wphamilton

Why we can’t put the smartphone away and just drive

Aha, just like I speculated about a year ago, because of the overlap of brain circuitry for the functions of inhibition and spatial processing! Particularly "inhibition theory" relating to the hippocampus.

It implies that driver engagement with smartphones is even more dangerous to cyclists than we may suspect, since avoiding relatively small objects such as ourselves is exactly the kind of inhibition that could be repressed by deprecated attention and, perhaps, degraded function of the hippocampus due to the spacial processing requirements of driving. Seemed interesting to me anyway.

FenderTL5

It is an interesting piece.

I've been thinking for quite some time that asking for voluntary adherence is proving futile and that some technology solution to disable functionality in a moving vehicle will be required.

Although, I can already hear the counter arguments to ANY solution that would disable a phone in a car. Maybe, have the phone switch to 'emergency call only' status when moving unless a complex override protocol is engaged.
I don't know, but the study is using data from 2011 or so and it's more pervasive now than then. Cars driving themselves is a solution but not likely to come soon enough.

fwiw - I no longer use a smartphone. I determined that the things I was using it for were not that important in the grand scheme of things so I went back to a basic phone.
I don't miss it.

unterhausen

it's not really that hard to detect when someone is using a phone, LEOs just need to prioritize it. It's plenty dangerous, no need to say they have more important things to handle

ItsJustMe

Another excuse for being selfish and short-sighted. I do not call or text or receive either when driving or riding. End of story. Whenever I see something like this, I think someone's going to use this as a get-out-of-jail-free card.

loky1179

It would be nice if any of them ever made it to jail in the first place!

aRoudy1

There may be a 'fix' coming in the near future. They wouldn't be able to distinguish between driver and passenger use, however, if there's only a driver...New device in the works to catch texting drivers | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com

Feldman

Another reason that it should become standard police procedure to immediately sieze and destroy cellphones in drivers' hands--there is NO DAMNED DIFFERENCE between an iPhone and an open bottle of booze!

Paul Barnard

Now I know there's a physiological excuse for why I can't drive without drinking. If I ever get caught, I'll use that in my defense!

noisebeam

Is this why cyclists sometimes make poor choices like running reds and speeding thru peds?

genec

Really? Did you really mean to throw that tired canard in here?

When cyclists start killing close to 600 peds and motorists a year (that represents less than 2% of all traffic deaths... similar to the less than 2% of all the traffic that cyclists represent) then I will start to worry about cyclists "running reds and speeding thru peds."

No, it isn't a good practice for a cyclist to blow a red light... but the "Darwin awards" tend to take care of the cyclists that really do a poor job at this. No, I don't think cyclists should run reds and stops... but I am a firm believer in "Idaho stops."

noisebeam

No, the point was not about the specific actions that cyclists may or may not do, but instead that cyclists as drivers are most likely equally affected by this lowering of inhibitions vs. the typical BF reaction of 'ooh lookie here, one more reason to hate on drivers'

genec

Oookay... Yeah I saw what it said. But I also recall that drivers tend to face another issue that leads to disconnection behind the wheel... the video effect. I believe this was covered in the book "Why we drive the way we drive." The discussion was that motorists are separated from their environment by the windshield and the rest of the closed car, and tend to make decisions based on what they see and perceive, like a video game, vice being immersed in the entire environment. (actually I think you and I discussed this a few years back with regard to driving speed)

According to the OP though... yes, I see your point... the same effect should also occur to cyclists.

genec

The author of the article offers a solution...

What I do is simply put the phone into a front pocket... one that is hard to reach while driving, therefore impossible to answer in a reasonable time. I hear the ring, feel the vib of a call or email, but since I can't get to the phone, I merely register that I may need to pull over to some convenient place before too long. (front pockets are somewhat hard to reach into while one is sitting, depending on the style of pants)

I also convey to friends and colleagues that I don't answer the phone while driving, and suggest that they too take up this habit. I actually chastise folks that call me from a moving car... "call me back when you've stopped, for your own sake..."

wphamilton

If the theory holds water, you'd expect to see something similar with cyclists. I had initially made this spatial processing/inhibitions connection with respect to video games and there is another element and neural overlap that the article didn't go into: repetitive stimuli and development of obsessive inclinations. The latter is tied in in similar fashion of overlapping function of the associated brain tissue. Although it takes some less generally accepted theories to make the connection .... but driving seems to be a perfect setup constantly monitoring movements and positions, engaging navigational functions, highly repetitive with otherwise restricted perceptions, and as we've all observed it can become obsessive and uninhibited. I think that the difference with cycling would be a matter of intensity.

It's not really just about inhibitions with using a smartphone - it's the change in general. Cut that person off, displaying your anger with a tire-screeching acceleration or your horn, shout red-faced at other drivers, even threaten other vehicles or pedestrians with the vehicle. Most of these people would never dream of behaving that way in person, but behind the wheel it's somehow different.

JoeyBike

The LEOs are on their phones too. So are the judges and their families. And all of the lawyers/attorneys. Haven't you noticed?

Cops have 2-way radios, a laptop computer on the console, and a personal cell phone to juggle. You think they are looking for cell phones in other cars? Very, very low priority for cops.

genec

Sad but true. We've had two cases here of cop in car hitting a cyclist... of course such situations are "thoroughly investigated" and for some reason, the LEOs always are vindicated.

delcrossv

IMO it's a pretty simple fix to disable a phone in a moving car, except for 911 calls. If a call/text etc. is so damned important, pull over. Yeah, it's inconvenient, but somehow we all survived for the 50,000+ years or so before we had smartphones.

mconlonx

There was that cop who killed a cyclist out in CA while replying to an email on his in-car computer...

OTOH, some state in the Northeast was making a big deal about it, doing a special crackdown on distracted drivers, with a cop parked on a bridge observing and half a dozen troopers pulling people over that the observer tagged as texting/using cell phone.

My own experience and metaphysical ponderings indicate to me that inhibition while driving a car is analogous to being online -- you'll say/do things behind the wheel of a car that you would not do or say to someone in person. Same way someone staring at a screen instead of another human will unload vitriol online, a driver staring through the frame of a car windshield sees other drivers and road users as something other than another human being.

genec

I gotta laugh... most of that time we didn't have either automobiles or electricity... or a whole bunch of other stuff that has come along in the last 150 years or so that is now so "vital." Even bicycles in their most recent "safety bike" form have only been around for about 140 years or so. Wow, how did we ever survive without all that "stuff?"

Hey books have been around since about 1440 or so... I think I'll log off and go read.

Chris516

Driving lowers inhibitions........AND INCREASES MORONIC BOMBASTIC STUPIDITY!!!!!!

spare_wheel

So it's like A&S?

(This is a seriously interesting thread, BTW.)

KD5NRH

Removing functionality under conditions a good number of people find themselves in for several hours a day would severely devalue the device and the extremely profitable service plan. You're going to be going up against every penny the cell companies can spare, along with the support they'll get from any company that dispatches by phone, employs outside sales reps on long routes, etc.

The more complex you make it, the longer they'll be looking away from the road while they're doing it.

Do you really want to be the smaller, softer alternative for the self-driving car's processor when a full size pickup cuts it off?

KD5NRH

This assumes SMS is the only way to text; using Google Voice to text, or Facebook messaging is going to be a regular data transfer, indistinguishable from the guy running Pandora through his stereo or the phone running an automatic update or automatic email check in the owner's pocket.

noisebeam

cultural expectations change as technology does.

genec

Remember the Big Black Out of the Southwest? It is amazing how quickly we can revert to "no technology."

Cyclists seemed to fare best during that period... as motorists forgot how to transition intersections, without some form of electrical control.