In San Francisco a few years ago--they went through all of the red light camera pictures and found the vast majority of those, that they could identify performing an activity during driving, were EATING.
Also, they have done other studies on cell phones and found no difference between talking on a cell phone, hands free cell phone, or talking between the driver and the passenger. Changing the station on the radio, smoking, etc. also were significant factors too.
Cell phones, hands free or not does not matter
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You've dialed the wrong number if you think that it's safe to drive while chatting on your cell. A newly released study of Australian motorists found that cell phone users were four times as likely to be involved in a serious crash.
The study, which ran in the British Medical Journal, is the first of its type to use actual crash data and cell phone records to correlate serious vehicular accident injuries with talking on the telephone. Further, the results show that the same risks are posed whether holding a phone to your ear or talking through a hands-free devise such as a speakerphone.
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Inattentive driving also is a subject of concern to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in Washington, D.C. Says NHTSA spokesman Eric Bolton: "For years, we've been very concerned about inattentive driving. Cell phone use is one of many such distractions that may be a factor involved in fatal vehicular crashes." Bolton cited other major distractions, namely drivers fiddling with CDs, switching channels on the car radio, talking to passengers, eating food or drinking coffee, and looking back at children in the backseat.
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From this study, young and old are more prone to accidents... However the young on cell phone performed worst than older drivers on cell phones:
url=http://www.utah.edu/unews/releases/05/feb/cellphones.html]University of Utah:[/url]
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Feb. 1, 2005 -- If you have been stuck in traffic behind a motorist yakking on a cellular phone, a new University of Utah study will sound familiar: When young motorists talk on cell phones, they drive like elderly people, moving and reacting more slowly and increasing their risk of accidents.
"If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell phone, their reaction times are the same as a 70-year-old driver who is not using a cell phone. It's like instantly aging a large number of drivers," says David Strayer, a University of Utah psychology professor and principal author of the study.
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The study found that when 18- to 25-year-olds were placed in a driving simulator and talked on a cellular phone, they reacted to brake lights from a car in front of them as slowly as 65- to 74-year-olds who were not using a cell phone.
The elderly drivers, meanwhile, became even slower to react to brake lights when they spoke on a cell phone. But the good news for elderly drivers was that their driving skills did not become as bad as had been predicted by earlier research showing that older people performing multiple tasks suffer additional impairment due to aging.
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When elderly drivers used cell phones, their reaction times got worse, but not as bad as had been expected. Previous research "suggested older people should have been really messed up if you put them on a cell phone because, not only are they slower overall due to age, but there's a difficulty dividing attention that should make using a cell phone much more difficult for them than for young people," Strayer said. Yet the study "suggests older adults do not suffer a significantly greater penalty for talking on a cell phone while driving than do their younger counterparts," Strayer and Drews wrote.
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There were too few collisions for statistical analysis. But Strayer notes that twice as many accidents happened to motorists on cell phones compared with motorists who were not talking. And young drivers were in collisions twice as often as elderly drivers.
"Older drivers were slightly less likely to get into accidents than younger drivers," Strayer says. "Why? They tend to have a greater following distance. Their reactions are impaired, but they are driving so cautiously they were less likely to smash into somebody," although in real life, "older drivers are significantly more likely to be rear-ended" because of their slow speed.
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More summaries of studies...
Yes, talking on a cell phone is probably more likely 2-4x likely to cause an accident. But so is being young (2x) and the young are (2x) more likely than the general male population to be talking on a cell phone (women are 1.5x more likely than males).
However, I really fear that if these (relatively) small increases in chance for accidents becomes the norm for writing laws (like it has not happened all ready), then it will justify new laws that justify a $100-$300 traffic ticket when somebody is otherwise driving safely. How about this example of a law that would probably save more lives than cell phone laws; only allowing drivers between 30 and 60 on the road since they have 1/2 the accident rate?
In the end, everyone needs to drive responsibly.
-Bill
