The worst drivers - the ones weaving around, going 15 mph under the speed limit in the fast lane - are the ones peering at their little cel phone screens, trying to use their clublike hands to dial their BFFs. I say hands-free will be a great improvement.
I have a theory on this. All my life I have been accustomed to holding a phone to my ear while sitting in a semi-reclining position, and letting my brain zone out as I talked with friends.* Then I got a cell phone. I found myself doing the same thing in the car. :eek: In my case my brain equates phone held to head sitting somewhat reclined, with I can stop paying attention. I got a headset ASAP.
No more brain taking a coffee break while I am on the phone. I find my headset to be no more distracting than a passenger.
As far as being hard to use, and a distraction I gotta say huh? I hear a beep in my ear, reach my right hand up and push a button on the bluetooth and say hello. No more distracting than reaching up to scratching an itch.
*On business calls, I find myself sitting up and leaning forward to pay attention.
People holding a cell phone in one hand may or may not drive worse than people talking on a hands-free unit, but they sure as heck don’t use their turn signals.
Sailboat
i do, because i drive with my left hand and use my pinky
God, I’m so glad I live in the “backwards” South.
This is also true in Virginia.
Can someone explain to me why you need to talk on the phone while driving? (Other than those giving step-by-step instructions for surgery and performing other life-saving heroic measures from their car while on the way to the store or coming home from work, that is.)(Which, I’m sure, is every single Doper who uses a phone, all the time, when driving. I mean those other people.)
Because its one of those things we’ve convinced ourselves we can’t live without.
:rolleyes:
My phone is a luxury, and I treat it as such. But there are a great many people who, for them, cannot conceive the thought of being without their phone. There are more excuses for this than reasons.
I don’t understand why this is so stupid. Is it sufficient? No (IMHO), but it is a step in the right direction. Change can come incrementally, and this is a good start.
That makes two of us.
What’s so bad about having drivers use a Bluetooth?
Some more studies that show hands-free cell conversations are still unsafe.
Is using a Bluetooth safer than holding a phone? Perhaps, but being safer is not the same thing as being safe. It still amazes me how many people are completely unwilling to acknowledge the possibility (or likelihood) of this, or use evasions (passengers/food/radio/etc.) as a way to avoid the issue.
Oh, and all the links I provided are more recent than Alice the Goon’s previous citation.
You can read about it here. This link says that the driver’s phone received a text just before the crash, but this is a local story for me, and I have heard reports that the drivers phone was also sending texts.
This is unreasonable- if I’m driving and my phone rings, I commonly hand my phone to a passenger to answer. At least, I used to do that until my mother was greeted to my phone being answered “County Morgue- You Stab 'Em, We Slab 'Em.” People with less obnoxious friends than mine should be perfectly free to have passengers talk on phones.
As a New Yorker who has had to deal with this shit for quite some time now, allow me to welcome you to the Land of No.
This hands-free bullshit benefits no one but the makers of mobile accessories. I’m not suggesting that’s the motivation for the laws in CA in NY, but I am suggesting that legislators care more about the positive publicity generated by banning something seen as potentially harmful than they care about getting it right.
I used to flagrantly violate this law on the grounds that I simply didn’t recognize my government’s right to tell me I should be lumped in with the rest of the uncoordinated oafs who can’t walk and chew gum (or in this case, drive and talk) at the same time. Yap at me all you want about driving being a privilege and not a right, or for having the gall to view driving in this way. I don’t give a shit. Lowest common denominator lawmaking means nobody gets to do anything because anything MIGHT be dangerous.
Not that I’m a huge fan of slippery slope arguments, but if we don’t tell lawmakers to get it right, it’s not inconceivable that they might start banning eating in cars, smoking in cars, playing loud music in cars and a bunch of other things that I consider to be my right to do, and which have never caused me to have an accident.
Incidentally, my hands-free device is currently a Garmin Nuvi 680. I can voice dial, but my phone already had voice dialing before I bought the Garmin. I could dial by punching numbers on the Garmin’s display, but how is that any different or less distracting than punching numbers on a phone keypad? Whether I hold the phone to my ear or use the phone’s (or Garmin’s) speakerphone, the distraction is approximately the same, so how the hell can anyone tell me that hands-free does ANYTHING to make driving safer?
p.s. - IMHO, while hands-free laws piss me off, they’re nothing in comparison to seizure laws, which were also detailed in the OP’s Snopes link. Since when should it be acceptable for a law enforcement agency to serve as judge, jury and executioner and seize someone’s personal property? Separation of powers exists for a reason, people.
I find speaking on a cell phone significantly more distracting than conversation with a passanger, and I’ve heard the same thing from many other people. I think part of the reason for this is mentioned upthread, namely that passangers will naturally shut up while you’re attempting a complex merge, while cell phone conversants won’t.
However, I think the more important part is more conceptual. IIRC There was once a bunch of research on why some people act in some apparently nonsensical ways around phone, such as being embarrassed to answer the phone naked, or becoming acutely uncomfortable when you realize that the other person on the phone is going to the bathroom (both of which are quite common). What was found was that people in conversations tend to visualize some imaginary “conversation space” to place their extrapolations of the other person’s face, gestures, expressions, and environment in. This is purely my guess, but I would think that it is much easier to keep track of your environment during a conversation when the environment and your mental “conversation space” are the same (when talking to someone in the car) than when they are two different spaces (when talking to someone somewhere else, i.e. on a cell phone).
If this is really true (and all of the research showing that cell phones are more distracting than passengers suggests something is different) then hands-free cell phones are only a minor improvement.
As a California pedestrian, I think the hands-free law is great and should go farther and ban non-emergency cell phone use while driving. I’ve walked down streets while eating, listening to my iPod, rummaging through my bag for my keys, and a few other things comparable to the other distractions drivers might have while driving, and I’d say that talking on my cell phone distracts me from where I’m walking far more than anything else does. My head just gets deeper into a phone conversation, to the point where I’m unconsciously shutting out things I should be paying attention to. If it’s an engrossing conversation, I could walk two blocks without seeing any of it. It’s scary to me to think how many drivers could be doing the same thing.
Moving while distracted is less of a big deal for me since I’m doing 4mph in my flesh-and-blood self, but you bet your ass if I were in a 2-3-ton vehicle doing 60 on the freeway, I’d wait until I was no longer driving to make my calls.
BINGO! This is my take on it. IMHO - When you are talking on the phone, you are heavily engaging parts of your consciousness that are not similarly engaged when you are talking to a person in person. Part of that consciousness that is engaged taxes visual responsiveness.
When I talk on the phone I find that my visual focus turns somewhat inward. I need to work to turn it fully outward. When I do that I find that I lose some focus on my phone call. I have observed this in others frequently. I would love to see some sort of study about this.
To pre-empt everyone who is reading this and saying, “sucks to be you, this never happens to me!” - I say, “back at ya, buddy.”
Ditto this. I drove halfway across country and back over the winter break to see my family. I kept my phone on in case I got any kind of emergency call. Whenever it rang, I pulled over first chance I could find and return the call. If a real emergency had cropped up, and my car was blocking cell phone use, how would I know? Should I stop every hour or even half-hour to check my phone?
Or a simpler situation: I’m driving in the middle of nowhere, and I need to make a phone call. I pull over, reach for my phone, but discover I’d forgotten to charge it. I plug it into the car adaptor, turn the car on, and… oh wait, now my phone won’t work.
While cell phone use while driving is bad, your solution is a little overkill.
The smoking rule is the really infuriating one- its not the job of the auto laws to regulate parenting that doesn’t involve automobile safety.
I don’t have a cell phone, but is a hands free conversation any different than one with a passenger?
Yeah! You know what California’s real problem is? People can learn about emergencies even if their car is turned on!
Back to the real world: I don’t see a problem with any of the new laws, except for the seizure laws and the no phone use by under-18s thing. The latter sounds a little draconian, and only gives the pigs another excuse to pull kids over and harrass them. “I pulled you over because it looked like you were on a hands-free phone. How about you pop the hood for me? I know you kids like to mess around with your engines. Say, you don’t mind if I tear your car apart looking for drugs, do you? We’re running a little low back at the station.”
I guess I’m not a huge fan of the mandatory switch to Bluetooth, either; a tax discount or permission to use the carpool lane when driving alone on Tuesdays or something would be more rational. But it’s not the death knell for liberty that some of you Thomas Jefferson wannabes seem to think it is, IMO.
Most phone conversations don’t “need to” happen at all. Why do you need to talk on the phone while walking? Sitting at home? Taking a break at work? Why did you need to be on the SDMB this morning?
Driving a car isn’t safe, so I guess there’s no point to insurance laws, seatbelt laws, speed limits, etc.
I’ve been hoping for a few years that NH would enact this very cell phone law. Maybe they will now that another state has. I actually don’t think it should be legal for anyone to talk on the phone while driving, but under 18 is a good start.
I find the smoking one bizarre, though. This law effectively makes it illegal for a parent to be a smoker, doesn’t it? Or not smoke very much, since most serious smokers seem inclined to smoke while driving. If CA wants to outlaw smoking, they ought to just do it, not these strange quarter measures.
FTR, I’m a non-smoker and own a cell phone.