Three weeks ago, as I prepared to speak to the Society of Telecommunications Consultants, I read an article that convinced me, once and for all, to hang up the phone when driving. The article, "Impactful Distraction" by Nathan Seppa, which appeared in the August 24 issue of Science News, convinced me that it was absolutely time to put down the phone when I'm driving. For anyone who drafts, manages and or even considers a mobility policy plan, this article is a "must read."
For years, significant attention has been paid to large damage awards to survivors in cases where employees have injured or killed someone while texting or talking on the phone while doing work (and where the employer is the "deep pocket"). These include Tiburzi v. Holmes Transport, Inc. (2009), an $18 million verdict; Ford v. McGrogan & International Paper (2008), a $5.2 million settlement; Smith v. Beers Skanska, (2005), settled for $4.75 million; and Bustos v. Leiva and Dyke Industries Inc. (2001), which settled for $16.1 million after a $20.98 million jury award.
But many of us maintain the attitude of, "That doesn't happen to people I know." I noted such verdicts, even wrote about them, and then went about my business of talking on the phone when driving.
I've always used a headset or Bluetooth, and I like to think that I've been very careful. But no matter how careful I've been--or think I've been--the bottom line is that driving and talking on the phone, let alone texting, is simply not safe. Period.
New York State, where I live, has one of the toughest anti-texting and driving provisions in the country. The state has already clamped down on texting when driving (5 points, $150 minimum fine), which should have been incentive enough, even though the new law involves only texting. But when I read some of the statistics included in the Science News article, I literally stopped justifying my mobile phoning habits and just put the phone down.
One of the compelling arguments in the article suggests that while we think we're multitasking, we're not. We're toggling. According to Professor Paul Atchley, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, people don't multitask as they think. They toggle between tasks. Further, according to Dr. Atchley's research, "when a conversation becomes more dense and complicated, cognitive demand devoted to it increases, which means that less brainpower is available for driving." Do you really want to be driving next to someone whose full attention is focused somewhere besides the road, even for a small burst of time? I don't think so.
I reached out to Dr. Atchley for clarification. What follows is his response.
"Try the following. Get a timer or a clock with a second hand. When you are ready, recite aloud as quickly as possible the alphabet to the letter L and then switch quickly and count to the number 12. I will wait.... How long did that take? About 5 seconds or so? Good. Now, let's multitask. Do the same thing EXCEPT now you should recite a letter and then a number and then a letter and so on. "A, one, B, two..." Go ahead, I will wait.... Considerably longer this time. I suspect this time you started to slow down around the letter F or so. As you switched back and forth between two tasks you know extremely well, you had to keep track of each task. Your memory got fuzzy, you slowed down, you made mistakes, and maybe you even gave up and sheepishly looked around to see if anyone was watching. If you completed the task, it took you much longer to complete."
What about hands-free? The fact is, according to Daniel Simons, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, mobile phone conversations impede what a driver sees and processes. While mobile phone conversations aren't the only reason for this, the notion of driving home, for example, and not remembering the trip is not foreign to most of us. So while not having to juggle the phone gives back some cognitive capacity, the amount is relatively small.
There are multiple distractions (eating, singing, mind wandering, etc.) that pull drivers away from the road, but a study referenced in an article by Amy Shin, MD, published by the New England Journal of Medicine, quoted research indicating that the average risk of a collision is four times as high when a driver is speaking on the phone than when he/she isn't. Perhaps even more frightening is that the response time is equivalent to the response time of a driver who is intoxicated. According to the NEJM article, "Current data suggest that each year, at least 1.6 million traffic accidents (28% of all crashes) in the United States are caused by drivers talking on cell phones or texting. Talking on the phone causes many more accidents than texting, simply because millions more drivers talk than text; moreover, using a hands-free device does not make talking on the phone any safer."
Since I've become an self-proclaimed evangelist (aren't all evangelists self-proclaimed? But I digress.), I've been asked why phone conversations while driving are any more dangerous than conversing with someone who's actually present in the car. Dr. Shin's research indicates that neurons are diverted differently depending on whether we are talking on the phone or talking to a passenger. Dr. Shin explained that "when patients aren't convinced, I ask them, 'How would you feel if the surgeon removing your appendix talked on the phone--hands free, of course--while operating?'" This hypothetical captures the essence of the problem--the challenge of concentrating fully on the task at hand while engaged in a phone conversation.
In a recent editorial for Real Clear Politics, Dr. Atchley wrote "In the current debate about the risks of technology behind the wheel, it is easy for us to understand the risk of not looking at the road or not holding onto the steering wheel, so we focus on acts like texting and driving and give a pass to hands-free technologies. But it is as much about the brain as it is about the eyes or the hands. There are too many cases where a driver reports, "I was looking straight ahead but I didn't see the car," and too much data from over half a century of cognitive science for us to ignore the fact that we need our brains to drive. And when we tax our brain, even with something simple like switching back and forth between reciting letters and numbers, the limits of our brain get exposed."
I have no intention of giving up my mobile phone. But I'm not driving and using it simultaneously any more. Please join me. We'll all be safer.
