On Monday, August 17, 2015 at 12:08:01 AM UTC-4, Ashton Crusher wrote:


You never change the radio station? You never look at the thing to
adjust it?

My car has pushbuttons on the steering wheel to change stations,
so I don't have to even take my eyes off the road. And even in
older cars that didn't have that, I don't feel anywhere as near
distracted by the radio. You're ignoring that the radio is a
one way device. I'm not engaged in a constant back and forth
flow of information. And I don't need to capture every word, to
pay close attention like I do with a person on the other end of a phone
call. If I just instantly stop engaging with the radio, nothing
happens. We are not accustomed to suddenly dropping a call.


As the link I posted to the real world study showed,
talking on the cell phone wasn't distracting but things like dialing
it were, just as doing other things in the car is distracting....
looking for your sunglasses, looking for a pen, looking for change for
the toll booth.

Sure, those things occur, but they are typically over in just a
few seconds. Phone calls go on for an order of magnitude longer.


Most of us wait till its safe to do distracting
stuff, we don't try and tune the radio while we are making a sharp
turn or putting the brakes on because of the guy who just pulled in
front of us.

Some of us do, yes. But even if you do, with a radio, if you're
fiddling with the stations, and suddenly the traffic situation
changes, you can just stop doing it. When you have your boss,
a customer, or even just a friend on the phone, it's far less likely
you're going to suddenly drop the phone, stop talking, etc.



Unfortunately, most of the "studies" purposely force the
participants to engage with the cell phone at the same time as
something is happening that requires their attention. The purposely
force the participants to be unsafe and then conclude what they did
was unsafe because of the cell phone when in fact it was only unsafe
because they were forced to do what they would not have otherwise
done.

I think it's still a comparison that has merit because of the
above examples. You can't predict when some other driver is going
to suddenly pull out, some child is going to enter the street,
someone is going to drift into your lane, etc.