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Subject: [IP] more on approve:go2hell 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.netSubject: 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
Co-Founder, IOIC
- International Open Internet Coalition -
http://www.ioic.net
Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com
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