Safe Speed Forums

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4672657.stm

Mobiles 'quadruple crash danger'

Drivers are four times more likely to crash when using mobile phones, even if they use hands-free kits, experts say.

They reached their estimates by looking at the phone bill records of 456 drivers needing hospital treatment after road crashes in Perth, Australia.

In the UK it is illegal to use a hand-held mobile phone while driving.

Safety campaigners say the University of Western Australia study in the British Medical Journal shows the rules should apply to hands-free phone use.

Crash comparisons

For each driver, the researchers assessed phone use immediately before a crash and on trips at the same time of day 24 hours, three days, and seven days before the crash for comparison.

Mobile phone use in the 10 minutes before a crash was associated with a four-fold increased likelihood of crashing.

This was irrespective of whether the driver was using a hand-held or hands-free phone.

Similar results were found for the interval up to five minutes before a crash.

Author Suzanne McEvoy and colleagues from the University of Western Australia said: "More and more new vehicles are being equipped with hands-free phone technology.

"Although this may lead to fewer hand-held phones used while driving in the future, our research indicates that this may not eliminate the risk.

Total ban

"Indeed, if this new technology increases mobile phone use in cars, it could contribute to even more crashes."

A spokesman from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents said: "This is exactly what we have said and have known for some time.

"We hope that the people who callously think that their phone call is more important than somebody's life will get the message eventually when they see more and more research like this."

He said the current ban on using hand-held mobiles while driving, which can carry the penalty of a fine and in the future possibly also up to three points on the driver's licence, should be extended to hands-free phones.

However, the study authors said this would be difficult to enforce.

They said a possible solution might be to change mobile phones so that they cannot be used when vehicles are in motion, but added that industry was unlikely to embrace this.
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The BMJ paper:
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/rapidpdf ... 2.55v1.pdf

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Safe Speed issued the following PR at 10:31 this morning:

PR210: New research shows weakness in government road safety policy

News: for immediate release

New research published in the British Medical Journal warns that drivers using
mobile phones have a four-times-greater crash risk, even if they are using
hands-free equipment. Safe Speed warned in the pre-law consultation process
that the recent UK law was 'hiding the problem'.

Safe Speed says: "It's not holding the phone that's the problem - it's the
psychological effects of the phone conversation. The law that effectively
sanctions hands free kits hides and legitimises the real problem."

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) explains: "We're just scratching the surface of the
mobile phone problem. For a start the risks apply very unequally across the
population. Some people have massively elevated crash risks while others don't
experience any increase in risk at all."

Safe Speed believes that the primary interference with the safe driving
process comes from the habit that some people have in visualising the person
at the other end of the phone. When they visualise, this interferes with the
necessary process of visualising the behaviour of other road users. Hazard
perception drops off and risks increase - sometimes massively.

Paul continues: "If you are someone who visualises the person at the other end
of the phone - BEWARE! this will affect your driving."

There is also evidence that people learn to cope with the conflicts of using
the phone and driving. Safe Speed believes that many drivers start off with an
very increased crash risk but the risk reduces over time as they become used
to driving and phoning.

Paul concludes: "This is just one more area where the UK government has lost
their grip on road safety. They are giving out false and misleading
information and failing to improve road safety. With proper policies over the
last decade, I believe that road deaths in the UK would be down to about 2,000
each year by now.

<ends>

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I'm hoping someone can set me straight here.

Firstly let me say that I never usr the phone in the car, be it hands free or otherwise, but, I personally can't see how having a handsfree conversation with someone whilst driving differs form having a conversation with a passenger.

I would go so far as to say that having a conversation with a passenger in the back of your vehicle may even be more dangerous , as one might feel the temptation to look in the rear view mirror.

Not looking to be shot down here , but I welcome your views.

There's plenty of science - like the new article in the BMJ - that more or less proves that it's different.

So we have to examine what the differences are. I did a lot of work in the area a few years ago when the UK mobile phone laws were a proposal. I came to the conclusion that the damage is done by a 'visualisation habit'. Many people report vivid and clear imaginary images of the person or the environment at the other end of the phone. I theorise (believe even) that this use of the 'visual imagination' conflicts with the necessary driving task of visualising hazard development. But not everyone does it, and those that do can learn not to.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Having a conversation with someone inside your vehicle differs in many ways to a mobile phone conversation. When using the phone the individual tends to focus on the device and, as Paul says, the person they are talking to. This occurs at the expense of other concentration.
I'm sure that evene glancing in the mirror at a back seat passenger does not provide a distraction of such magnitude.

It would be interesting to re-examine the Australian data and determine whether crash probability decreases with increases use of mobile phone use.
Even if it does then a user must still pass through the inexperience phase when his/her crash risk is demonstrably affected.

But, prohibiting people from using mobile phones at all whilst driving would create an enormous clash between the regulatory requirement and the culture of mobile phone use. It would be utterly unenforceable and even more ignored than our current hand-held ban.

Green, I think it's because when the person is in the car with you, they are experiencing the journey with you and will be understanding if you need to concentrate on the road and not them.

A person on the other end of the phone can't see you, or the road ahead, so the you will feel pressured into devoting your full attention to the person. Otherwise you might come across as rude.

I'm not supporting phoning while driving as this accounts for 90% of the near misses I have when riding.

However, it may well be that drivers with poor attention spans and those who feel disconnected from driving (due to excessive low speeds) feel more compelled to make calls, pick their nose, figit with the controls, etc..

I personally feel that the more we disengage the driver from driving the more we encourage them to do something else.

I'm not necessarily advocating this, as I recognise the enormous practical difficulties, but it would at least ensure that any reputable companies instructed their drivers not to phone while driving, and did not provide them with hands-free kits. Therefore, even if it was widely ignored, it would exert some downward pressure on the amount of phone-driving.

Given that a growing weight of research shows that hands-free phoning is (on average) quite dangerous, and the hand-held ban has to some extent encouraged people to use hands-free kit, it raises the question of what policy option should be pursued.

Would a stronger warning in the Highway Code, but falling short of outright prohibition, have any effect?

_________________
"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Just to pick up on this comment...



Yes, I'm sure it would be fairly simple to prevent mobile phones being used whilst moving at over a certain speed.

However, being in motion does not mean you are driving.

One of the advantages of taking the train is work can be done en-route. How would such a system differentiate between car (or bus) and train? What about the chauffer driven executive?

They put a lot of thought into that idea then.

Well, we were always fairly sure that the phone law was flawed. If anyone wants a day to day example of how it's the phone conversation just think about how many pedestrians you see walk into the road without looking, and how many of them have a phone to their ear. They don't have a steering wheel or anything to worry about - all they have to do is look both ways but the phone conversation distracts them from doing so. If it happens to people on foot it seems reasonable that it also applies to people in the car. Personally I find that my ability to hold an intelligible conversation is badly affected by driving rather than the other way round. I tend to be into the driving and not realise that I'm leaving long pauses, going "er, hang on, let me just get over this roundabout" and generally not listening to what the other person is saying. It's got to the point where hardly anyone wants to waste their time by phoning me in the car anymore and it's turned into a 14 foot charging cradle .

While we're on the subject, a question to those more familiar with the research. One thing I use my mobile for a lot while driving is the traffic service. There's no conversation involved, just a recorded voice saying "You're near wherever, no delays on the A-thingummy, five miles of slow traffic on the M-doobeywoobey" and so on. Does that have the same potential to distract drivers as actually having a conversation with another person on the phone?

_________________
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Nope - it's like the radio ....passive as opposed to interactive participation in a conversation.

OK - can argue "training" in my case - but my ability to use a radio and other gadgets in the car is the result of intense training with refreshers from age 23..

Rest of the family don't bother with mobile use when driving and as someone posted above - conversation with a person actually tracvelling with you is different that conversing with a "remote and detached" in an office. I do not know what it is about phone calls - but the conversations become intense. Wildy and her sister have both told me that for them it is a langauge issue - they have to listen too hard to get the gist - and perhaps this is part of the problem - a more intense listening and concentrating on the conversation dues to poor sound quality and voume against normal car noise....

Of the accidents which do occur around here - I'd say a mobile phone use has featured in some of them (as contributory factor but not necessarily the prime cause) - but cannot give the stats without checking our databanks on this - and even then - doubt if our figures would be indicative of national averages since we are below national average anyway

_________________
Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

Not sure it would as most qualified drivers probably don't even possess a copy of the HC. And there's plenty of evidence (drugs, smoking) to suggest that beefed up warnings don't really have any significant effect on the behaviour of their target group.
What we are faced with is a true dillema. A massively popular (almost addictive) activity which demonstrably compromises ones ability to drive a car safely, yet the part ban on which is broadly ignored by supposedly reasonable people WTF do you do?
Personally I think there may ultimately be only one route, one aligned to that taken in Germany viz their 'ulimited autobahns'...i.e. cause an accident for which your high speed can be attributed and there is a large and weighty book ready to be thrown at you (a lot of folks forget or are unaware of this when pointing to Germany's autobahn speed regulations).
The same should be spelled out here regarding mobile phone use (handheld or otherwise). I.e. "Ok folks, we realise you are going to make mobile phone calls whilst you are driving whether there is a law prohibiting it or not. But be absolutely clear on this, unless you have an absoultely cast-iron verifiable reason for doing so then, IF YOU CAUSE AN ACCIDENT WHILST CONVERSING ON YOUR MOBILE PHONE, EXPECT TO GO TO JAIL". Spell it out loud and clear, TV ads, newspaper ads, radio ads etc etc, then enforce it.
I know we don't generally believe in the 'jailing ordinary folks' route around these parts, but perhaps its the only way to get the message through.