Cell phones and other distractions

By: Drivers.com staff

Date: Sunday, 19. November 2006

Anyone who's ever taken a driver education program will have heard it: "Be safe. Devote your full attention to your driving!"

The reality is that this is not possible. In the beginning stages, a learner driver may be fully absorbed just keeping the vehicle straight. Later, this task becomes "automated" and the driver has time to include checking for traffic lights, signs, other traffic. In time, this becomes automated as well. Most of the time, driving does not take up the full attention of an experienced driver. We humans have a very strong tendency to "multi-task" and it's not uncommon for drivers to attend to a variety of other tasks, both mental and physical, as they drive along and negotiate traffic. In easy driving conditions, absent-mindedness is probably the greatest danger.

It's common to see drivers conversing with passengers, listening to the radio, eating, smoking cigarettes and much worse. Some drivers do this better than others, and this is an area where appropriate research is lacking. Apart from simple knowledge and vision tests for beginners, there is no diagnosis of drivers' different abilities such as attention-dividing skills and visual capabilities. A person could go through a lifetime with the driving equivalent of dyslexia and never realize it--unless he or she were tested after being involved in a serious crash.

Legislating against driver distractions is a tricky business, but the widespread use of cell phones has raised public fear about this technology and already a number of countries have passed laws restricting the use of phones in cars.

An Australian paper published in 1998 cited research and statistics from around the world showing that "drivers who use mobile phones while driving have impaired driving performance, an increased risk of a crash, and an increased risk of a fatal crash." A more recent study from England found little agreement as to the potential effect of mobile phone use on driving--"including whether hands-free phones are safer than hand-held."

The latter study was carried out in the United Kingdom by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) and the Health and Safety Unit of Aston University in Birmingham. Thirty participants took part in driving activities on a simulator which provided realistic driving situations, including "intelligent" traffic. Drivers were asked to engage in a conversation while driving in both manual and automatic transmission modes.

Interestingly, the researchers found that an automatic or manual transmission made little difference to the results. However, there was a significant effect from the use of cell phones to carry on a conversation. During conversations, drivers did not vary their speed according to conditions as they normally would. In other words, they were less responsive to traffic. And they were less responsive after the call than before.

This last point agreed with the results of a Canadian study conducted in 1997 in which drivers were estimated to be more likely to have an accident up to 10 minutes after a phone call, presumably because they were thinking about the conversation.

Undoubtedly there will be more research on the distraction effects of cell phones on driving. However, it's obvious that, with all the other distractions coming into the car in the form of "helpful" technologies the conclusion of the RoSPA study that hands-free phones didn't help is an important one. If it holds up, it means that drivers will have to learn to manage these distractions more effectively.

Training is going to be the key to successful traffic safety efforts in the future, and, as researcher Lawrence Lonero points out in an article for Drivers.com, it will have to be integrated with all the other safety initiatives such as enforcement and incentives for safer behavior.

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