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| quote: | Originally posted by Jungle Fever
In my opinion, the only way you should be allowed to talk on the phone in your car, if you are the driver, is through hands free. This would reduce the risk of a driver being distracted due to cell phone use. It should be law for every driver and not just novice ones.
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Actually that's a fallacy, there was a study done earlier this year and it makes no difference if a cell phone is hands free or not; the driver is still distracted.
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Study: Hands-free phone not safer on road
June 30, 2006
BY MARIO PARKER
BLOOMBERG NEWS
Drivers talking on cell phones are just as inattentive or likely to get into accidents as drunk drivers, even if they're using hands-free devices, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Human Factors.
People conversing on cell phones while behind the wheel performed just as poorly in a driving simulator as those with a blood-alcohol level of 0.08%, the level at which someone can be convicted of drunken driving in Michigan and most states, according to psychologists at the University of Utah.
Both handheld and hands-free cell phones impaired driving, the study found.
That calls into question regulations that prohibit handheld cell phones and permit hands-free devices, according to the researchers.
At any given moment during the day, 10% of drivers on U.S. roads are gabbing away on their wireless devices, according to a 2005 estimate by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
State lawmakers are "not addressing the issue by allowing the use of hands-free cell phones and not handheld," said Frank Drews, coauthor of the study and assistant professor of psychology at the University of Utah, where the study was conducted earlier this year.
"We shouldn't take the mind-set that if you use a headset you would be safer."
Simulated road test
The study examined the behavior of 25 men and 15 women, each of whom drove four times in a simulator. Each drove undistracted once, then drove with a hands-free device, once with a phone and then drove with a 0.08% blood-alcohol level, measured by a Breathalyzer.
The participants drove on a simulated 24-mile multilane highway with two or three lanes of traffic in each direction, in dry, daytime conditions, following a pace car, according to the study.
Each driver used a cell phone to talk to a research assistant about a subject of interest. The study's results:
• Participants drove more aggressively when intoxicated, and more slowly while talking on a cell phone.
• Cell phone users were 9% slower to brake, had 24% more variation in following distance and were 19% slower to return to their initial speed after braking.
• Three cell phone users had accidents.
• Intoxicated drivers followed the pace car more closely, were twice as likely to brake 4 seconds before an accident would have occurred and hit the brakes with 23% more force, according to the study. There were no accidents.
"What we found was that the relative risks are very comparable," said David Strayer, lead author of the study and professor of psychology at the University of Utah. "We found that people on cell phones were equally impaired."
'Inattention blindness'
Strayer said that cell phones "create a form of inattention blindness."
While many consider holding a cell phone to be a distraction, it is the actual conversation that distracts the driver, according to the researchers.
"These people reduce efficiency on the highway system," Drews said.
Those who talk on cell phones while driving are 5.36 times more likely to get into an accident than undistracted drivers, the study found.
If driving drunk is illegal because of the accident risk, and the risk is comparable to driving while talking on a cell phone, then governments should consider outlawing their use, the researchers said.
New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and the District of Columbia all have laws requiring drivers to use only hands-free cell phones, according to the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
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>>Source<<
I'm all for it.
People seem to have a hard enough time WITHOUT it...
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