Any time there’s a link posted at FARK about someone on a cell phone, the cell phone nazis come out. I hate cell phone Nazis. I’m not talking about the people who would like it if you didn’t scream into the phone… I’m talking about the idiots who seem to have some sort of vendetta against anyone who talks on the phone anywhere near them.
Assuming the person is not being as loud/distracting as two people having a conversation… you have to wonder if the person isn’t just upset because they can’t eavesdrop on the whole conversation. Or maybe they, too, have a cell phone and nobody calls them. Their jealousy shines through and results in them being pissy at anyone “popular” enough to talk to someone on the phone.
Then there are the “just don’t take phone calls in public” people. Listen, assholes… that’s what cell phones are for. So you can take them with you and be accessible all the time. If this wasn’t the point, you wouldn’t need anything more than a wireless handset for your land line. Is it rude to be talking on the phone in a restaurant? Maybe. Rude to the people you’re with, possibly, but certainly not rude to the people sitting at other tables. On public transportation? Nope. If you’re so bothered by other people’s noise, maybe you ought to invest in a set of ear-plugs.
And people who drive around with “Shut up and drive” bumper stickers… good god, don’t get me started. Just because you aren’t capable of driving well and carrying on a conversation doesn’t mean other people aren’t. I am. I talk on the phone all the time when I’m in the car. It’s never a problem.
But there’s the rub — if people are on the phone and it’s causing them to be rude, we need to realize that the rude behavior is not the cell phone… it’s whatever else they’re doing. If someone happens to be driving like an idiot because they are on the phone, the problem is not the phone, it’s the lousy driving. Nearby cell phone users do not cause your airbags to deploy… collisions do. Cell phones do not cut you off in traffic, careless drivers do. In short, the problem is not what the people are doing (talking on the phone, reading the paper, whatever), it’s what they’re not doing (paying attention to the world around them).
June 10th, 2006 at 11:48 am
I agree with you, with one caveat. People on cell phones on public transportation tend to talk LOUD. Two people siting next to me having a conversation is frequently completely different than one person sitting next to me on a cell phone. Also, I tend to wonder about the types of convos people have. I do not want to hear about someone’s sex life, STD history or some other uber private subject matter. People tend to think that if they are on a phone they enjoy more perceived privacy than if they were having a person to person conversation. [This is laterally related to people who think you can't see them picking their noses at traffic lights just because they are alone in their own cars, but I digress ...] There are small children on trains and buses and they don’t need top hear that Nina f– this one and Shawn cheated on her when he !@#$%^ some other girl at a club, etc. Conversations are fine, but rude is still rude, and in that instance the catalyst of the rudeness is the cell phone itself. [That being said I never leave my front porch w/o mine and consider driving time to be a prime time to catch up on calls.]
June 10th, 2006 at 11:50 am
“Assuming the person is not being as loud/distracting as two people having a conversation…”
The problem is not the phone.
June 11th, 2006 at 12:58 am
In re phoning and driving:
This seems like a silly distinction to make, I think. Saying that the problem with phoning and driving is the driving is like saying the problem with drunk driving isn’t the drinking, it’s the driving. The problem isn’t the driving alone in either case: it’s the combination of the driving with another activity that happens to impare one’s ability to drive.
Perhaps you are capable of phoning while driving. I find myself skeptical, though - I’ve seen too much research on the subject, and besides, common sense alone (to say nothing of logic!) dictates that it’s harder to pay attention to the road AND a phone conversation than it is to pay attention to the road alone. I would be rather amused to see you argue that it requires no more concentration to hold a phone and talk on it and drive than to simply drive, nee?
You’re correct that cell phones don’t cut me off in traffic. But perhaps if that guy in front of me had been solely paying attention to the road instead of talking on his cell phone with his [wife/boss/client about the argument they had this morning/his pay rate/their court date today] while trying to also pay attention to the road, then he might not have cut me off in the first place.
So, careless drives cut me off in traffic; this is true. Careless drivers also do things like distract themselves while driving, e.g., talking on the phone. You’re trying to create to seperate classes of thing where only one muddled one exists.
June 11th, 2006 at 2:08 am
That’s quite a bit of straw you’ve got there.
For starters, any distraction at all makes it “harder” to drive. So maybe, then, we should remove the radios, consoles, passengers, etc, etc, etc from cars. Why not? It makes it harder to drive.
The bottom line is that careless drivers are that way because they don’t have the appropriate level of respect for the duty they have to others. If we take the phone away, those people are just going to find something else to do with their time in the car. Taking their phones away is not, in any way, shape, or form, going to solve the problem. It’ll change the excuse, but it’s certainly not going to help any appreciable amount.
There’s no separate class here. You’re the one with the distinction. I have one, and only one, class of people who cause problems on the road: careless drivers.
I don’t particularly care how or why they are not paying attention to the road. I don’t feel any better about getting rear-ended just because the guy wasn’t on his phone. And I really don’t care what they’re doing in the care if they’re not causing problems for others.
Again: the problem is not the phone, it’s the driver. If the driver is incapable of driving and talking on the phone, they shouldn’t do that.
…and trying to equate talking (on the phone or not) to drinking alcohol is a bit ridiculous… but even were I to take the bait… the problem is STILL that the person drank more than they could drive with.
Personally, I can have a beer or two and not endanger a single life on the road. More than that, and it starts getting risky. So, again, the problem is not the alcohol, per se, but the poor judgment. (Major difference: talking on the phone does not impair your judgment the way alcohol does)
If you can’t talk on the phone and drive, don’t. Some people can.
June 11th, 2006 at 9:19 am
Cell phones impair everyone’s ability to drive. Any bit of alcohol in your system impairs your ability to drive. In both cases, the effect varies greatly. Some people are more able to concentrate on two things at once, but spliting your attention between two things will increase the risk that you do something improperly or inaccurately. This is just as applicable to driving. For some people, the risk only goes up a little bit, and some people can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. But everyone is affected by it a little bit. So you’re right, some people can probably drive on the cell phone will only a tiny increase in the possibility of an accident, maybe even a negligible increase, but no one can split their attention between two things and do both things perfectly. If you’re on a cell phone, you’re driving is worse. Just for some people, it might not be a big enough decrease to consider.
June 11th, 2006 at 9:43 am
Alcohol and cell phones are not the same thing. They do not have the same impact on driving.
Let’s use a little computer science analogy.
Your computer processor multi-tasks. It does that by dividing its time into very, very small chunks and then handing those chunks of time out to different programs.
If the processor has two tasks, each of which are going to take two minutes of undivided processor time… and the processor “multi-tasks” them, it will take four minutes before either of them is done (give or take). The amount of time for the whole job is not appreciably different, but the time it takes for each task to finish is much greater.
Consider, instead, a processor that only has one of the above tasks, but the processor is half as fast. The task still takes the same amount of time — four minutes — to complete as it did above.
“So,” you say, “that’s just proof of Taco John’s point!”
But it doesn’t. It’s actually a fantastic illustration of the difference between the problems caused by distractions (like cell phones) and those caused by substances that actually impair your ability.
In the analogy above, drinking is similar to having a half-speed processor. Talking on the phone wall driving like the processor doing two things at once.
But here’s where it gets interesting: a processor is not required to hand out timeslices in equal proportion to all tasks. You can create it in such a way that the most important task gets more time than the other… and therefore finishes sooner.
The same is true in real life. While all distractions cause some degradation in performance, the bottom line is that you’re not going to eliminate them… the problem is not the distraction, the problem is misplaced priorities: carelessness.
The people are too focused on the Cell phone conversation and not paying enough attention to driving.
I would also quibble with the notion that you can’t do two things perfectly if your attention is split… that’s simply not the case.
June 11th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
Using the processor model though, if you give any time at all to the less important task (the phone call, radio, drinking coffee, kids in backseat), the more important task (driving) takes longer to finish than if it had 100% of the time all to itself.
Now if you only devote 1% of your attention and judgment to the phone call, then the degradation in performance will be minimal, and like in a computer, you probably wouldn’t notice the difference. But I doubt many people can actually hold a phone conversation paying that little attention to it.
I agree that the real problem is carelessness, but I think the carelessness comes from either making the decision to get engrossed in a telephone call, thus giving it a bigger share of your attention, or not recognizing the fact that you personally can’t control how engrossed you’re going to get in a phone call.
In the end, I agree with you that some people can drive and talk on the phone. In my opinion, it’s because they are either very good at multitasking (higher overall capacity) or can control where their attention is going very well (can split up the capacity to the right priorities). Because of this, it seems like I believe someone driving while on a cell phone has a lot more working against them than you do, which means I think that the ability is a fairly rare and special one.
June 11th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
The one fundamental assumption that your opinion here — that devoting any percentage of your attention to a second task degrades your performance in the first — makes is that there are no tasks in which a marginal increase in attention results in no performance increase.
Put another way: you are assuming that every task out there would benefit from 100% of your attention and that 99% of your attention will not suffice.
Let me give you an example.
Walking from class to your locker.
If you spend 5% of your attention to carry on a conversation with another person, are you going to fall down the stairs? Are you going to trip over something? Maybe walk to the library instead?
No, you’re not. Because walking to a certain place neither requires nor benefits from having 100% of your attention. Certainly if you become so engrossed in a conversation that you quit paying attention to your surroundings you could have problems… but devoting 1% of your attention to something else is not going to degrade your ability to walk.
Driving, in most situations, does not require 100% of your attention.
It’s tempting to believe the “obvious” statement that any task will benefit from having 100% of your attention, but I don’t think there’s much evidence to support it.
Nor will there ever be, really… because I doubt that we, especially in today’s society, can ever really devote 100% of our attention to anything.
June 12th, 2006 at 10:17 am
Wait, wait - comparing driving while distracted (cell phones) to driving while physically inhibited from paying full attention to driving (alcohol) where both lead to the same issue (lower reaction time) which causes accidents is a bad analogy, but comparing people to CPUs is a good one? Someone call Isaac Asimov.
Anyway, there’s no straw in my argument. If your argument is simply that the issue is careless people (not cell phones), and that we shouldn’t worry about cell phone use while driving because those careless people will just do something else careless, then logic dictates that we should also repeal all the laws against drunk driving. Only someone who is careless would drive while inebriated, and so the problem is careless people, not the drinking, right?
In any case, you then say: “While all distractions cause some degradation in performance…” And so you can feel free to dispute my analogy all you want, but that’s really all my point was, anyway. Talking on the cell phone is a distraction and it degrades performance - anyone who says “I drive just fine while talking on the phone” is certainly as wrong as anyone who says “I drive just fine after drinking.” You don’t drive just fine; you drive less fine than you would minus the phone or minus the booze.
Further on the subject of bad analogies, you compare walking to driving in Comment 8. I don’t think I need to go into detail on how those are totally different things - I’ve yet to see a fatality result from two people colliding in a hallway because one was yakking on a cell phone. (Although, of course, anything is posible.)
“…which means I think that the ability is a fairly rare and special one.” I second John here.
June 12th, 2006 at 10:25 am
I’d also be curious as to how you square these statements:
1: “While all distractions cause some degradation in performance…”
2: “Put another way: you are assuming that every task out there would benefit from 100% of your attention and that 99% of your attention will not suffice.”
3: “Driving, in most situations, does not require 100% of your attention.”
You are correct that there are plenty of things that you can do that 99% of your attention is plenty for (statement 2). Walking around the halls fo the law school, for instance, probably requires nowhere near 99% of your attention.
But because there are situations in driving where 100% of your attention is necessary in order to avoid an accident (a necessary conclusion from statement 3) and that any distraction causes a degradation in performance (statement 1), it is bad to have any distractions at all while driving. You never know when you will need 100% of your attention on the road; it’s not as if you can say “Hold on, I think I’m about to get into a head on collision because some guy is about to swerve across the center line - let me call you back.”
Thus, even assuming that you’re correct that we can never be fully distraction-free, we should do everything we can to minimize distractions, and getting off the bloody phone while you’re driving is a good first step.
June 12th, 2006 at 10:34 am
1. I didn’t say we “shouldn’t worry about it”. I said that it wasn’t the problem. I don’t think we should devote any more “worry” to cell phone use than we do to other distractions.
2. The issue of the comparisons between talking on a cell phone and drinking have been dealt with. They’re not the same. They’re only vaguely similar and even then only in one potential end result. And while it’s tempting to make comparisons based on the end result, the logic there is weak and poorly considered. Ice also causes traffic fatalities. Does that mean that ice on the roads == drunk driving? Nope. They just occasionally have the same result.
3. “anyone who says ‘I drive just fine while talking on the phone’ is certainly as wrong as anyone who says ‘I drive just fine after drinking.’” No. Not at all. For starters, both of those statements could be true. Depending on how much someone has been drinking, how well they can handle driving and talking, etc.
Almost universally when there is an accident (or near miss) while someone is on the phone the person on the other end of the phone stops talking. The person on the other end will then generally hear the sound-effects of an accident.
What happens when that person randomly stops talking? All of the attention they were devoting to the conversation is redirected to driving. This is simply not possible if you’re drunk. There’s no “hold on, let me sober up” whereas an immediate cessation of talking on the phone returns one to full capacity. Same thing happens when there is someone else in the car that you’re talking to.
The difference between someone who can drive well while on the phone and one who can’t has everything to do with proper attention management, not whether or not they’re currently holding a conversation.
4. There wasn’t a comparison between walking and driving. The walking example was an illustration that not all tasks require 100% of your attention, subverting a major assumption of John’s argument.
5. My original statement that distractions degrade performance was based on the same analogy that I later realized was faulty.
6. The idea that we should get off the phone while driving to reduce distractions sounds great… except that it’s not a universal truth — it requires a bit of cost-benefit analysis.
To wit, you suggest that it’s “possible” that one could be killed walking down the hall. If you also concede that it’s possible that paying 100% attention to where you’re walking could prevent that, the logic that we should reduce all distractions “just in case” dictates that one shouldn’t talk on the phone while walking, either.
So while it’s a nice platitude, and for many people may be a good idea, you’re painting with too broad a brush to suggest that it’s true for everyone.
7. There is the additional possibility that a given person will spend only 40% of their attention on driving regardless of whether there are distractions or not… that there is simply nothing we can do to force the person to be more careful. In such a case, it’s also possible that adding the task of talking on the phone would not impact, in any way shape or form, their driving performance.
I gues it’s also possible that the presence of a distraction might make them more cognizant of their driving and, therefore, increase the amount of attention they pay to it… in which case the hypothetical person would drive better when on the phone.
8. In short… while I agree that many people do not drive well while they are on the phone, I’m not convinced that the phone is neccessarily the cause.
9. Let’s also not forget that there’s a huge difference between holding a phone to your ear while driving and using a headset or speakerphone.
PS: so much for the 2,000 character limit. This probably should’ve been its own post.
June 12th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
The argument isn’t that someone is too uncoordinated to hold on to a cell phone and drive at the same time - although that may well be the case for some people. The argument is that the conversation itself distracts - whether you’re doing business over the phone and worried about profits or arguing with your significant other over the phone and worried about who they’re cheating on you with. That’s why handsfree sets don’t change the statistics on the number of cell phone related accidents.
And as for paying 100% attention to walking: there’s a cost-benefit analysis to be done here. Since it’s extremely unlikely that someone is going to die (or even be seriously injured or even cause a lot of money in property damage) while walking carelessly down a hallway, it’s not such a big deal if people don’t pay attention while walking.
But since there is a much larger chance that carelessness while driving will lead to expensive property damage if not serious bodily harm or death, it’s much more important that people pay as much attention as possible to the road. It’s not a big deal if you run into me and I drop my books. It is a big deal if you run into me and dent up my car (or break my legs or kill me).
June 12th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
What really freaks me out is those wireless Bluetooth headsets. Like when I see someone walking down the street who appears to be talking to themselves (very loudly), and I don’t see any cell phone held to their ear, but then if you look very close, you can see that they are not talking to themselves but have this little earbud thing they are wearing. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just a bit weird.
I do have a “wired” headset I wear when talking on the phone while driving. I don’t think it makes me any less or more alert to the road, but I feel physically uncomfortable with one hand on the wheel and one hand holding the phone to my ear.
Sure, any number of things can distract someone when driving. But, I can tell you between New Orleans and Houston, in those two cities, if someone is driving way under the speed limit on the interstate, or otherwise not paying attention to what they are doing, more than half of the time, they are holding a phone to their ear.
It’s like anything else: you can’t make a law promoting common decency and good sense. I don’t think banning cell phones is a good idea… but I do wish some people had some “cell phone manners”.
June 12th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
“there’s a cost-benefit analysis to be done here.”
Well if you’re going to do one… do one.
I’m not quite sure how you get from “walking is not dangerous, so you don’t need to pay attention” to “driving is more dangerous so you should eliminate all distractions.”
Clearly this is not an all-or-nothing decision. I sincerely doubt you are going to driving everywhere by yourself with the radio off “just to be safe.”
This is an analysis that has to be a) done by individuals for themselves and b) considered at the margins.
Let’s say that in a perfect environment, I won’t pay more than 95% of attention to the road… and lets say that I decide to take on a phone conversation that requires 10% of my concentration. So now my driving maxes out at 90%.
Is there an increased risk? Sure. How much is the increase? Depends. Depends on the driving conditions, your current state of mind, whether or not there are other things competing for your attention and so on. So, really, all that you can say with any degree of certainty is that there is a cost.
I think it’s easy to see how much the benefit would vary from person to person.
So if what you’re saying is that you personally have done the analysis and don’t think driving and talking is a good idea for you… then more power to you.
But you simply cannot have done the analysis for someone else (or people in general), there are entirely too many variables that you don’t know.
And that’s my point. I’m not trying to suggest that everyone should be talking on the phone, only that the cell phone nazis don’t discriminate between those who are actually a problem and those who aren’t. (I also disagree with casting so many opinions and personal preferences as fact, but that should have become clear by now.)
June 13th, 2006 at 10:28 am
Tsk, tsk - when I say something that is contrary to what you think, it’s an opinion or a personal preference (that you disagree with using as a fact), but when you express a personal opinion or fact, e.g. that it’s fine to drive with distractions as long as you are not a careless driver, it’s fine? For shame! lol
Anyway, addressing that last paragraph, let’s go back to an older analogy: drinking and driving.
Surely there are SOME people who can have a blood alcohol content of .08 (that can be as little as one drink for some people) and drive close-enough-to-just-fine. Even accepting that drinking affects one’s abilities differently than cell phone usage, it’s as much a given that drinking affects different people differently; as such, it’s not a stretch to imagine people who can drive at 90% with a BAC of .08.
But our drinking and driving laws don’t discriminate between those who are actually a problem and those who aren’t.
Don’t like that? Surely there are some 17 year olds who are mature enough to have sex. But statutory rape laws (in at least some states) don’t discriminate between those who are actually mature enough and those who aren’t.
Getting too unreasonable? How about something more toned down: Surely there are some people who can drive a car very well at 70 miles per hour - but the speed limit on Highway 37 doesn’t discriminate between those who can handle a car at such a speed and those who can’t.
I could go on with this forever, I think. The point is that lines always have to be drawn somewhere, and to people at the margins (e.g., those who can drive and talk on a cell phone without any significant degradation in their performance), the laws will always seem arbitrary and too stringent.
But the fact that some people can drive well at .08 or at 70 mph or with a phone doesn’t mean that the law should accomodate them, any more than the law should accommodate the any other statistical outliers. The law is (for better or for worse) made to apply to everyone in general, and most people are careless jerks who often demonstrate that they ought not be aloowed to drive at all in the first place, much less with a phone in hand.
And of course, we’re not even really talking about laws that ban cell phones while driving here - we’re talking about people who think that cell phones are, as a matter of social (not legal!) poicy, unacceptable while driving. Ooooh, watch out for that stigma!
That brings us full circle, though, and it’s a good stopping point. In your OPINION, it’s okay to use cell phones while driving, and in your OPINION, it’s not rude to talk on a cell phone in a restaurant, on a bus, etc. In some people’s OPINIONS, you shouldn’t talk on a cell phone while driving (or while at a restaurant, on a bus, or - my personal pet peeve - in a bleedin’ movie theatre).
I’m fully willing to grant that opinions are like assholes; everyone’s got one and they all stink. But in the interest of fairness, don’t act all high and mighty by calling others out for casting opinion as fact (which I don’t even think I was doing - I was simply trying to demonstrate the logic behind my opinion) when you’re as guilty as anyone else.
June 13th, 2006 at 11:09 am
If I didn’t know you better, Nick, I’d think you were moving the goalposts on me. When did we start talking about the law? We could certainly have a debate about what the law can, does, or should do… but that’s not what I’m talking about here. We’ve both had the same amount of law school, I most definitely don’t need another lecture on formal realizability.
Second, the difference in opinions being cast as fact here is that you’re making an assertion. I’m not neccessarily making the counter assertion in most cases, only pointing out that there are holes in the assumptions and logic of the assertion. I grant that it’s __possible__ that talking on the phone universally makes people worse drivers. What I won’t grant is that you’ve even visited the neighborhood of supporting that it’s actually true with solid logic flowing from correct assumptions. Instead, you’ve taken some opinions that sound reasonable on their face (although sometimes not so much upon closer inspection) and then built logic on top of that. That’s all well and good, but we both know it doesn’t make for a very convincing argument.
Of course, I have given you the benefit of actually refuting your arguments instead of dismissing them out of hand (”Wait, wait - comparing driving while distracted to driving while physically inhibited … is a bad analogy, but comparing people to CPUs is a good one?”) or ignoring them all together (Points 3, 6, 7, and 9 in comment #11 and virtually all of comment #14, for example) so we’re clearly not coming at this from the same angle.
But yes, it is my opinion that some people are far too sensitive about cell phone use. It’s also my opinion that the mere fact that someone is using a cell phone 50 feet from you at another table in a restaurant should not bother you unless they are screaming into the phone. But, then, I feel like it’s legitimate to be annoyed by anyone screaming in a restaurant regardless of whether they’re on the phone or not. Simply put, I just don’t see many situations in which simply adding a cell phone should be cause for people to get annoyed.
Loud talkers? Annoying, cell phone or not. Bad drivers? Annoying, cell phone or not. Carrying on a conversation at a reasonable tone at a restaurant or on a bus? People who get worked up over this kind of thing probably need to take a trip to a mental health professional.