Hands-free accidents waiting to happen

Imagine the first cars, a new technology, kicking up dust on Manitoba's unregulated roads. Imagine our government then banning alcohol consumption while driving, unless the alcohol was consumed hands-free, creating a booming market for in-car beer holders with long straws securely attached to a driver's mouth.

Absurd, you say? Reflect on Manitoba banning only hand-held cells in light of research on this life-and-death issue showing that using hands-free devices while driving is just as dangerous as using hand-held devices.

Cognitive psychologist David Strayer's research concludes that the increased accident rate of 400 per cent for cell users is primarily due to its effects on cognitive processing. "It's not that your hands aren't on the wheel, it's that your mind is not on the road."

The Foundation for Traffic Safety reviewed 18 studies and concluded that hands-free and hand-held users both have .23 second reaction time delays. This means that at 60 km/h, your vehicle would travel 3.8 metres farther at full speed before you would react. At 100 km/h, it means 6.3 more metres. As you are driving through an intersection, stopped at a light, or crossing the street, are you comfortable with drivers around you needing 3.8 to 6.3 more metres to react because they're chatting?

Elisabeth Wiig, professor emerita at Boston University's Department of Communication Disorders, explains that most driving is on automatic pilot, not engaging the brain regions that process decision-making. When the unexpected happens, the decision making centres need immediate activation.

"Any distraction can have fatal consequences. If you are talking on a cell, whether it is hand-held or hands-free, you will block the multi-tasking needed as your memory system is engaged in processing the phone conversation."

Hands-free proponents often counter that talking on a hands-free is like talking to a passenger, and thus shouldn't be banned.

A Western Washington University study examined if people would notice an outlandish clown on a unicycle while walking past him. Some 81 per cent of those conversing with a person beside them noticed the clown. Only 25 per cent of those on cells noticed. If you cannot notice a clown on a unicycle, you're not going to notice children about to cross the street.

A Strayer and Drews study asked drivers to take an exit 13 kilometres down the road. Some 88 per cent of drivers conversing with passengers took the exit; only 50 per cent of those on hands-free cells did.

The study found that drivers conversing with passengers will both pause the conversation more often to focus on the road, such as focusing on merging traffic, and will converse more about driving conditions. The passenger often acts as a second pair of eyes on the road.

Numerous studies show that conversing with someone beside you, which we've done for millennia, does not diminish the ability to absorb visual inputs the way conversing with a disembodied voice, which we've been doing for less than a century, does.

You also have the choice to leave your cell in your pocket, purse, or trunk -- not something you can do with your spouse or children.

A Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study gained much attention for purportedly proving that using voice-activated hands-free devices does not increase risks.

When one actually reads the 285-page study, and not just the press release, one finds that the study observed commercial motor vehicle drivers (CMV), not regular drivers. The study acknowledged that CMV drivers often receive extra driver training. It observed CMVs used on highways for interstate commerce. Not many tricycling tots or crosswalks on those!

The study was based on 21 crashes. There are more than six million vehicle accidents in the U.S. per year.

For the 55 trucks in the study, accidents didn't increase if a voice-activated hands-free was used. From this, media reports conclude that using a hands-free doesn't increase accidents. The study's finding that hands-free devices increased accidents by 30 per cent in CMV cars is usually not mentioned, nor is its caution that "potential cognitive distraction of talking/listening was not measured."

When one digs deeper, this study does little to counter the evidence that hands-free drivers engage in dangerous driving, such as tailgating more closely, rolling through more stop events and not noticing items in their driving path just as much as hand-held users.

Banning hand-held cells while keeping hands-free devices legal makes as much sense as banning hand-held alcohol consumption while driving, but allowing it if the booze is in a cup holder and is drunk through a long straw. Driving is the most dangerous thing we do, and our attention should be on the road, not on a deluded sense that our phone calls can't wait. Cars are for driving and are neither our office nor our living room. We should be demanding that our laws reflect this.

Karen Kernaghan is a speech language pathologist with a private practice in Winnipeg.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 30, 2010 A12