[geeks] Stuff fo' sale

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 @ 01:29 -0600, Dan Duncan said:

> > I don't believe studies, I believe my eyes...
> 
> Really?  So how many people driving around you are using handsfree units?
> How many people are driving while stupid because they're fiddling with
> the radio, drunk, having a conversation with a passenger, running on too
> little sleep, or are otherwise distracted?
> 
> Simple answer:  YOU DON'T KNOW.  Your eyes can't tell you this.

Yes, they can.

When people talk, even hands free, their is unique body language.

Besides, there are also accident reports.

I talked to a local cop about this, and found some interesting things.

He said that of course whenever there is an accident, they get a report
from the driver, and often they ask basic things like where were you
going, what caused the accident, what we you doing, what road were you
on, what intersection, etc.  It's at least partially to make sure the
driver was self-aware.

Drunk drivers of course, usually know why they are on the road, but do
frequently not know what caused the accident.  They usually know the
road, but frequently don't know the intersection, or if it happened in
an intersection.

The officer said they've found largely the same problem with cell phone
drivers, and in many cases they were worse.  The phone had so much of
their attention, the could not identify several basic questions:

	- what road am I on
	- what section/intersection did the accident occur in
	- where am I going
	- where am I right now

There was no notable difference among those with handsfree sets,
although fewer hand-free wrecks are recorded, so it must at least be a
little safer.

Back to eyes: I can also observe people on cell phones while they are
shopping.  They run into people, run their buggies into displays, stop
in doorways, and forget the business they are supposed to be doing.

Granted, driving a car is different, but do you really think people do
better in a car than they do driving a buggy in Wal-Mart?

Aside:

Police and other agencies that have to use communication while driving
have known about the problem of driving and human communication for
decades now, which is why police driver training includes communication.

Communication related accidents are very high among rookies and officers
not trained to communicate in their driving courses.

Why should it be surprising that we see the same results with cell phone
usage?

> I don't displute that using a cellphone can be distracting for
> drivers.  The studies prove that.  The problem is that moving them to
> a handsfree setup doesn't accomplish anything.  

Doesn't this somewhat contradict what you said earlier?  Or are you
making a different point here?

> (Don't get me wrong:
> I'm in favor of improving safety.  I think a lot of drivers would best
> be handled by dragging them out of their cars and stringing them up
> along the side of the road as a warning to others like pirate corpses,
> but maybe that's just me.)  

> It's also a slippery slope towards
> restricting my use of ham radio whilst mobile and I'm really not a fan
> of punishing a few million people because of the 150 or so you see
> being morons in a given year.

Lot's of things are slippery slopes.

Seatbelts save lives, but hey... it could be a slippery slope to the
government requiring us to held into our cars until we reach a
pre-selected destination.

I mean, *ALL* regulation is a slipery slope, potentially.

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["I wish life was not so short. Languages
take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about." - J.
R. R. Tolkien]