Originally Posted by
njkayaker
It's an interesting case. The issue of "distracted driving" and the use of in-car devices is a big concern. Not too many years ago, very few drivers were using these devices. Now, it appears nearly to be the norm. For various reasons, every driver thinks they don't have a problem and that it's only "other drivers". Somehow or other, we need drivers to do err on the side of extreme caution with respect to things that might distract them.
While distracted driving has always occurred, I think the nature of the distractions and the frequency they occur is different now (and getting worse). I suspect that doing things like using cell-phones and GPS units is considered acceptable and normal by many more drivers than things like shaving, putting makeup on, or reading newspapers (which, statistically, very few drivers did/do).
While everybody makes mistakes, this event was really the consequence of making a bad choice, a choice that should have been clearly seen as a bad choice ahead of time.
Originally Posted by
The Human Car
I think you raise a good point here. Distracted driving used to be things like fiddling with the radio which was more likely to occur when the road situation did not require full attention, now calls and text msgs can come in at any time, GPS units that want our attention at intersections and so on. We used to call friends after dinner when they were likely to be home and now a lot of people are making use of their "down time" while commuting home in the car to make and receive calls.
Intuitively, I concur with the above arguments. That is, to my common sense, it appears that there are dramatically more "tools" available for distraction and consequently it should be a much larger problem today. While some headlines one would think that there would be some huge spike in collisions, injuries, and mortality conditioning on a few obvious things, but based on rough aggregate data -- essentially, I played with the NHTSA FARS -- it is hard to support a big increase in mortality associated with distracted driving.
Now I think that there are enough studies that demonstrate that distracted driving is a real problem and fundamentally responsible for a large proportion of collisions, injuries, and mortality. I just think that it has always been a problem but that the distractions are more obvious today and that there is some risk compensation going on. For instance, when someone starts texting while driving, I'll speculate that the person is more likely to slow down.
Originally Posted by
njkayaker
One can compare two kinds of "common" non-driving activities that drivers do: 1) drinking coffee, 2) using a cell-phone.
My impression is that drivers tend to do the first less frequently with more care than they do the second. It's quite common to see drivers using a cell phone while performing a risky manuever (eg, making turns). It's very uncommon (as far as I can tell) to see a driver drinking in the same sorts of situations.
...
The problem with driving is that it is usually easy, boring, low risk. Many people take that to mean that it is always these things. Of course, it's the rare exceptional things are required to be able to deal with.
Well, no one want to spill their coffee.
Originally Posted by
The Human Car
Interesting phraseology.
Originally Posted by
njkayaker
Even really bad drivers have a very high success rate at avoiding collisions.
I think that you are right. That is, suppose the risk of a reportable collision is 1.0e-5 per mile for a bad driver and 1.0e-7 for a good driver.** The bad driver has a <10% chance of being in a collision over 10000 miles: The good driver <.01%. The bad driver in this example can go a lot of miles with a bit of luck without a collision despite the huge difference in risk. From past conversations, I'm pretty sure that everyone here is well aware of the type of cognitive biases that result in people over estimating their ability.
** I did a quick web search for some rough "average" figures. With the caveat that I might have confused the numbers somehow, I think that the good driver here roughly reflects some average statistics I spoted. But don't be surprised by some oversight or error on my part.