld phone was being used, the driver's speed-adaptation to conditions dropped off about the same amount during phone conversations.

The study also showed that drivers were less responsive after a phone call than before. This finding agreed with an earlier Canadian study in 1997 in which drivers were estimated to be more likely to have a collision up to 10 minutes after a call in comparison with before a call. This is presumably because the contents of the call continued to occupy the driver's mind.

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John,

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