And I don’t follow why it would be riskier to conceal your phone while talking. Wouldn’t you just put on speaker phone and set it in the cupholder or something? I don’t know what method of concealment increases danger. Concealing the phone while texting, however, is probably more dangerous. But texting while driving in general is dangerous.
I am self-employed, and spend a considerable part of my day driving to client’s locations. I frequently make and receive business calls while driving. I have a hands-free bluetooth headset, and voice dialing. Occasionally I will pull over during a call if I need to make some notes. I believe those are adequate safety concessions, and I won’t modify my driving/dialing behavior any further.
I’m a little confused about what the poll is asking. Are you asking what excuses we personally use, or asking what excuses we think other people are using? Because I very rarely talk on the phone while driving (only to answer if I think it’s urgent and need info, then hang up quickly) but I’m guessing all of those are excuses other people use.
Doesn’t that law also encompass texting? They’re both banned in CA.
IMHO, driving while talking on a cell phone that is concealed in the glove compartment is riskier than using a hand’s free set-up, but I guess it comes down to how flexible one is on the issue.
What people think the reasons people in general are using at this point. I was aiming for more of a perception thing; I just didn’t want to start off putting people on the defensive about their own cellphone usage, but instead have an actual conversation about this.
But the study was referring to talking only.
I’m looking at it right now and it’s not clear that that’s the case from the ABC story. It just refers to “state law banning handheld mobile-phone use behind the wheel,” which I assume would cover having a phone in your hand while texting. If you have a link for the actual study, that would be useful. The texting ban overlaps the talking ban during the measured time period, and I don’t see any effort to separate the two factors.
I have a 60-70 minute commute one-way each day. Occasionally, I will receive a call from a client while I am in transit. I use a Borg thingee in my ear and always keep the call time to a minimum. There is a corporate policy that you are required to pull over when using a cell phone for business purposes. I imagine liability issues are the reason for this, but I’d like to believe that they have their employee’s best interests at heart. (I also believe in Santa Claus).
I almost never initiate a call while driving. It is much too easy to miss a small cue that an accident is looming when you aren’t properly focused. If I have to make a call, I will wait until I can pull over somewhere to do so, especially if the call is to my dear bride.
Driving the same route every weekday for more than seven years has allowed me to become familiar with my other commuters, and the outlandish things I have seen people do while driving is amazing. Not just texting, that is much too common even after being banned here in Georgia. No, I am talking about reading a book, applying makeup and (believe it or not) changing clothes!
It is a jungle out there, kids.
It drives me insane when people look at their passengers to talk to them. NOT NECESSARY. WATCH THE GODDAM ROAD!
They do it in movies and TV all the time and I get incredibly tense. Yes, I know it’s TV but they are so egregious about it I’m always bracing for the accident I think they are setting me up for.
But I suspect you may have confused people. For example, am I supposed to check #3 if I don’t believe it’s dangerous, or if I think other people do it because they don’t think it’s dangerous?
I can’t speak for myself, because I’ve never tried driving while speaking on a cell phone. But I can say from experience that some types of driving require significantly more concentration than others.
And I don’t find it particularly hard to believe that some people are significantly better at the kind of multitasking required to talk and drive than others are.
So maybe the answer really is “It isn’t dangerous, for some people, some of the time.”
If I were to show you a video that showed that you looked as if you were glancing at the speaker system or at an imaginary person as you used the cellphone, would you modify your driving/dialing habits?
Indeed, it would appear that banning only texting also has no effect, if not a negative effect, on the number of accidents.
LINK
Personally, no, I would not put much weight on that. Even if your statement is true, glancing at something while driving is going to happen regardless of whether you’re on the phone or not. You’ll glance at your radio to adjust volume. You’ll probably glance at the steering wheel if the volume controls are there. You’ll glance at the cruise control buttons. You’ll hopefully glance at your speedometer frequently while driving.
I’m not justifying the usual things about how important I think I am, in fact, as I said, I rarely talk on the phone while driving except when it’s directly pertinent (eg “Hey, I’m running late, I’ll be there in 10 minutes” or “What was your address again?”).
Believing that the way that your brain works is necessarily the way that other people’s brains work is just silly. I am special only in that my brain operates more efficiently when it’s more fully engaged and, as I understand, this is not typical. For instance, I engage in a face to face conversation better if I have something to fidget with or look at, but if I’m trying to have that same conversation while watching TV, listening to music, or whatever, I will fail. Similarly, when I’m writing an e-mail, coding, or driving, listening to music helps me focus.
I seldom drink, and when I do, I don’t drive. This goes under the same list of things that necessarily impair driving because it affects the senses that are needed to drive. It’s not comparable at all.
No, it’s not. Concentrating on a single thing is actually more difficult for me than doing a couple things at the same time, provided they don’t require more than a trivial amount of overlap in the senses used. In this sense, using a phone is no more dangerous than listening to music or having a conversation with another person in the car, other than the amount of time diverted from the road to look at what you’re doing. If I do get a call while driving, which is rare, I can answer it without ever diverting my eyes from the road.
Also, as I said, I still rarely talk on the phone when I’m driving. And those things that necessarily distract my ability to drive, like texting, are things I don’t do except when stopped.
So, how should one drive? The car should be utterly silent, no music, no conversation with other passengers? It sounds like you’re an authority on what is and is not a distraction for everyone else, so maybe you can tell me exactly what is and isn’t distracting for me. The fact of the matter is, I know what is distracting to me, like texting, like reading and I don’t do them. Yes, a lot of people say certain things aren’t distractions when they are or downplay or justify the level of distraction, but that simply is not the case here.
If I were justifying I would say “well, I’m a good driver, so it’s okay” or “I NEED to talk on my cell phone for my job”. What I’m telling you is that, if even when I’m not talking on the phone, I need some sort of additional input to help me focus on the primary task I’m doing, so even when I’m not on the cell phone, I am listening to music or something similar. If I’m going to have that sort of audial input as a necessity anyway, and I can utterly eliminate any interference a phone might have on my needing to look at it, either by doing it completely through touch or when stopped, how is it meaningfully a distraction at all when music or a conversation with a passenger is not?
Yes, some people can’t do that. Hell, I’ve met people that can’t even have a conversation with someone in the car or turn on the radio without being obviously distracted. Just because something is distracting to one person, doesn’t mean it’s distracting to everyone.
If I were giving a stupid justification, like saying I’m good enough of a driver that the distraction, while detracting from my ability to drive, still makes me a better driver than most, you might have a point. Or, you can take what I’m saying at face value and accept that I am better able to judge what does and doesn’t work for me when I’m driving, and that if I’m willing not to text or read or whatever else because they are distractions, that I would do the same thing with talking on the phone as well.
Either way, I conceded in my first post that I think most people probably can’t do it, but thinking just because you and/or most people cannot, therefore everyone cannot, is just poor logic. If you feel you can’t do it, then don’t. If you feel you can’t, but do it anyway, you’re putting other people at risk; and I think a lot of the people that do fall in this group. If you feel safe doing it, what’s wrong with it? In my case, because of how my brain works, I actually feel safer listening to music or talking on my cell, as rare as that is, than I do driving in a quiet car; I will not modify this behavior because someone else needs quiet when they drive.
Here is a quite informative wiki entry on this subject, with links to lots of studies - which I haven’t followed. Handsfree is not safer than handheld, thought there seems to be some question of whether dialing is the reason.
As for passenger conversations
Which explains why listening to the radio is not the same as talking on the phone.
That’s exactly why I drive an SUV.
There are clearly a range of driving abilities, as measured by insurance rates and accident statistics, but people are very bad at correctly assigning themselves to the right driver category. I suspect the nitwits I used to be behind leaving 10 car lengths at 10 mph and weaving in and out of the breakdown lanes as they chatted away thought they were driving just fine.
It is true that different conditions require different driving skills, but one can turn into another very quickly. Haven’t you ever been in a situation where everything was moving smoothly and normally until some idiot cuts across 3 lanes of traffic, or hits another car causing a chain reaction, or pulls out in front of you with no warning? If you had been talking on a cellphone in that situation, isn’t it possible that your reaction time would be worse?
Is there data showing an increase in crashes and/or fatalities in the years when cell phones have become ubiquitous vs. pre-cell years? I’ve never seen it, but presumably it exists.