reducing cell phone-related to deaths to zero.

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Anthony Watson <atrigueiro () yahoo com>
Date: August 27, 2006 12:36:09 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: reducing cell phone-related to deaths to zero.

It seems that there is this ever-growing desire of the people to have  
the government protect them from themselves and from everyone else.   
Trying to reduce every risk to nothing when it means giving up rights  
should not be something Americans embrace...at least not in the  
America that Ben Franklin helped created.
These draconian laws always seem to come under the banner of "If we  
can save one life, then we should do it...."

I am surprised that Daylight Savings Time continues to be advocated  
and expanded.  Study after study has shown that there is an increase  
in  traffic accidents and therefore deaths twice a year as the  
clocked are shifted.  I see no real tangible benefit from Daylight  
Savings Time that would be worth the death of even one soul.  Add to  
it that these traffic accidents sometimes involve children, for  
example waiting as bus stops in the dark, it hardly seems worth  
risking the life of one child.

Also, I think a case could be made that the strap-in society that we  
are now raising our children is is affecting them in ways we have not  
yet understood.  I mean children are strapped into car seats for  
endless trips around town, they are strapped into strollers and high  
chairs for so much of their early years.  Then later medical science  
begin warning that our children are sedentary and flabby.  They have  
been raised to be sedentary.  There are some consequences to the  
strap-in toddlerhood and infancy that American children are subjected  
to early on.  I have two children and I tried to curtail my desire to  
strap my kids down when they were being mischievious and I think they  
benefited hugely from my insistence that they allowed to be free and  
mobile, especially outdoors whenever possible.


There are consequences to the sacrifice of freedom for safety, even  
in a device as universally lauded as the car seat...IMHO

~aw





There's also an American study on this subject

http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/WickensChapterFinal.pdf#se
arch=%22frank%20drews%22

and a news article referencing the authors' work
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060630/NEWS07/60630045
3/1009

For me, the relevant question is "how does talking on a cell phone,
either hands-free or hand-held, compare to a conversation with your
front seat driving companion?"
I talked with one of the authors, who said they've done some preliminary
investigation on this question, and still find that cell phone usage -
handsfree - is worse for safety than the in-person chat.  Their
postulated mechanism is that the *passenger* shares the local context
with the driver and thus moderates his/her own conversation to adjust
for critical times in driving, whereas the cellphone partner lacks the
context.
I don't know if this work has been published yet.

herb



-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 10:29 AM
To: ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: [IP] more on more on Silliness in Action:
California Poised for Cell Phone Ban



Begin forwarded message:

From: patrick thibodeau <smoke_dc () yahoo com>
Date: August 27, 2006 10:26:41 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Silliness in Action: California Poised for Cell  
Phone Ban

I'd love to see links to the science supporting this
contention that the California's proposed cell phone
restriction is silly. Connecticut adopted a similar
law Oct. 1. A widely quoted British study summarized
by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety seems to
offer conditional support to the contention that
hands-free will make little difference.
http://www.iihs.org/news/2005/iihs_news_071205.pdf

> Hands-free versus hand-held: The results suggest that
banning hand-held phone use
won't necessarily enhance safety if drivers simply
switch to hands-free
phones. Injury crash risk didn't differ from one type
of reported phone
use to the other.
"This isn't intuitive. You'd think using a hands-free
phone would be less
distracting, so it wouldn't increase crash risk as
much as using a hand-held
phone. But we found that either phone type increased
the risk," McCartt says.
"This could be because the so-called hands-free phones
that are in common
use today aren't really hands-free. We didn't have
sufficient data to compare
the different types of hands-free phones, such as
those that are fully
voice activated."<

Maybe a restrictive law is needed: either ban cell
phone use or stipulate the type of hands-free use that
is acceptable. Perhaps the automotive industry,
working with cell phone makers, can integrate hands
free, voice activated systems into dashboards that not
only allow users to answer calls by voice command but
can read email as well. How difficult would it be to
have users answer a call by flicking a dashboard
switch? If the California law is silly, then what
should be done to reduce cell phone related death and
injury?

Patrick Thibodeau
Washington DC






--- David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:

>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
> Date: August 26, 2006 11:15:52 PM EDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Cc: lauren () vortex com
> Subject: Silliness in Action: California Poised for
> Cell Phone Ban
>
>
> Dave,
>
> As you know, I frequently speak out against what I
> view as silly
> laws that fly in the face of logic, science, or just
> plainly
> observable facts.
>
> In yet another proof that reality and politics often
> don't mix,
> lawmakers here in California are poised (after many
> years refusing
> to go along with the bill's main sponsor) to approve
> a ban on
> handheld cell phones when driving.  This may happen
> as soon as next
> week.  You can count on Arnold, desperate for
> popular actions he can
> take so close to election day, to sign the bill.
>
> All of us have been annoyed by the gabbing cell
> phone user who seems
> to be driving oblivious to everything around them.
> So without a
> doubt this law will have wide appeal.  And if
> experience in other
> states holds, the law will have little or no
> long-term positive
> safety effects, and handheld cell phone use will
> quickly rise back to
> pre-law levels after a brief initial reduction.
>
> The reasons are obvious.  Study after study shows
> that distracted
> driving of *any kind* is a key factor in accidents.
> While someone
> holding a cell phone clamped to their ear is easy to
> spot, we're less
> aware of the radio manipulators, people screaming at
> their children
> in the back seat, makeup applicators, food eaters,
> and any of a
> myriad number of other distracted drivers.  In fact,
> studies have
> shown that the most common distractions leading to
> accidents when
> driving are other people inside the vehicle or
> things seen outside
> the vehicle.
>
> Even worse, research shows quite clearly that
> talking on hands-free
> cell phones (still permitted under the bill) is
> equally distracting
> as using a handheld device.  It's the remote
> conversation itself
> that is the real distraction, not the act of holding
> the cell phone
> -- plus there's all the situations where people
> fumble around to
> answer or dial a call even on a hands-free cell
> phone.
>
> When proponents of this legislation are presented
> with these
> inconvenient facts, they tend to reply with, "Oh
> well, at least
> we're doing something..."
>
> "Something" isn't good enough when it's based on bad
> science.  If you
> really want to remove cell phones as a distraction,
> you need to ban
> them totally when driving -- handheld or hands-free,
> as has been
> done in some other countries.  I'm not advocating
> this, nor do I
> think that politicians here have the guts for such
> actions anyway.
> In fact, banning children from cars might be far
> more effective in
> terms of reducing accidents, however unlikely the
> prospect.
>
> To a certain extent this law will be a paper tiger.
> Major California
> cities don't have enough police to deal with serious
> crime, much less
> pulling over people for illegal cell phone use.  And
> the bill's
> penalties -- $20 for first offense, $50 for
> subsequent, will hardly
> be seen as an onerous burden by most drivers in an
> era of $3+ gasoline.
>
> But this law itself is still primarily pandering to
> voters in a manner
> that flies in the face of science.  Perhaps laws
> officially
> recognizing astrology will be next here in the
> Golden State.
>
> --Lauren--
> Lauren Weinstein
> lauren () vortex com or lauren () pfir org
> Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
> http://www.pfir.org/lauren
> Co-Founder, PFIR
>     - People For Internet Responsibility -
> http://www.pfir.org <http://www.pfir.org/>
> Co-Founder, IOIC
>     - International Open Internet Coalition -
> http://www.ioic.net <http://www.ioic.net/>
> Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com <http:// 
www.vortex.com/>
> Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
> Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com <http://lauren.vortex.com/>
> DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com <http://daythink.vortex.com/>
>
>
>
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