Photo by Chris Meyer
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One sunny afternoon at the corner of Dunn and Kirkwood in Bloomington, Dong-Chul Seo, a lecturer at the IUB Department of Applied Health Science, was hit from behind. The other driver had been startled by the ringing of her cell phone and hit the accelerator.
Seo had previously studied traffic safety and, after a small accident, wondered what kind of research had been done regarding cell phones and driving accidents. Surprised to find a lack of hard data, he decided to collect his own.
Seo focused his research on college students, since drivers under 24 are disproportionately affected by traffic accidents. Seo surveyed nearly 1,300 college students from five universities on their driving records and use of cell phones. The results, published in the December issue of Journal of American College Health, confirmed the hypothesis that hands-free units might not offer a safety advantage over handheld phones.
Seo was surprised by his own findings. The number of reported accidents or near-accidents involving cell phones was close to national numbers; 159, or 13 percent of the respondents who were drivers. What astounded him was the type of cell phone use involved in accidents. For one, he found that accidents with cell phones occurred more often the longer the cell phone conversation. Secondly, he found that accidents with cell phones more often involved hands-free models rather than hand-held cell phones. This does not mean that hands-free cell phones are more dangerous. Instead, it reflects the societal belief that hands-free cell phones are safer. If a cell phone user believes their hands-free model is safer, they are likely to use it more often and for longer periods.
The distraction from the task of driving, Seo said, is not from holding the phone but rather from having a conversation with a person who is not in the car with the driver. Seo further explained that passengers might get the same information as the driver. Other people in the car can see the conditions the driver is facing. A car conversation will often pause when the driver is faced with decisions such as entering heavier traffic, changing lanes, poor visibility, weather changes and so on. However, a person on the other end of a cell phone conversation does not have that information.
Talking to a person on the phone requires more concentration. This is because a level of information is lost when you are not talking to a person face-to-face. When the person is with you, important non-verbal cues and body language can be used. This information is lost when you are talking on the phone.
In a 2001 study, researchers from the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh found that the brain has a fixed amount of thought processing available while multi-tasking. This means for each activity added, the quality for all activities will be decreased.
"We are limited to fully doing only one thing at a time. Driving requires your full mental attention, all the time. What can you imagine could happen if you closed your eyes for half a second?" Seo said.
Another study that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1997 reported that drivers using a cell phone increase their risk of an accident by up to 6.5 times. This increase in risk is comparable to driving with a blood-alcohol level above the legal limit.
According to the National Highway Commission on Safety, 40 percent of accidents are caused by distraction.
"Talking while driving is the biggest distraction in my opinion," Seo said.
Other activities such as listening to music or a book on tape are passive activities that do not demand as much attention as cell phone conversations.
Seo is confident of his main findings, however he did express that there are some important caveats. Since the data were collected from questionnaires, there is some amount of falsehood that cannot be detected or corrected.
There is a growing trend in legislating cell phone use while driving. The existing laws of New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C., ban the use of hand-held cell phones. Currently, Indiana and 30 other states are contemplating similar laws. These laws are not based on empirical information; Oklahoma is the only one out of all 50 states to collect useable crash data on in-vehicle telephone use. Rather than passing more laws, Seo recommends that all other states follow Oklahoma's lead.
"That would give us the hard data that is lacking," said Seo.
Editor's note: Maurina Paradise spent her childhood in Hawaii. She wrote the above article for a journalism science writing class instructed by Holly Stocking. Paradise is finishing her final semester at IUB and will receive an M.P.A. in environmental policy and natural resource management from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and an M.A. from the School of Journalism.
Related information:
Swarthmore College psychologist Kenneth Gergen has written extensively about cell phones and the challenges of “absent presence.”
http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/kgergen1/web/page.phtml?id=manu32&st=manuscripts&hf=1
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