By ‘drink driving’, I mean any level of blood alcohol that places one above the legal limit to drive - even by 1%.
Reading the interwebs it seems that using the mobile phone (not a hands-free) driving is as bad, if not worse, than having a few brews and turning the key;
“Reaction times for drivers using a phone are around 50% slower than normal driving” http://think.direct.gov.uk/mobile-phones.html
Because imbibing alcohol before/during driving is seen as a selfish, indulgent, deliberate & flagrant vice whereas using a cellphone is considered more a semi-innocent misuse of a convenient technology we all partake of. Other than driving you can use a cellphone most places without any social stigma. You can’t even legally drink while walking down the street, regardless of whether you’re actually intoxicated or not. IOW it’s as much (more really) an emotional judgement as it is a practical one.
There is also a fairly pervasive notion that the distraction of using a cell phone while driving only applies to other people. I know a disappointingly large number of people who insist that they themselves are not in fact distracted while on the phone - they’re just as attentive as when doing nothing but driving.
I am sure there are also plenty of people who don’t believe they themselves are as impaired by drinking as other people are, but it has become less socially acceptable to say that outloud.
The actual answer is that we have been dealing with drunk driving since the invention of the automobile. Cell phones and cars are a relatively recent phenomenon. It’s also a lot harder to detect whether you have been using a cell phone while driving.
American also has this weird schizophrenic attitude when it comes to alcohol. On the one hand, you have the puritanical MADD mentality that led to prohibition in the 30s. OTOH, most people who don’t suck like to drink.
I think this is it. I’ve talked on the phone for short periods (~30 seconds) while driving but I try to end them quickly. I also try to avoid it at all when driving in complicated traffic (as opposed to bumper-to-bumper jam). You can’t be drunk for short bursts.
Heck, if I have to take a call while driving (and I can’t pull over readily), I like to hold the phone at chest level with the speaker on.
-Cops, if any, are less likely to spot it
-I’m not holding the phone to my ear, which blocks my peripheral vision on that side.
…and I keep the call as short as possible. Though I do remember a passenger who tried to show me his phone so I could read a text message, while driving. I thought that was particularly idiotic. Just read it to me, schmuck.
…and there was that guy who carried on an animated conversation with a bus driver while we were sailing along curvy roads at night in Northern Italy, obviously wanting to make frequent eye contact and, near the end of the trip, affectionately touching the driver’s face while the bus was still moving. I had to really restrain myself from grabbing that guy and smashing him into a seat railing, by telling myself that though satisfying, this action was likely to prove an even greater distraction. Unfortunately, I hadn’t an Italian phrasebook handy to give me a phonetic rendition of “get back in your seat, you fucking moron.”
Anyway, my further commentary is likely to get even rantier, so I’ll stop here.
On my old cell phones I could dial without looking, but my new phone requires me to look at the screen. I’ve noticed that to be a huge distraction for me, yet I still do it. I also look at the screen for email and txt notifications. I’ve also been driving drunk for the past 30 years so I have some confidence in my ability to do that.
Why would you initiate a call while driving?
And as for 30 years of making the roads more Russian Roulette-like for yourself and the drivers around you, we thank you for your dedication.
I seriously don’t understand the need to communicate with people outside of your vehicle while driving. Surely you can wait to call your BFF until you’ve reached your destination? Likewise, I think your BFF will (or at least should) understand if you can’t talk right now. We made it decades not calling people on the go without disaster… So what’s changed?
My wife pointed out that one of the away messages that could be displayed to people trying to contact her is “I can’t talk right now, I’m driving.” I snerked, and then got sad thinking of how few people will ever use that one.
I think that part of it is that if you are drunk, you know you are drunk and try hard to compensate. If you are on the phone, you have to think about the call as well as having to hold the thing. I guess that driving while swigging from a whisky bottle would be worse.
When I used to drive and phone I became aware that it was much more distracting than talking to a passenger. I think that this was because a passenger would usually shut up if things got tricky, while the person on the other end of a phone call has no idea what is going on.
This said, there are plenty of videos out there showing people doing all kinds of stuff whilst driving.
One rather simple answer is that accident statistics don’t bear out the idea that cell phone driving and drunk driving are equivalents, probably for the reasons cited by the others in this thread.
Distracted driving contributes to a fairly large portion of fatal accidents (although not as many as DUI) but distracted driving includes a whole host of things like fiddling with the radio, rubbernecking and even daydreaming. Cell phone use only accounts for small portion of distracted driving accidents, but since the various road safety bodies have identified it as something they have a better chance of stamping out than the other distractions, that’s what they’ve been fixated on.
:smack: “confidence in my ability”! Do you also have confidence in everyone else’s ability to avoid your erratic driving while you’re doing it? When your string runs out, which I hope is soon, I hope you don’t take anyone else with you.
The source of the meme (that using a cell phone while driving is like driving while drunk) comes from this article (look at the second sentence of the discussion).
BTW, the article also said, quite clearly, that hands-free cell phones were not associated with a reduced risk. So much for all the legislative sleight-of-hand following this landmark paper. If the lawmakers were serious about reducing the risks of cell phones and driving, ANY use of them while driving would have been made illegal.
Various psych studies have shown the phenomenon of attention blindness–the inability to consciously register what is right in front of your eyes when you are thinking about something else. This has nothing to do with whether your phone is handheld. Many people on this board have seen the basketball video that demonstrates this.
Why in the world do you do these things when you realize it’s a distraction and when you could kill somebody doing it? Also you should realize that alcohol gives you a false sense of confidence.
Yes but police ticket drunk drivers all the time who have not gone so far as to cause a fatal accident. The idea is to prevent deaths. They are probably not going to check records of everyone who they think might be using a phone while driving.