Studies imply that even hands-free operation of cell phones impairs safe driving ability. While I’ll admit that voice-actuated, eye-free operation is safer than traditional phone-in-the-hand-with-button-pressing mode, cell phones still present many opportunities for distraction when complete attention to the road is criticial; like when merging or exiting interstate highways, driving around the barrels in construction zones, avoiding black ice and pot holes, steering through wind gusts, and moving through heavy rain or snow storms with the windshield wipers flapping and the raindrops distorting the view. Since one or more of these adverse conditions can arise at any time and without much warning, IMHO, a driver’s attention needs to be focused on driving, with near minimal distractions.
Talking to someone on a cell phone differs from conversing with a passenger in that the person on the other end cannot tell when dynamic traffic conditions indicate that he should be silent. The driver must tell him, and this is just one more responsibility to tax the driver’s attention and slow his responses to the rapidly-changing road conditions mentioned above. The phone buddy keeps gabbing even though traffic signs may appear that the driver really should read and understand. Drivers tend to not perceive such info bits when absorbed in conversation on the phone.
Conversations with passengers are safer than those with folks on the cell phone, also, because the passenger can observe the driver’s body language, and can also see the road conditions to the same degree that the driver does. So, when a attention-demanding situation occurs, the driver need not tell the passenger to be quiet, but might have to tell the person on the cell phone. The person on the phone does not as directly observe the road conditions and can thus, unintentionally distract the driver with his banter.
Also, a passenger’s voice demands less of the driver’s brain power to comprehend than a voice on a cell phone – hands-free or not. The audio in cell calls tends to be more muffled and constrained in audio frequency bandwidth and volume, and thus, is less intelligible than a voice on a radio, or a passenger’s voice for that matter. Additionally, intermittent cell signals often cause some words to be lost; there’s a lot of, “What did you say?” and “I can’t hear you” with cell phones that cause the driver to (albeit momentarily) direct his attention away from the road. In this way, even a hands-free cell phone conversation demands much more mental overhead than a direct verbal exchange with a passenger, and thus, places the driver as well as his passengers in greater peril. The technology is not mature enough to be consider safe to use while driving.
GPS Vs. Cell Phone Usage Dangers
Some suggest that if we ban cell phones, then why not ban GPS units as well. My answer: GPS units differ from cell phones in several key ways. First, the ones I’ve observed require less of the driver’s attention. Once you program your destination into them, they generally require no further adjustment. They call out the directions clearly (usually), and the announcements are timed to occur well before the driver is required to merge, exit, or turn.
Also, the speech that GPS units generate is typically more legible than cell phone chatter, and what’s more is that there’s much less of it except during those times when you’re driving in the close quarters of a city. Then they can be a bit monotonous. But unlike a conversation with a real person, the driver is not mandated to pay them attention. With people, there is social pressure to respond promptly during conversations.
Further, unlike most cell phones that tend to be very compact, GPS units are specifically designed ergonomically for drivers so that they’re as minimally obtrusive as practical. Indeed, they’re meant to be used by drivers.
Many units even provide timely information on traffic and construction conditions that enable drivers to avoid congested areas as well as the risks of driving in said places. Though the GPS technology is newer than cell phones, and thus hasn’t been studied as much, my hunch is as follows: Whatever increased danger to drivers there is that’s due to paying attention to the GPS unit instead of the road, is more than offset by the improved safety they bestow.
After all, with an audible GPS unit in the car, the driver need not look away (or as far away) from the road as much as he would if he was using a paper map. The GPS display is much simpler than most maps and would seem to require of the driver less concentration for navigational purposes than a map. As far as map usage goes, a GPS unit may in fact reduce accident rates because it conveys its information to driver more efficiently by taking much of the guess work out of where to go.
So because of the more tightly focused and useful niche role of GPS units in the car’s cockpit, they can’t be legitimately likened to cell phones. Indeed, I’d argue that GPS units as described, are far less dangerous than cell phones.
Now as I do not drive, my experience with GPS systems is admittedly rather limited. However, my original statement was about the distracting effects of cell phone usage only. GPS usage and how closely it mirrors the cell phone in the degree of distraction it creates I would have preferred not to get into, as I do not see them as being in the same class of activities. While the former is specifically designed to aid the driver, the latter is not. Practically all the information provided by the GPS pertains to the driver’s focus, which is driving and navigating the vehicle. But most often, the information being exchanged while talking on a cell phone has nothing do with (and thus supplements in no material way) the task at hand, which is to drive the vehicle safely.
The jury is still out on the dangers of GPS usage — indeed, much less scientifically obtained data is available about GPS than cell phones at this time. The intense visual GPS interfaces of today’s sleek GPS devices may indeed be more dangerous to use than talking on a hands-free cell phone. So I’m not passing judgment on GPS just yet.
But with the cell phone, unlike the GPS, much evidence is already in that shows this activity to impair a person’s ability to drive a car as much as 90 percent, which is worse than many drunk drivers experience at the height of their intoxication. Now the potential for danger with GPS is real, I think. But it hasn’t been studied enough yet to know how much it impairs a driver.
The similarity I cite between cell phone users and drunk drivers was intended to illustrate with an extreme example, how cell phone users, as do drunk drivers, overestimate their multitasking abilities on the road. While using a cell phone may not be an actual impairment in the sense that drunk driving is, it does however cause acidents that are just as deadly. Drunk driving is banned because of how deadly it has proven to be. In that same vein thus, so too should talking on a cell phone while driving be banned, as it has also proven to be equally dangerous.
Cell Phones Are Visual Too
On the simple interfaces of cell phones being less dangerous to use than the highly visual GPS ones: The trend is that cell phones are becoming more visually-operated as well — especially with the recent landslide popularity of the iPhone 4. There are millions of iPhones in use already, and this latest one’s only been on the market for roughly two months. In fact, with this phone, most of the arguments made against the GPS and how its visual interface might be very distracting would also apply to the iPhone, the Droid, the Blackberry, and other devices that are more-than-ever utilizing a visual interface for user I/O. So in this sense, perhaps GPS usage could be viewed as akin to cell phone usage.
For the increasingly visually demanding aspects of cell phones, I was responding to the argument that GPS units are more dangerous than cell phones because of the visual attention that operating them demands. My counter argument was that cell phones are not exempt from this trend toward increasingly complex visual user interfaces, and so suffer increasingly from the same drawback.
Within the city, GPS units are admittedly more intrusive than they are on highways and strait-shot pathways. But even in the city, I can’t imagine them being AS intrusive as an ongoing cell phone conversation that requires listening as well as thinking up responses. In the GPS case, all you have to do is listen to it chatter.
With the plethora of road-ready apps available on the iPhone et al, the potential to lure drivers’ eyes from the road is likely no less than a GPS.
Yes, drivers are responsible for ignoring many distractions. So why add to that already large list by talking on a cell phone while driving?
I agree that with freedom comes responsibility. But people often enjoy the freedom without actually shouldering this responsibility. Ideally, a person should be able to self-police, and abstain from an action when what he’s considering is beyond his capability. She may think she knows when she’s unable to operate a car safely while chatting, and perhaps many can. Drunk drivers invariably feel that they can safely drive a car while inebriated. But while many boast that they can, many of those also prove that they cannot; they kill another with their car while gabbing. People tend to overestimate their multi-tasking abilities with cell phones as well. So, they need regulated, and if it takes a ban to do that, then that’s what should be done. IMHO.
My bottom line is that anything that distracts the driver from the road enough to put me in peril when riding with him / her is a bad thing and should be banned. That includes cell phones as well as GPS units. Just ask anyone who has been injured by a cell phone wielding road warrior, and they likely feel the same. If you need to use such devices then just pull over until you’re done.
