Quote:
|
Originally Posted by meembo
That is a remarkable assertion. I don't know you, but your confidence in your ability to ignore distractions on a dime sounds superhuman! I'm glad you try to limit your attention to the call, but I assert that the simple act of answering calls while driving is the first in a chain of distractions during the call that endanger you and others. By the time you realize the call needs to be dropped in order to pay attention to the road, your reaction time to hazards has slowed considerably already. In the same way a drunk driver can't accurately judge his abilities because of his impairment, a chatting driver with divided attention can't judge to the best of his ability when to "refocus" on the road.
|
In that case, I assume that no matter who is in the passenger seat next to you, all your drives are conducted in complete silence.
There's really no difference between talking on a voice activated cell phone using a headset than talking to your passenger. Fact is, i don't take my focus off the road. And if I'm in traffic, I don't talk on the phone without pulling over. But if I'm driving around on a deserted highway and my desk calls me, I can talk without being distracted from the road. Driving is the top priority.
But there are all sorts of non-driving distractions that you deal with every day. You listen to the radio. you change stations. You change CD's, or tracks on CD's, you play with the heater or the air conditioner, mess with your seat controls, eat, drink, think about things other than driving. . .all sorts of distractions. The trick is not legislating the distractions. The trick is in teachign drivers to be aware of teh distractions and how to prioritize them.
I'll use my helicopter pilot as an example. If we're out on a story, he's concentrating on keeping the chopper in the air, he's concentrating on spotting other news/police choppers and the occasional airplane, he's concentrating on not hitting buildings, trees, towers, or land formations, he's concentrating on talking to the tower or to the newsroom over the radio, he's concentrating on the 3 police scanners in the chopper, he's concentrating on his kneeboard, he's concentrating on his instruments, he's concentrating on flying me to the best angles for shooting, he's concentrating on helping me find whatever it is we're supposed to be shooting, and somewhere in there he's probably also thinking about what he's going to have for dinner or how many A's his kid got on the last report card. How the hell does he deal with all those things to concentrate on without crashing? Training. Prioritization.
But the fundamental difference between him and most drivers is that he's had a lot of training, and most drivers have had pretty much butkus for training. Another big difference is that he considers his performance in that chopper to be a life and death issue. If he fucks up, he dies. And so do I. Most people do not get into a car saying "I need to do this thing right or I could take myself and who knows how many others out through my mistakes."
Quote:
|
I fundamentally disagree with you that the issue is "training and awareness". No amount of training removes the threat of distractions while driving. The issue is distraction, whether it is in the form of a child or a hamburger or a phone call. I don't see how it's possible to advocate awareness and defend cell phone calls while driving. The reduction of cell phones and other distractions to the driver is precisely the issue.
|
Well then let's get rid of ALL distractions. Toss out the radio, mandate that all vehicles come with automatic climate controls, toss out map pockets in the doors because they might hold a map that you might read while you're driving, toss out mirrors in the sun visors, outlaw billboards, drive throughs, etc, you get the idea. We cannot eliminate distractions. You cannot even stop people from gabbing on the phone - pass a law against it and they'll get a handsfree speakerphone kit, and the cops will never be the wiser. So rather than trying to legislate something you can't possibly get rid of anyway, we may as well teach drivers how to drive and how to prioritize.