Back when cell phones were forbidden in hospitals “because they interfered with equipment”…
…there were far fewer staffers and visitors walking into walls and other obstructions because they were staring down at their cellphone screens.
I think that’s more because people will pay more attention to their phone than the pump and could end up spilling gasoline.
Weren’t the first cell phones analog and later they switched to digital?
it might just be a CA thing but all the pharmacies have a line on the floor you wait behind and there’s a sign saying “no cell phones past this point”
Must be local - we just have a sign that essentially says “wait here” a few feet back from the counter. Nothing about cell-phones on it.
For those who have experienced this situation, do you know the reason for a cell phone ban in a pharmacy wait line?
I actually had looked it up because of this thread, and the only explanation I could find has nothing to do with either equipment or privacy. The explanation I found was it was to prevent people from being “checked out” when speaking to the staff ,causing the staff to ask "yes or no " questions, and the customer responding “yes” on auto pilot.
When I pick up my prescriptions, I should be asked my name, addfress DOB and any identifying infrmation as an open ended question. Apparently, people on phone tend to get yes or no questions. They say they are picking up for Smith and instead of being asked for the first name the pharmacist says " John?" . Instead of being asked for address and DOB, the pharmacist says " 4 oak st, 1/10/51?" The customer is distracted and answers “yes” to all,e even though the info is wrong. So Joe Smith, who lives at 14 Oak st and was born 11/15/61 gets the wrong prescription 9 Presumably he also never looks at the label) How much of an issue this is in reality, I don’t know, but that’s the explanation I found.
Interesting…thank you.
A lot of places ban using cell phones while waiting in line or at the counter. E.g., the DMV was one recent place I saw this.
It’s pretty obvious: Because using a cell phone just slows things down to a crawl.
I see it at the grocery store while checking out. A person on a cell phone does an astonishing number on the pace of things.
That, like giving hospitals an excuse to shut up noisy patients on their cell phones, might be an ancillary benefit of not using a phone while pumping gas, but it isn’t the reason for the signs. The reason is that normal cell phones are not rated as ‘intrinsically safe’ (though there are intrinsically safe ones), devices which by design cannot generate sparks of enough intensity to ignite flammable vapor. In more serious ‘industrial strength’ cases of flammable vapor environments like on a tanker’s deck or at a refinery, companies really do enforce prohibitions on non intrinsically safe electronic devices.
The actual risk has proven minuscule to non-existent in the long running experiment at gas stations conducted by posting those signs (sometimes) and nobody paying attention to them.
I see a sign lately at a construction site near my house that blasting is going on, turn off cell phone (interference with the radio signals they use to trigger the blast). On a busy road. What % of people are following that I wonder, but I’ve never heard of accidental triggering of a blast by a cell phone (IED’s intended to be triggered by cell phones, of course).
And I’ve heard around 10% of plane passengers typically ignore prohibitions on various electronic devices in phases of flight where they ‘could interfere with plane’s [navigation mostly I guess] systems’. Nobody wants to go out on even a short limb gteeing that won’t happen without the expense of testing every personal device on the market against every plane system in every condition. But if it was actually at all likely to cause a disaster I guess the devices would have been comprehensively confiscated when you get on the plane, jail sentences for hiding them, etc, a long time ago.
You don’t have to guess.
There’s is a non-zero possibility as cited above. And experts believe there has been or will be a crash due to personal electronics.
But the calculus is that the number of crashes is not going to be high, so we are willing to accept that level of risk because the alternative is unpleasant, expensive, and unpopular for only a small improvement in safety.
Pretending there’s no risk because there hasn’t been a definitive case yet is a prime example of the Gambler’s Fallacy and is at odds with reality.
As I noted above:
No of course I don’t have to guess that if even one fatal airliner crash was conclusively tied to interference from passenger electronic devices the rules would be more vigorously enforced.
But I would still say the basic reason for ever having had those rules was the cost and feasibility of quantifying the risk of every consumer electronic device sold then or subsequently introduced to every system on every plane flying then or subsequently introduced in every condition. So the actual risk has never been quantified. It’s just obviously not a large addition to pre-existing tiny risk of airliner crashes
So a ‘calculus’ but without knowing whether personal device interference airliner crashes would be say 10 per century or .01 per century worldwide.
There’s no implication of ‘zero’ risk. The point is it’s not established (by any earlier reference in the thread and I don’t elsewhere) whether it’s a tiny or just small relative addition to the 1 in a 1mil (or 10mil or whatever) baseline risk of a fatal crash per flight, does it makes it 1.1 per mil, or 1.001/mil? But if it was a non-small addition, we’d know.
I have no cite but I would say the risk of a pilot causing a passenger plane to crash is many times higher than a passenger’s electronic device. With recent events it seems even the electronic devices the passenger jet’s manufacturer installs in it are more dangerous.
I’ve worked in hospitals since the 1980s. I don’t recall ever having been instructed to not use a cell phone.
mmm
It’s still not a good idea to use cell phones in either animal hospital offices/labs, etc., or in hospitals for humans, because they do tend to interfere with the use of vital equipment. Better to be safe than sorry, as the saying goes.