I’ve had people ask me about this, as well as wondering about it quite a bit myself.
How is it that use of a radio in an airplane enhances safety but use of a cellphone in a car degrades it?
I can be zipping along at well over 100 mph in a plane with no option to slow down, talking to Mr/Ms Controller or other pilots, turning my head side to side to look for other planes, operating the flight controls (pedals and wheel-thingy for you groundpounders), fiddling with the instruments, flipping switches, aiming that baby at the planet, and touching down gently (well, most of the time) all while listening and/or talking calmly and coherently on the radio.
If I’m in a car, moving at 30 mph with fewer controls, no knobs to turn, and only 2 dimensions of movement to worry about, and no traffic, just opening the damn cellphone and saying “hello?” can turn me into a road hazard (no actual accidents so far, but definitely some embarassing Dumb Shit Driving)
WTF?
I’ve mentioned this to several other pilots, and I’d say about 2 out of 3 seem to have had simillar experiences (With possibly #3 minimizing the situation). You’d think car+cell would be easier to handle than plane+radio. Is it training? The radio is used solely to talk about what’s going on around you, the cell might be used for discussing irrelevant stuff like picking up bread and milk on the way home? Cars induce stupidity? What?
I think the issue is that radio use in an aircraft enhances saftey MORE than it degrades it. Such is not the case in an auto.
Indeed there are many things to do in an aircraft, and talking on the radio is another that adds to the workload. Pilots/contollers are trained in the use of succinct standard phraseology to limit the workload and frequency congestion on both ends. Nearly ALL communication is necessary for the safe operation of the aircraft. Such things as clearances to keep aircraft separated, traffic advisories to prevent midair collisions, and weather updates make up the bulk of air-ground communication.
Air-air communication is usually broadcast in the blind to alert other aircraft of your position and intentions to lessen the chance of a mid-air collision. Most pilots use headsets with push-to-talk buttons on the yoke/stick, the car folks should learn from this and use handsfree kits more often.
Contrast this with cell phone use in the car. I don’t own a cell phone, but I can imagine the only clearance one gets on a cell phone in a car is an extension of a kitchen pass. Hardly necessary for safe operation of the vehicle. Ditto for business meetings, shopping lists, chit chat etc.
Generally, aircraft have a much wider margin of error in maneuvering (except in taxi,takeoff,landing phases) that an auto does. The airways are +/- 4 miles wide, and other aircraft are not zipping past you 4 feet away. 5 seconds spent changing radio freqencies (after a quick traffic scan) is not the same as opening a cell phone and punching numbers all whilst driving through a busy intersection.
Which brings me back to training. We pilots are trained to Aviate/Navigate/Communicate, in that order. If things get too busy a quick “Standby” is broadcast to allow the person on the other end know that we are attending to a higher priority task. Judging by some of the cell/car activity I see, that training doesn’t exist.
Extra-vehicle communication in both autos/aircraft degrades safety, but in aircraft the training and operating parameters lessen the impact. Safety is enhanced by a great deal in aircraft by the use of communications, and this offsets some of the risks associated with its use. Other than emergency use, I can’t think of a obvious way that cell phones enhance safety in a car.
It has more to do with concerted coordination & reaction time. When driving down the highway, there are cars just feet (maybe inches) away from you. At the standard cruising speed of 55Mph (85 in Virginia :D), it only takes 37 mS (that’s about .004 seconds) to crash into a motionless object in the direction of travel. Flying at 30,000 feet up I suspect that your nearest obstacle will be miles away (if the air traffic controlers are doing their job). I don’t know what typical cruising speed for a 747 is so somebody else will have to do the math on that one.
Case in point: I was once rounding a corner in a shiny gold super beetle at a nice calm 20Mph when suddenly the sun shone into my eyes and triggered my sneeze reflex. It all happened so fast I had no time to even put the brakes on to slow down. I jerked violently with the sneeze, the jerk was transferred to the steering wheel and I ran into the curb as I turned and blew out a tire. Luckily I hit no other cars and none hit me, but I could just as easily have been negotiating a challenging on ramp at higher speed and caused a 28 car pile up. Or there could have been a pedestrian standing close to the corner who’s legs I might have broken. All because of how close the obstacles & other vehicles are, not necessarily because of my speed.
But this brings up another point. As a pilot, you have several sets of eyes watching out for you. Air traffic controllers on the ground, on board radar (planes do have onboard radar don’t they?) and that fact that there are two dimensions of travel on the ground (as opposed to three in the sky) is not a help but a hinderance. Even if there is an airborn object within a thousand or a hundred feet (in the direction of ±x or y) of your plane, it is probable that said object will be hundreds if not thousands of feet away in the direction of ±z. On the ground you don’t have that extra margin of clearance.
Plus the fact that the average pilot is a highly trained and skilled individual, whereas nearly anyone can grab a cell phone and jump behind the wheel of their Deathmobile.
I think I’d agree with the above posts, especially Anthracite’s post. Pilots are trained individuals, and unless training has been seriously flawed, I’m assuming that you learn to fly with the radio included - not so with an automobile/cell phone. Every time I get in my car I find more evidence that anyone can get a license… not to mention that there’s probably a bevy of unlicensed drivers zipping around. Generally not the case in the sky, I hope.
Oh, and Broomstick, regarding the wheel-thingy and pedals (yeah, I’m a groundpounder): Does the manual indicate which lever is the velocitator, and which is the decceleratrix?
I agree with the above posts completely, and I’ll add this…
I think the FAA should mandate radio calls in the traffic pattern of non-towered aiports. Anyone with half a brain already does this. Now I realize many GA airplanes don’t have radios - but that should change. The FAA has lots of rules people aren’t happy with, but this one makes sense to me.
As the other posters have pointed out, it takes very little effort to make radio calls, especially when you consider how much it improves safety.
Now all we have to do is get the glider pilots to make radio calls on the common frequency, and we’ll all be safer (see my recent thread on gliders for that one).
And with regard to Anthracite’s point, we need to improve driver education in this country in a BIG way.
I agree with all the above, plus my theory that most people who use cell phones have grown up in an environment where talking on the phone is a single-task event. They grow up talking on the phone lying on beds, sofas, walking around the house, etc. I think that once they get thrown into a car, where it’s a multi-task environment (moreso with a cell phone in hand), their brains can’t quite keep up. I don’t think we’ll have the same problem in another 20 years.
I think that there are two things that make talking on a cellular phone more dangerous in a car than talking on the radio is in an aircraft, both of which have been mentioned. First and foremost is that telephones are used for conversation and radios are used for a quick transfer of information. Even on the helicopter frequency I hear very little chatter. Sure, there’s some – after all, there aren’t many heli pilots compared to fixed-wing pilots, and you’ll hear stuff like, “Hey Jack, is that you?” – but mostly what you hear is like “Four-one-three, northbound, Newhall Pass, two point five [thousand feet]”. In a crowded airport environment such as Van Nuys or LAX, it’s hard to get a word in edge-wise; so pilots don’t spend a lot of time talking on the radio.
The other major factor is that we’re unlikely to hit another aircraft. No one is going to slam on his brakes in front of us.
Anthracite mentions that pilots receive much training. Oblio says, “[P]ilots are trained to Aviate/Navigate/Communicate, in that order.” My flight instructor was fond of saying (all together now; it’s every instructor’s favourite phrase), “FLY THE AIRPLANE!” “Fly the airplane!” and “Look outside!” was so drummed into my head that I drive that way as well. Although learning to fly is relatively inexpensive (basically, give up a skiing vacation at a destination resort for one season – make your own comarison), it’s not exactly cheap. Depending on how you learn to drive, getting a driver’s license can be almost free. First, a pilot candidate has to have the desire to learn, then he or she has to shell out the ducats and dedicate himself to the task. Learning how to drive is much more casual. The result is that pilots are much more dedicated to the task of flying than a car driver is to the task of driving. (And any pilot will tell you that he/she is a better car driver than a non-flying driver. – therefore, a pilot is more able to talk on a cell phone while driving than a non-pilot is. )
Talking on a cell phone is a continuous operation. Aircraft comminications are snippets of talk. From the time I acknowledge that I have been cleared to land, I do not touch the microphone until I am at taxi speed.
I’d also add that communicating on the radio in an aircraft doesn’t require nearly as much attention as talking on a cell phone, because the radio traffic is very structured. We know what we’re expected to hear. When I call in and say, “Alpha Tango India is on final”, I expect to hear (almost exactly) “Alpha Tango India cleared to land runway XX. Wind 240 gusting 5-10 knots”
So, the whole transaction is handled sort of in the background of your brain. If you ever wondered how pilots can understand what they are hearing when there is so much noise and distortion, this is why. We know what we expect to hear.
A cellphone conversation, on the other hand, is free-form, and requires much more of your focused attention which you have to take away from driving.
As a private pilot also, I’ll also vouch for every thing said here by my fellow winged folk :).
The fundamental difference is that the radio is NOT used for chatting or conversation, we don’t make radio calls to wish a happy birthday to our fellow flyers and ask them how their kids are doing in school.
In flying, a radio call is used to get information that you NEED to know to fly your plane, or to transmit information that others NEED to know to do their flying or controlling.
We are trained to be very conscious of separating activities to manage our cockpit workload. If I am on final approach, I don’t care who is talking over the radio, I dedicate all focus to landing the airplane safely. After my task is done, I then make the radio call or reply to the tower. Pilots and controllers understand and respect this.
Interestingly, it is since becoming a pilot that I have stopped using a phone in cars at all while driving.
All that said (and well said), I agree with what I perceive to be part of the OP’s point: talking on a cell phone in a car does not necessarily make you drive poorly. I do it occasionally, and I’ll occasionally tell the person I’m talking to that I need to set the phone down to make a turn or because I’m coming up on a complicated intersection, but I’ve seen people just absolutely flip out because someone else was talking on a cell phone while driving (perfectly safely, I might add). It’s a little ridiculous, and is leading to the notion that it should be banned. Unsafe driving should be (and is) banned, but if you ban talking on the cell phone while driving, you’d better ban drinking a soda while driving, too, because in my opinion, that’s equally likely to distract you or deprive you of a free hand at an inopportune moment.
But I guess I shouldn’t turn this into a GD thread.
And let’s not forget the radio. How many accidents are caused when someone reaches over to change a station or put a tape or CD in the player at the wrong minute?
For that matter, I think we should erect plexiglass shields between the front and back seats so the kids can’t disrupt the driver. Better put one between the driver and passenger, too.
Yes, people SHOULD broadcast at non-towers, and 90% of them do. On the other hand, what about radio failure? My non-tower field probably gets at least one aircraft a month with radio failure, probably more. Sceanario is that they’re typically on their way to Gary Regional or heading towards O’Hare’s Mode C veil when the radio conks out. They park in our field - non-tower - which is a 15 minute drive from GYY, if that’s where they’re going. There’s another, non-tower field with an avionics shop about 12 miles away that they can easily go to even with a dead radio with no extra hoops to jump through. Now, where would these folks go if they suddenly HAD to broadcast? A tower with a light gun? Yeah, you can do that… but it slows traffic waaaaaaaaaaaaay down. Last time they were reduced to lightgun signals at GYY half the traffic pattern peeled off and went elsewhere.
I don’t think the lack of radio mandate is for the convience of old geezer planes that never had “ears” installed anyway - it’s to give aircraft a place to go when their radios quit that inconveniences the least number of people. I mean, geez, you ever see the paperwork you have to go through to ferry a plane with a dead radio through radio-requiring airspace? Compared to taking off from a non-tower field with no extra to-do and flying to another non-tower for repairs with no extra to-do?
Requiring radios would also tick off the deaf pilots, too. Not something I used to think about, but I got a flying buddy who’s deaf as a doorknob. I suppose we could just tell the deaf folks “sorry - you’re screwed”, but I get leary every time someone suggests eliminating a group of folks from flying - I mean, I might be in the next crowd to be lopped off.
And, frankly, I think those gliders pilots grok referred to are full of crap
There must be something to it.
Just this afternoon I saw my second wreck caused by someone on a cell phone slamming into the back of a car stopped at a traffic signal. Never even touched the brakes.
I’ve never heard of a plane crash caused by a pilot talking on a radio.
Peace,
mangeorge
It’s rare, but it has happened that distraction caused by the radio has caused or contributed to aircraft accidents. Almost always involves a hand held mike instead of a headset and push-to-talk, and also almost always involves a solo flying pilot - 'cause if you got two people in a busy cockpit you can have one fly and one talk. Which is how the big boys do it, I’m told, which is why this sort of accident is unheard of in 747’s and DC-10’s.
Well, you’ll get no argument from me that the FAR’s are too complex and often misguided. But I still say that my suggestion makes sense.
Oh, well - if your radio fails you should be shot down immediately.
But seriously, equipment fails sometimes, and that’s another situation. Then you simply do whatever it takes to make the situation safe, as we already do now when untoward events happen. That could mean light gun signals, or landing at a non-towered airport without making a radio call as some people do now.
You got me on that one. I never thought of that either.
But I stand by my suggestion. And I remain amazed that the safety obsessed FAA has so many convoluted regs that make little sense, but still allow planes to operate in relatively busy airspace without making radio calls.
Handling an airplane plus radio is much easier than driving a car plus cellphone. My opinion - the air radio talk is not chitchat, it’s prepared, planed, and expected, for the most part. But all that aside - handling an airplane with one hand and holding a mike with the other is much easier than trying to drive a car with one hand & hold a cellphone to your head. (Myself, I always fly IFR with a headset, making it easier still).
Unless you’re in the act of takeoff or landing (or doing aerobatics) you just don’t have to worry about slamming into someone or something in the next instant in an airplane. And you have the full range of motion of the stick/yoke available without going “hand over hand” like when you drive a car. And when communication is most intense (flying on instruments) you are deliberately keeping your maneuvers to the most benign, with the widest margin of clearance between you and mother earth, or some other airplane.
– therefore, a pilot is more able to talk on a cell phone while driving than a non-pilot is. 
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