I hope this doesn't make sense to you folks.

[cjsmith]

Seen in someone else's journal, a story: a maniac driver runs a red light at apparently a pretty good clip, and hits a car whose female driver is on the phone.

First comment indicates a wish that the cellphone got permanently implanted in the head of the woman who was hit. It goes on to say she was probably putting on makeup at the time.

Wow. First off, let's note the casual bigotry. If the driver who was hit hadn't been noted in the story as female, that lovely throwaway comment about the makeup wouldn't have been in there. Would the first part have been? Next let's take a look at the fact that the commenter is more ticked at someone for being on the phone (and yeah, being female) than at someone who RAN A RED LIGHT AND HIT ANOTHER CAR. O-kay. I know there are links between cellphone use and distraction while driving, but this gal DIDN'T run the light, and was thus to my mind quantifiably less dangerous at that time than the person who did run the light. I sure know which driver I'd rather share the road with. But this commenter defended his comment, saying it was every driver's responsibility to look out for others and he just hates it when women put on makeup in the car.

Bat shit, holy man.

Comments

[submarine-bells.livejournal.com]

First off, I would like to agree with the main point made in the original post that the driver of a stationary vehicle is unlikely to be hugely to blame in that sort of accident just because they're using a cellphone at the time of the accident. However, as a road safety researcher I will say that I believe that using cellphones while driving is *really* dumb. I don't have time to dig out a nice long list of research papers about this right now, but for a start I will point folk who are interested at this (http://www.monash.edu.au/muarc/reports/muarc206.html) for a start... it's a review of recent-ish (2003)literature on driver distraction issues, including mobile phones. The abstract I linked to does mention the thing that klwalton refers to: A recent study revealed that a greater proportion of drivers involved in traffic accidents are distracted by eating or drinking (1.7%) than by talking on a mobile phone (1.5%).

However, one point that often gets overlooked in such debates is the issue of task pacing. It's very true that distraction of any sort while driving can be dangerous. However, a critical difference between cellphone use and other in-car distractions is that CD-player twiddling and eating stuff are tasks that the driver has control of the pacing of and can stop doing during times that external driving conditions require more attention. Coversation with someone else in the car can ebb and flow according to driving circumstances also - a passenger can see that the driver is about to perform a u-turn and hold off nattering or asking questions at that point, which makes it easier for the driver to apply more attention to the driving task. However, someone on the other end of a cellphone conversation has no idea what the driver is doing, and is going to expect that the driver has their full attention, and will converse accordingly. This is likely to lead to more attention being required by the conversation at nconvenient-to-driving times, which in turn increases the chances of an accident occurring because the driver wasn't paying attention to their driving at a critical moment.

So yeah, I have a cellphone but I refuse to have telephonic conversations while driving. On the rare occasions that the phone rings while I'm driving, if it's within easy reach I'll pick it up and say "can't talk now, driving" then put it down again. If it isn't, I'll leave it. I truly believe that doing anything else is irresponsible, by and large.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the studies, but your comment fits wiith my intuitive feelings on the subject. At least with passengers in the car, they can sense when traffic's bad. The one thing that's almost as bad as a cell-phone is inquisitive children, because they tend to not be aware of traffic and tend to repeat questions. And mine always ask deep philosophical questions just as I'm merging onto 101. But even there you can yell at them to shut up if necessary.

I still sometimes talk on my cell-phone when driving, though. And yes, it's stupid. If it's an intricate conversation, I pull off.