Use of mobile phones: UK versus NZ legislation

[Drunken Monkey]

Don't make me find the studies but some have shown that it requires more concentration to converse with someone on a phone then in real life.

Please do, I'm curious.

[scumdog]

You still haven't shown me the difference between talking to a passenger or talking to the phone on the dash. By your token, am I supposed to ignore other occupants in my car "unless it's an emergency"?

Normally the passenger will 'let you know' when you are about to plough into the rear of a logging truck. (or at least they will scream/stop talking)

The blabberer on Bluetooth won't.

But they'll hear YOUR screams/

[Dave Lobster]

Normally the passenger will 'let you know' when you are about to plough into the rear of a logging truck. (or at least they will scream/stop talking)

Even if there's three of them in the back seat, aged between two and five, screaming at each other?

I doubt that very much.

[MikeyG]

Unless you change the law to stop people:
Talking to passengers
Shouting at children in the back seat
Eating
Drinking
Driving with one hand on the wheel
Smoking
etc.

I was reading in a car mag that in aussie they have banned cellphones and smoking while driving.

[Ixion]

Normally the passenger will 'let you know' when you are about to plough into the rear of a logging truck. (or at least they will scream/stop talking)

The blabberer on Bluetooth won't.

But they'll hear YOUR screams/

I would be very interested to know if there is any evidence of that theory. I suspect it is an urban myth.

Firstly passengers are passengers. The most likely reason they are passengers is that they do not drive . And therefore will be very unlikely to observe driving hazards.

Even if the passenger does have a licence, the very fact of being a passenger means that they are unlikely to pay much attention to the road. You are arguing that the driver will be so distracted by the conversation as not to pay attention to traffic and road conditions. But the driver is talking to the passenger (by definition). So why will not the passenger be equally distracted ? Why would the driver de distracted by the conversation , but the passenger, the other half of the conversation, not be?

I see this all the time on the motorway with old women. The old woman driver will be nattering away, head turned to look at her passenger. The passenger will be nattering away also, head turned toward the driver. Neither is paying much attention to the road.

I think the theory of the "observant passenger" is a myth.Unless someone can produce some evidence.

And conversation with a person is IMHO much more distracting than converation on a phone, because it is very difficult to avoid looking for the body language cues that we rely on when talking to people. On a phone, there are none so it is less distracting.

[Filterer]

Please do, I'm curious.

here is a start
http://www.newscientisttech.com/chan...mg18725105.000

"While a car is moving, the strength of signal received by a driver's phone continually changes, and the phone often has to switch from one base station to another during a call. That causes a slight loss of sound quality, forcing the driver's brain to work harder to work out what the person at the other end is saying, say Takashi Hamada and colleagues at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tokyo, Japan."

..

"The researchers then played 11 volunteers an audio recording of a story that included similar interruptions. As the volunteers struggled to hear the distorted parts of the recording, their right parietal cortex, the part of the brain that perceives sound, became more active"

..

Previously, it was assumed that speaking to passengers was less distracting because they stop talking when the driver needs to concentrate.

[Dave Lobster]

"While a car is moving, the strength of signal received by a driver's phone continually changes, and the phone often has to switch from one base station to another during a call. That causes a slight loss of sound quality, forcing the driver's brain to work harder to work out what the person at the other end is saying, say Takashi Hamada and colleagues at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tokyo, Japan."

This may be true in Japan, as they use a different type of mobile phone there. But on GSM (used here, on Voda at least), this is not the case. There might be a slight loss of quality, but you'd need to be doing over 160mph to experience it. Unlikely that would be the case here.

[Fat Tony]

Eating
Drinking
Smoking

Those can now also be considered an offence in the UK, but as previously mentioned there's sod all traffic police left on the roads over here now (replaced by GATSO cameras) to enforce any of it.

Having said that, one guy got charged last year for drinking a cup of coffee while driving (though he was stationary at traffic lights when the police saw him)

[Dave Lobster]

Having said that, one guy got charged last year for drinking a cup of coffee while driving (though he was stationary at traffic lights when the police saw him)

Its criminal behaviour like that that's sending the country down the drain.

[MD]

Using hand held phones is definitely more dangerous than smoking or talking to pasengers. I've just bought one of those head sets with the mic on a boom over your mouth. Much better than fitting a car kit and now it's much easier to yap on the phone, while playing play station and changing the music and I'm still able to use my other hand to turn the page of the paper I'm reading. Bloody brilliant this mult-tasking while driving.