Quote:
Originally Posted by Cobrabill
You nailed it:"BEHAVIOR".And as anyone short of a imbecile knows,you can't legislate behavior.
Cell phone are no different than:
Ipods
cd/tape decks
GPS systems
Heater/A.C. controls
power mirrors
rotten little bastards in the back seat
"Airbag" in the passenger seat
The driver is being distracted.The source of the distraction is irrelevant.Ban them all or ban NONE of them.
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Plenty of evidence out there about all the distractions you've listed but I (and most will) beg to differ on a cell phone in the hands of a driver being no different then the other items on your list. Plus you need to think about time involvement with a cell phone - blocking your vision on one side - verses things like adjusting the radio, mirrors, etc.
From the web, study done in 2005:
Cell phone distraction causes 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries in the United States every year, according to the journal's publisher, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
The reason is now obvious:
Behind the Statistics
Are Cell Phones Really So Dangerous?
Drivers talking on cell phones were 18 percent slower to react to brake lights, the new study found. In a minor bright note, they also kept a 12 percent greater following distance. But they also took 17 percent longer to regain the speed they lost when they braked. That frustrates everyone.
"Once drivers on cell phones hit the brakes, it takes them longer to get back into the normal flow of traffic," Strayer said. "The net result is they are impeding the overall flow of traffic."
Strayer and his colleagues have been down this road before. In 2001, they found that even hands-free cell phone use distracted drivers. In 2003 they revealed a reason: Drivers look but don't see, because they're distracted by the conversation. The scientists also found previously that chatty motorists are less adept than drunken drivers with blood alcohol levels exceeding 0.08.
Separate research last year at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign supported the conclusion that hands-free cell phone use causes driver distraction.
"With younger adults, everything got worse," said Arthur Kramer, who led the Illinois study. "Both young adults and older adults tended to show deficits in performance. They made more errors in detecting important changes and they took longer to react to the changes."
The impaired reactions involved seconds, not just fractions of a second, so stopping distances increased by car-lengths.