Banning handheld phone use by drivers had NO effect on accident rate - study Recent legislation banning the use of handheld phones by drivers had basically no effect on the number of road accidents, according to a new study. “If it’s really that dangerous, and if even just a fraction of people stop using their phones, we would expect to find some decrease in accidents,” says professor Daniel Kaffine, …
@Chris Wareham -- "Banning handheld phone use by drivers had NO effect on handheld phone use by drivers"
This this this SO MUCH THIS. The problem is enforceability. There is a massively decreased police presence on the roads, and an actual traffic stop is the only way to catch someone doing this.
@Neil B "There is a massively decreased police presence on the roads, and an actual traffic stop is the only way to catch someone doing this."
Some areas there aren't any traffic officers even before the cutbacks, Devon & Cornwall Police for instance have just 7 traffic cars across the entire region, the biggest single police force area in England, and the regular patrol cars couldn't care less about motoring offences. I've seen police cars going round without headlights well into dusk, and they ignore drivers who have a brake light or headlight out - this being a rural area the roads are unlit as soon as you get outside the towns.
Bit of a followup to my last post on Devon & Cornwall Police (regular police driving without headlights & ignoring motoring offences), today I see this article on the beeb: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-28437914 (£30,000 spent on repairs after they failed to apply the handbrake on multiple occasions... in the last 6 months)
...and an actual traffic stop is the only way to catch someone doing this.
I dunno. Don't forget, every aspect of our lives is now committed to MPEG. Including your commute, your stop at the petrol station, your buying sweets,... basically any urban road or motorway, you are a film star. They probably even see which number you dialed.
"Banning handheld phone use by drivers had NO effect on handheld phone use by drivers"
Exactly right. Maybe I'm an exception, but I did actually stop using a phone other than with a headset, and even then I sometimes just kill the call if I'm in a dangerous spot. I had the aha moment a lot earlier than when the ban came in, mainly because I have been using mobiles for a *long* time (my first phone was a NEC P3 :) ).
So, from simply personal experience, the outcome of the study only makes sense with your re-interpretation :)
My own experience over the last ten years owning both cars and phones is that yes, using a hand held phone will driving isn't a safe thing to do - did it once or twice and stopped. I have a hands-free kit for the last 6 or so years, and I think it really depends on the call - happy to chat to someone (mainly my wife) low involvement conversation - how was your day, how where the kids, do I need to pick up something from the shop, etc. And happy to take work calls where I'm a passive listener - but anything where I need to think and engage is lethal - tried it once, I'm told that in the middle of a passage of technical advice I just unconsciously started talking about road conditions and other cars - bad, but better than the alternative where I suspect I would have crashed - didn't try that again.
So I guess to me the problem here is that the behavior we want (drivers to focus on driving) and the action taken (banning hand-held mobiles) are loosely aligned, but the action may well not be having the effect we want.
Of course, one other possible reason - lots of drivers didn't use handheld mobiles when driving without the band being in place - I wonder if this group overlaps heavily with the group who would automatically obey the ban?
If I understood the article in the link correctly this study was made during "2008".
I have a very poor memory but I believe that 6 years ago SmartPhone usage was no-where near what it is today. Today people use their smartphones for a plethora of Social Media applications which were not prevalent at the time.
Please, redo this study today and publish the result.
The article also does not state how the managed to ensure that no-one used their phones....
I don't recall the last time a car rolled itself out of someone's garage and mowed a bunch of pedestrians down.
Having said that, even that eventuality is engineered in: that's why you have automatic screen wipers. But fear not, this may soon happen.
"Having said that, even that eventuality is engineered in: that's why you have automatic screen wipers. But fear not, this may soon happen."
I don't see it happening. It doesn't navigate through boom gates with tickets that need a button press, and retreival of your parking ticket. Nor does it deal with rouge shopping trolleys, nor fucktard parents and their errant brants running right behind you as you're reversing (is Audi going to pay the brat's hospital bills?), even worse the the precision robotic arm that needs to plug in your ticet again, or the vending machine that is not web-integrated to pay your parking time, worst of all the manual payment boxes where you have to deal with someone who's first three languages are anything but english, you get the idea.
We have a LONG way to go.
"That's a bit harsh. All they really need to do is ban accidents."
Believe it or not, that's not quite as ludicrous as it sounds.
"Banning" something doesn't make anyone stop doing it, it just gives you legal recourse to penalise those who are *caught* doing it. The *intention* is to modify behaviour through the threat of being penalised. Nice in theory, but as many have said before, it only works on those who were honest to start with. The criminals, or the ones using their phones, or the ones running red lights are going to do it anyway.
So just "making" a law will change behaivour, but not in the way you want. In case of phone useage, it does not stop people from using their phones, it only means they better obscure the fact they're doing it.
For one thing, Google gets employees who can work during their commute without getting shouted down by San Francisco renters for putting them all on a shuttle bus. For another, they'll probably license the technology to any and all car manufacturers on a per-unit basis.
Third, and most important to this article, if you're not driving then it is safe to use the phone. You can talk on it, read from it, edit things on it, and otherwise use Google's software on it.
Fourth, you can spend more time that you're not using the phone or laptop to read targeted Google ads on video billboards.
Police tend to be better drivers?
In what universe?
In quite a few of them. By way of illustration, in Belgium you can see motorway police train on racing circuits every single week. I have had quite a few eclectic bits of driving training (including anti-kidnap), but I would not presume to drive away from police drivers.
I was trained to drive to P1 level in the Ambulance Service. I am fully aware of my shortcomings as a driver and try to avoid mistakes. I don't claim to be perfect, but am aware of of hazards and drive in a way that is defensive. I do drive quickly when it is safe, but when it is not, then I do not. I try not to break speed limits, even on a quiet motorway at night; it may be within your capabilities when everything is OK, but when something goes wrong at speed, it goes wrong very quickly and while you may escape a blowout at 70, your chances decrease significantly at 90 and when you do hit something, the results are more serious by a large margin.
The difference with someone not trained to this standard is that you often find, they claim to be better drivers than they actually are, those who are trained to this standard accept they are still developing their skills and are regularly sent for refresher training.
Your argument presumes ordinary drivers aren't trained to drive while talking on handheld or handsfree devices. I was trained to be able to do this by a retired police driving instructor and also to train our fleet in order to reduce the frequency of avoidable mishaps.
Perhaps the answer, if police are safe to use them, is to train everyone to be safe using them. Make it part of driver training, tests.
Truckies have been using CB radios for decades before the invention of mobile phone.
CB's require one hand to be away from the steering wheel, so logically that is just as dangerous as using a mobile phone.
Then there are the cabbies who play with their booking systems whilst driving.
Cops play with their radios, and phones, and speed cameras, and computer systems while driving.
If they were truly serious about road safety, then there would be a blanket ban on all of them.
Of course, with cops "being better drivers" and "receiving training", then there should be no reason why the same training in use of mobiles whilst driving should not be made available to the general public. But they won't do it, as the training would only give them a on off payment, whereas a ban will be a continuous revenue stream for the greedy twunts.
there should be no reason why the same training in use of mobiles whilst driving should not be made available to the general public.
Having ridden hundreds of thousands of miles on motorcycles, over decades, I long ago concluded that everybody should have to do advanced driving courses to get a license. But one of the biggest priorities of our civilization is to get as many people and as many cars on the road - out of the showrooms and onto the road - and into the petrol stations buying as many petrochemicals as they can afford. Quite apart from the motoring industry being one of if not the major influences on Government from a lobbying pov, there is also a lot of lost tax revenue from decreasing alcohol and tobacco sales to make up! But the experience I've gained by virtue of being so much more exposed to danger than car drivers, which is like advanced driving training (plus the experience of time and repetition) is what every motorist should aspire to. Trouble is our world is steered by bean counters.
I long ago concluded that everybody should have to do advanced driving courses to get a license
Fully agree - but I would add something. I would like it if people have at least 2 or 3 sessions in ALL categories of vehicles that use the road. Drivers knowing the needs and driving characteristics of other road users are infinitely more able to work out a safe approach to their driving. Making an emergency stop in a HGV without ABS will make you think twice of using that empty gap in front of it on a congested motorway..
From what I see driing a lot in the UK, your bog standard plod seems to drive just like the average numbnut car driver - I think they used to be much better years ago, but they've got significantly worse over the couple of decades. But maybe that's because they are getting younger!
Seriiously though, dedicated traffic cops seem to have remained very good - I haven't ever noticed them driving like eejits (though there are always going to be exceptions).
The Police, like all other emergency service drivers are not exempt from the law. In the event of an accident, they are subject to much higher levels of scrutiny than the public, I can attest to this having been at the receiving end of a Notice of Intended Prosecution following an RTC while driving an Ambulance.
If you watch any of the "in car documentaries" where the police are in pursuit of a vehicle, you are more likely to see the passenger providing the commentary, you will see the Ambulance attendant using the radio and you will see the fire service supervisor on a fire tender use the radio, not the driver. If a Police traffic car is single manned then they often have a PTT switch allowing messages to be sent, personal radios are never hand held and many have in the ear headsets. Drivers do not engage in long conversations, messages are short and to the point.
If any of these drivers are in an accident, they face a real chance of prosecution. The view taken by the CPS is that as we all received a higher standard of driver training and that a higher standard is therefore expected on the road; if an accident happens, then this higher standard is used as the yardstick for prosecution. What would be seen as a case of careless driving and potentially a caution for any other road user, would be prosecuted as the higher offence of dangerous driving for an emergency services driver.
I will pose you a question. If your house is being burgled and the offender is still there and has a knife, or if you are trapped upstairs with your house on fire or you are in your living room and your child has choked on a peanut, do you want the emergency service driver to be worrying at every stage about whether their next move will have them ending up in court facing the loss of their job or do you trust them to drive to the best of their ability making the maximum progression to come and help you ?
Not when Mythbusters went about it. They have compared Drunk driving, Mobile use (with and without hands-free) and tired driving. None of them compared well with the 'normal' state of the drivers.
You may not feel that they used a sufficiently large sample size but the differences they recorded were big enough for each driver to be relevant and possibly a lot more relevant than stats which start by removing lots data to eliminate 'other' factors. You say that even if most ignore a ban at least some will observe it but could those be the same people that were careful before the ban and did not have accidents whilst on the phone?
Gets us into the territory where they list the cause of an accident as 'Speed'...this is simplification of cause for ease of collation. Speed is the cause of every automotive accident as without it no two object can come into contact with each other (although technically 0 is also a speed). The critical word missing is 'inappropriate'. Go at 60 round a bend marked at 30 and the likelihood is you will have an unintended occurence, travel at 90 on an empty dry well-lit motorway way and your are much less likely. Use your mobile phone in the midst of rush-hour traffic to get directions when you are lost and it is when, not if, you will hit something. Do the same on that aforementioned motorway and the reduction of attention on your actual driving is not so relevant.
But the Mythbusters experiment had the wrong title.
It should have been 'Is it safe to do complex mathematics whilst driving'. There was no 'chat' on the phone with the person driving being able to day 'I can't answer that right now' or 'This is getting complex I'll call you back. As such it was a biased experiment.
If I am on my hands free and I can't talk because of the traffic, I don't. The experiment was set up in such a way that there was only outcome. If you had the person sitting in the car with you asking the same complex questions and demanding the answers without exception then you would have had the same result.
... the car that was straddling two lanes of the dual carriage way on Thursday, whose speed was alternating between 40 mph to 60 mph. When it eventually pulled into the lefthand lane had a driver with phone in one hand held to his ear and glancing at paper work on passenger seat.
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