ON DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION

LOOK MA, NO HANDS

Today California joins a host of states that make it illegal to drive while using a cell phone in one's hand.  While the logic of the move seems reasonable, as we've seen state after state pass this law, there is growing evidence that cell phone use while driving, regardless of whether held to one's ear, or with a head-set/speaker-phone arrangement, can be equally distracting and dangerous. 

The LA Times notes:

"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says the new law will reduce accidents. "Getting people's hands off their phones and onto their steering wheels will save lives and make California's roads safer," he said earlier this month.
That, however, is not what the research finds. Scientists say that when mixing cellphones and driving, the number of hands available for the tasks is not the limiting factor.
Instead, it's a driver's attention and processing capacity. These are often stretched beyond safe limits when someone juggles the complex tasks of negotiating traffic and conversing with another remotely."

The article goes on to quote some studies that provide some evidence of this phenomena.  A 2005 study for example, found that:

"Compared with drivers exceeding the legal blood alcohol limit, users of cellphones -- hand-held or hands-free -- reacted 18% more slowly to braking by the car in front and were more likely to get in a rear-end collision.
What's more, the talkers seemed to compensate for their slowed response time by falling farther behind the car in front -- a pattern likely to slow traffic and exacerbate congestion."

It'll be difficult for politicians and regulators to ban both hand-held AND hands-free cell phone use while driving. 

What'll likely need to happen  over time is that cars will get additional technology that assist the drivers while they're driving, whether they're distracted or not.  This CNN piece from last year, gives some examples:

"The next generation of environment-sensing cars will use more than just radar and infrared sensors to watch for signs of trouble. Video cameras will look for stoplights that have turned red and for children who are running toward the road. Distance-sensing lasers will check for vehicles in the driver's blind spot and the passing lane.These sensors won't do anything that a vigilant driver can't already do, but what if they could? What if your car could sense road conditions and traffic problems that are out of your sight? That's coming too.

The next giant leap in sensing will be radio networking that enables cars to exchange information.

"Communication [between cars] will be like an additional sensor," says Ralf Herrtwich, director of vehicle IT research at DaimlerChrysler.

Car-to-car communication will ensure that your automobile is impeccably informed about road conditions ahead. And this extra "sensor" will have almost unlimited range, because information can be instantaneously relayed from one vehicle to the next, to the next, and so on."

It'll be a while until these types of technologies are mainstream realities, but they're no longer in the realm of science fiction. 

The ideal technology of course would be self-driving cars, with or without the robot driver as in the classic 1990 Schwarzenegger sci-fi movie Total Recall.

Until then let's all be really careful while driving and using cell phones, hands-free or not.