There’s a reason that bereaved relatives are the last people we should be listening to in the wake of an incident.
The father of a cyclist who was left in a coma after she was knocked off her bike has said using hands-free devices while driving should be banned.
Sigh… Tragic though this case is, it isn’t certain that the hands free kit itself was the problem. As with any device, people can lose concentration. The driver could just have easily been distracted by any number of things going on in the cab – and there is plenty to distract us if we look; from the stereo, to the instruments or the satnav. If we allow our attention to wander, then a collision becomes more likely.
Just because this driver allowed the device to distract him, (however it isn’t absolutely certain) we do not need specific devices banned by the state.
Her father Peter Bowers, from East Malling in Kent, claimed hands-free devices distracted drivers.
Mr Bowers’ claims are not the same thing as evidence. Plenty of people use these devices without causing incidents, yet Mr Bowers would penalise all of them, because of one person who may have been distracted by the device, but could equally have been distracted by something else. Besides, we already have a way of dealing with this:
It is legal to use use hands-free phones, sat navs and two-way radios while driving or riding but the police have the power to stop and penalise users they think are distracted and not in control of the vehicle.
There you go. No need for a ban. Just as, frankly, there is no need for a specific law banning the use of hand held phones – the law is already adequate, it merely needs to be enforced. Introducing new law doesn’t help as there is more law to enforce and it generally won’t be – indeed, I see people navigating cars regularly with one hand clamping a phone to their ear. That ban worked well, didn’t it?
The problem with such laws is that they can’t be enforced – effectively. Unless you have the police watching every single driver every time they take a trip, the numbers just mean that 99% of trips could be carried out with drivers using non-hands-free phones, two-way radios, satnavs, smoking, drinking, eating and the police won’t catch them. And when people realise that a law is unenforceable they ignore it.
The fact that the laws doesn’t work doesn’t mean that more laws are required. Accidents happen. Sometimes a person is at fault, sometimes not. When they are at fault they can be punished. But don’t punish everyone for the stupidity of the few.
I believe that back when the research was first being done on this stuff they actually did some fairly serious analysis of various “distracted driving” accident causes and found that the vast majority concerned other passengers (particularly kids I believe) in the car or events/distractions outside the vehicle. Cell phones etc were down around 10% and smoking was down around 1% or 2%. NOTE: these figures are NOT for “all accidents.” They are ONLY for “accidents thought to be due to distractions” which is a moderately small subset (20%? I forget actually) of the total accidents.
– MJM
Sounds about right.
This is probably that research – http://www.nsc.org/news_resources/Resources/Documents/The%20role%20of%20driver%20distraction%20in%20traffic%20crashes.pdf
Driver inattention is 25% of police reported accidents. Distraction is one form of inattention is over half of this number. Of specific distractions, smoking is 1%, mobile phone use 1.5%. Occupants, outside events, radio/cd add up to just over 50%.
So like everything politicians and bansturbators go for (obesity, drinking, smoking, etc) they go for something that is actually only a minor problem when you really look at the figures.
SadButMad! Excellent! Yes indeed, and I see my memory wasn’t far off after all!!
OK… soooo… Can’t do much about outside distractions, but let’s look at “radio/cd” and “other occupants.” Taken together, those two distractions cause 2,500% more accidents than smoking. Obviously, if smoking is deemed important enough for legislation based on accidents, then those two should be looked at as well, and actually BOTH are quite easily solved!
(1) Replace car radio/cd devices with a single channel weather/police-event/traffic radio with the verbal information reported in a monotone voice, preferably computer-generated. There would be only one control: on or off. Volume would be pre-set at moderately high for the hard of hearing.
(2) Remove the front passenger seat. Separate the rear seating area from the driver with an opaque and soundproof divider. Emergency communications could be initiated by a passenger through pushing a button that would activate a red blinking dashboard light notifying the driver to pull over and stop so that a telephone link to the back area could be activated.
Two simple fixes, 2,500% more effective at reducing accidents than prohibiting smoking while driving.
Who could possibly object?
– MJM
The CD/radios in many cars can be shockingly poorly designed.
Perhaps what the government should be focusing on is regulation of such products, mandating that they comply with at least a basic set of ergonomic rules. There really is no excuse for some of the “user interfaces” – and I use that term in its loosest possible sense – that I’ve seen, particularly at the low-end of the market.
Humans are not machines. Watch some of those “Accident Investigation”-type documentaries for a while and you’ll see that assertion proved time and time again. The ergonomics and user experience of every human-operated machine need to be given much higher priority. Poor design and ergonomics should be treated, legally, like any other fundamental design flaw. There’s really no excuse for getting it wrong.
There is an obsession in recent times for everything to be “menu driven” and have touch screens. These are almost always detrimental to efficient and straightforward interaction. Push buttons and rotary knobs have a tactile confirmation of operation and can be located without having to look at them: not so for touch screens, especially when the function of a particular “button” on screen is context dependendent.
It is particularly alarming that a number of vehicle manufacturers have now incorporated a large computer-menu centre console which handles many ordinary vehicle functions (heaters, window demist etc.) as well as the radio/cd player. There is absolutely no need for this (except perhaps as a gimmick or as a way of penny-pinching by the manufacturers) and it cannot possibly be good for road safety.
The only logical solution to all of this is….rickshaws !!! 😀