When you text and drive...Follow

Except he saw me pulling up to the corner. And he stayed there. And he stayed there for a good few minutes with the van behind me stuck behind him (who didn't drive around him like I did).

He clearly didn't care that he was blocking traffic.

*Shrug* I've texted while driving, but I certainly try not too. Also, I don't look at the phone. It's like a keyboard; once you've learned where the keys are, you don't need to even look to type (note though that I use the old method of putting in letters, not T9 Word or whatever it's called). I find inputting alternate routes into my GPS a lot more distracting. As to WHY I need to reprogram my GPS, new construction often messes with the routes around Orlando. Two weeks ago it made me miss an exit on my way to Disney, and the alternate route sent me down a street that didn't exist. Stupid GPS.

The most dangerous thing I've done is driving while tired. Gosh, I HATE doing that. I will literally slap myself in the face in an attempt to wake up some more, and the first convenience store I get to I'll get out and down something filled with caffeine or sugar.

Would that matter? Would the visiting parents and the college kids even be voting in that town?

Forget talking on the phone. I miss turns on roads I drive every day when I'm talking to someone in the car with me.

That's why trunks were invented.








If you need to use a GPS in your own city you're a moron. They're very useful for on the road and vacations and stuff but in your own area? That's just sad.





People who deny that it's a distraction are lying to themselves. Talking at all is a distraction. Some can multi-task better than others but the reality is your brain will focus more on one thing over another. How many of you ever get into a conversation while doing anything, not just driving, and actually stop listening to what someone is saying?

People who think Orlando = Gainesville are probably even more moronic, amirite?

I don't care where you live, ******** if you can't get around on your own after living there you're a dubmass.

One of my favorite featuers on my GPS (Nuvi 760) is the bluetooth connectivity with phones. Whenever I get a call while I'm driving, it automatically gets redirected to my Nuvi, and all I have to do is touch a big "answer" button on the screen and I'm connected. The GPS's audio is directed to the car speakers, and it has a built-in microphone so I can just talk directly into it without having to deal with a headset. I also use my Nuvi to store and play all my of mp3's in the car, since it's a lot easier and safer to operate a large touch-screen on my dashboard than to try and fiddle around with my iPod.

I'm guilty of having texted while driving a couple of times, but both times I did it I became very aware that entering text on the iPhone's software keyboard was far, far more distracting and dangerous than operating my GPS or talking on the phone, so I dropped that habit pretty quickly. Saying "A distraction is a distraction" is a dumb oversimplification; there will always be distractions when you drive, the key is to minimize them and learn to keep your focus on the road.

Yeah no. I've lived here for 19 years, and while I can get around to most places I still have trouble with a lot of areas. This is due to the fact that if I'm not driving I zone out, usually by playing silly mind games with the lines on the road or the trees or something.

Back on the topic of cellphone distractions, it changes from person to person how much of a distraction it is. Having someone in the car with me will always be a greater distraction that talking on the phone. When talking on the phone I'm not more distracted than when I'm not doing anything. Changing the volume in my car is much more of a distraction. I'd have to say that driving while tired is the worst distraction I've ever faced and I try to stay away from it at all costs.

This is kinda the point I was getting at. As you do more "unusual" things, the total distraction level is multiplied. As you get more accustomed to them, the amount of mental concentration required decreases and you'll be affected only by more basic physical issues (like the difference between holding a phone to your head or speaking hands free in this case).

Most people can drive in their own car and fiddle with the radio without missing a beat. You don't even have to look at it. You know where the buttons are and your fingers just do what you need them to do. You're in a car you are familiar with, using a radio that's positioned where you're used to it being, with the buttons where you're used to them.

Ever driven a rental car? Try adjusting the radio while driving down the freeway. You'll suddenly realize that you're having a harder time concentrating on the road. You're combining a couple of unfamiliar factors and they multiply into a major impact on your driving. I suspect that this factor outweighs anything else going on. And it's this factor which most tests designed to assess the amount of distraction talking on a phone cases are really measuring. That's why they conclude that talking hands free is just as dangerous as talking with a phone in your hand. The mental juggling of doing several things you're not used to at once (driving a car or simulator you're not used to, handling or talking on a phone you aren't used to, and driving on a course you aren't used to) all multiply into a distraction that drowns out the mere physical differences involved in the activities.


And if everyone on the road used a different car every day, and drove a different route every day, and used a different cell phone every day, these would be valid and accurate tests. But that's not what we're actually looking at in the real world. What we want to know is the degree to which the average driver, driving their own car, on their daily commute, talking on their cell phone, increases the rate at which they may cause an accident. No study I've heard of comes even close to replicating the conditions we really want to test.


So yeah. They come up with erroneous results. It's not surprising at all. Test people in their own cars with their own cell phones and you'll get a much better idea of the degree to which they are actually increasing the danger to their fellow drivers. And when you do that, I'm quite certain that the physical issues surrounding actually holding a phone to your ear will become much more relevant. As I pointed out earlier, there mere fact that one of your hands is busy will impair your driving. The effect on your ability to turn your head to check for cars in your blindspot before changing lanes is pretty huge. Most of the times when I've almost been hit by someone using a cell phone, it's this scenario. They go to turn or change lanes, but don't actually look first because one hand is holding a cell phone to their head and this makes it harder for them to look around. It's not that they don't see stuff right in front of them, but that they don't pay as much attention to cars next to them, or around corners.

I honestly am not sure what you're going on about. Dialing a phone is distracting, conversing with someone on a phone is distracting. Can they, or should they be compared? Why would you?

Dialing the phone presumabley takes mere seconds, a conversation perhaps many minutes. They're not really comparable.

However, conversing while driving is significantly distracting - slowing reaction times to the same extent alcohol use can.

Cell phone conversations, if they are distracting, are already illegal. Chat away, you cause an accident while doing so you should be charged and punished accordingly - felony for injury, 2nd degree murder/manslaughter for a death. How many of those conversations REALLY have to take place while you're driving and how many are simply convenient. Legal or not, is it worth it to any of you to needlessly increase the risk of a crash simply for your convenience?

Driving is already about the most risky thing the majority of us do.

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I'm not disagreeing with you, but do you have some sort of evidence of this? I think it would be interesting to see some studies on how our brains work differently when we talk with someone in person as opposed to on the phone. I imagine it would be something to do with a lack of nonverbal clues on the phone being instead imagined in one's mind, but I don't know for sure.