Drivers on Cell Phones Kill Thousands, Snarl Traffic
By Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Senior Writer
posted: 01 February 2005
01:52 pm ET

Finally, empirical proof you can blame chatty 20-somethings for stop-and-go traffic on the way to work.

A new study confirms that the reaction time of cell phone users slows dramatically, increasing the risk of accidents and tying up traffic in general, and when young adults use cell phones while driving, they're as bad as sleepy septuagenarians.

"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," said University of Utah psychology professor David Strayer. "It's like instantly aging a large number of drivers."

The study was announced today and is detailed in winter issue of the quarterly journal Human Factors.

Traffic jams and death

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:

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.

Older drivers more cautious

The latest study used high-tech simulators. It included people aged 18 to 25 and another group aged 65 to 74. Elderly drivers were slower to react when talking on the phone, too.

The simulations uncovered a twofold increase in the number of rear-end collisions by drivers using cell phones.
Older drivers seem to be more cautious overall, however.

"Older drivers were slightly less likely to get into accidents than younger drivers," Strayer said. "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." But in real life, he added, older drivers are significantly more likely to be rear-ended because of their slow speed.

Other studies in the journal found:

Telephone numbers presented by automated voice systems compete for drivers' attention to a far greater extent than when the driver sees the same information presented on a display.
Interruptions to driving, such as answering a call, are likely to be more dangerous if they occur during maneuvers like merging to exit a freeway.
Things could get worse. Wireless Internet, speech recognition systems and e-mail could all be even more distracting.

Some distractions don't belong in a car at all (I'm thinking DVD). For others such as cell phone calls, pull over to a safe stopping place. Other distractions might require moving the vehicle to a more secluded spot to be safe ...

Peace,

- Sequoia

Seriously though, kids have way to little judgement to be juggling driving, talking on the phone, and shuttling distracting friends. I think part of the blame for poor driving skills is the removal of drivers education from the schools which has happened all over the country to cut costs. That combined with parental neglect in teaching driving skills and monitoring kids activities, and overindulgence in providing things like cell phones and fast cars are to blame.

I've watched so many vehicles weaving (sometimes completely out of their lane), speed up/down with no relation to surrounding traffic speeds, slam on brakes to avoid rear-ending, and nearly side-swipe numerous other cars... used to be I thought 'drunk or doped-up?', then I decided to keep count: of the last 500 vehicles I've seen being driven in such a way as to imply driver impairment: 2= who knows? (ah, before you ask: one aged about 30, and one about 70); 3= reading maps (kid you not, open and propped over the steering wheel); 1= applying something to face while looking in rearview mirror (dunno what, male driver) and 490+ = cell phone held to ear! BTW, those were observed during my usual 6a/4p commute, September, October, and November '04. I've quit counting - and try to leave *lots* of space between my car and those cell phone yakkers. However, last Friday I was victim of rear-ender - male in mid-twenties was on phone and didn't stop for red light quite in time. No damage, but that's no thanks to his stupidity. And, guess what? we agreed there were no damages and then he drove off - with phone to ear!

I can't help but wonder how many of those calls are so urgent that it's worth the driver risking his/her life to be on the phone while driving. As with Marshallz10, I suspect very few realize just how poorly their driving actually is while they are yakkity.

Anyone remember those videos of some guys' reaction to beer? It began with them sober: they stated whether or not they felt sober, walked a straight line, did simple math (2+4=6, 4+4=8, etc), and read a simple non-tonguetwisting sentence. Then the film continued in 10 minute intervals, after imbibing (some had one beer, some two beers), with each guy repeating the same actions as sober -- for those who never saw the film - about 40 minutes after 2 beers was enough to have a slight wobble in the stride, not or very slowly compute 14+8, and none could read the sentence with clarity, and yet every one of the guys still claimed to be completely sober. I suspect every single driver who is on a cell phone would claim with equal vehemenence that s/he was in full control of the vehicle. Makes me wish the police would film those drivers - and send a copy of the film so they could SEE what the rest of us see!

Frankly I dislike the demands of instant communications although I like e-mail at lot better than I expected when I finally bowed to some level of inevitable progress and acquired an adequate computer about 7 years ago. Now I am about to go up another level with a more powerful system and probably cable or DSL connection rather than modem.

But sitting at the new-fangled keyboard will still be that aging farmer-naturalist-gardener. :)