The truth about driving and talking on the cell

Herb Weisbaum • Profile • E-mail

We all see it and many of us do it – chat on a cell phone as we drive. We know it’s distracting, but we convince ourselves we can handle it. Some people now use a hands-free device, believing it reduces the risk.

“I’m able to put two hands on the steering wheel and I’m able to concentrate on what’s going on around me,” says Romell Witherspoon of Renton, Wash.

For Nemesia Ramolete of Covington, Wash., hands-free means worry-free. “I don’t feel like I’m going to hurt anybody else on the road.”

Cell phone companies encourage going hands-free. Lawmakers in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and the District of Columbia have validated this idea by banning drivers from talking on a cell phone unless they use a hands-free device. California and Washington join the list on July 1^st.

“If we have readily available technology that costs next to nothing that saves lives, why not use it?” asks California state Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), who sponsored the bill. By having two hands on the wheel, he says, the driver is better able to handle an emergency situation.

Video   NBC producer and daughter deliberate new phone law June 19: Starting July 1, new laws in California will target cell phone use while driving. NBC Producer Mike Mosher and his daughter do a practice run on what they're about to give up while driving the Golden State Freeway. Nightly News

“There isn’t a study in the world that says you are safer clutching a cell phone to your ear than you are with both hands on the wheel,” Simitian says.

But some research shows that hands-free calls are just as distracting as calls made on a handheld phone.

“The evidence is mounting that the conversation itself is the risk, not holding the phone,” says Russ Rader of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “The research shows the risk of having an accident is about four times higher for drivers using cell phones, whether it’s handheld or hands-free.”

I think we’ve all seen someone weaving in their lane while on a cell phone. That’s because a driver is not paying full attention to the road.

“Some degree of awareness changes when you’re talking on the phone and driving, and I think we all know this,” says Marcel Just, director of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University. “Just listening to someone talk on the phone while you are driving is going to reduce the quality of your driving performance,” he says.

Distraction equals danger
University of Utah psychology professor David Strayer has studied driver distraction for years. He says talking on the phone causes what’s called “inattention blindness.” The driver looks but does not always see things that are there, such as pedestrians, stop signs, traffic signals, or other vehicles.

Strayer uses simulators and sophisticated eye-tracking devices to see precisely where a test driver is looking. “They see about half of what they would normally see,” he says, “because talking on a cell phone has diverted attention from processing the information you need to be a safe driver.”

The difference is easily demonstrated with driving simulators. Professor Strayer tells test subjects to pull over when they see a rest area about eight miles up the road.

When no one is talking to the driver, every one pulls off at the right spot. If there’s a passenger talking, about 90 percent of the drivers are successful. In many cases, that’s because the passenger helps them remember to find the rest area. But when test subjects are talking on a cell phone 50 percent drive by the rest area. Why? “Because they simply didn’t see it,” he says.

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