Driving While Distracted
Matt Richtel has a good piece in the New York Times on the economic pressure to multitask that drives a lot of people to try to use work-related electronic devices while they’re also driving:
Truckers, plumbers, delivery drivers and others are tethered to dispatchers with an array of productivity devices, including on-board computers that send instructions about the next job and keep tabs on drivers’ locations. Such devices can require continual attention — distracting drivers who are steering the biggest vehicles on American roads.
The compulsion to work while driving often trumps clear evidence that such activity is dangerous. Studies show that someone who talks on the phone while driving is four times more likely to crash, even using a hands-free headset, than someone who is simply driving. The risks are even greater when sending text messages.
It would be good to be clear about one point, though, namely that this isn’t just people making an individualized tradeoff about their safety versus their jobs. When you drive in a dangerous manner, you’re creating a huge risk for everyone else on the road as well. Consequently, this kind of thing should not only be illegal, the penalties ought to be pretty stiff. A guy who walked alongside the road shooting bullets into the air would be quickly perceived as a danger to the whole community and stopped. People who talk or text on the phone behind the wheel are imposing huge costs on everyone else.
Insofar as people need to save time on their commutes it would make a lot more sense to use a congestion tax like they have here in Stockholm. As you see, the actual prices that they charge are pretty modest (you need to pay in both directions). The whole system was very controversial when first put into place—just as the proposed NYC system was controversial until the state legislature decided to kill it notwithstanding the wishes of NYC’s people and elected officials—but the debate has substantially died down since it’s been up and running for a while. There’s a strong mental bias toward the status quo that makes people skeptical of this idea, but I’m pretty sure it’ll spread steadily over time. Ultimately unpriced crowded roads are genuinely contrary to the interests of the vast majority of people, it’s just that historically the technology hasn’t existed to do congestion pricing in a reasonable way.
35 Responses to “Driving While Distracted”
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October 1st, 2009 at 9:21 am
Chatting on the phone should be illegal for everyone, not just delivery guys. As for all the other gear they carry with them, like it or not, they’re going to have to use it. However, if ignition cutouts can be integrated with breathalyzers, and in-dash DVD players can be disabled while the car is on, so can all this gear be designed so that it cannot be used unless the truck is stopped. That’s what should be law.
October 1st, 2009 at 9:26 am
Funny that the distracted driving discussion seems to leave out the one major piece of equipment — the iPod.
October 1st, 2009 at 9:26 am
[...] more here: Driving While Distracted Categories: Technology Tags: a-good-piece, also-driving, and-keep, and-others, are-tethered, [...]
October 1st, 2009 at 9:27 am
But it’s Stockholm!
I can’t imagine anything more miserable than having to take public transport (wait for the bus or walk to the train station) in Stockholm in the dark dead of an artic winter, when you have a Volvo with heated seats and remote start.
October 1st, 2009 at 9:29 am
Don’t we already have laws against reckless driving? Do we need separate laws against driving while shaving, applying makeup, clipping fingernails, reading the newspaper, watching TV, and doing all the other stupid multitasking people try on the road?
Also, has there actually been an increase in the number of car crashes since the introduction of cell phones?
October 1st, 2009 at 9:38 am
I agree. I don’t try to adjust it while driving. Car stereos have gone through a few decades of design refinement to minimize the distraction needed to work them. MP3 players are designed to be worked by someone staring at them.
October 1st, 2009 at 9:39 am
What zic says – we also need to disable ipods, and for that matter, car stereos. The studies demonstrating the danger of talking on the phone generally say “distracted driving” and not “talking on the phone,” which is generally listed as one example. This could include disciplining your kids in the back seat or any number of things that would be unpopular to ban.
Similar to the soda tax that Matt likes, why arbitrarily pick one thing that symbolizes the concept if you want real reform. Develop a ratio of sugar that triggers the tax and ensure that it applies to equally unhealthy beverages like sodas but also caramel macchiattos and the like.
October 1st, 2009 at 9:41 am
Cab drivers?
October 1st, 2009 at 9:43 am
By the same token, we could eliminate drunk driving laws and safety inspections. We don’t require sobriety and good brakes for fundamental moral reasons. We do it because it makes accidents less likely.
October 1st, 2009 at 9:49 am
Wouldn’t increased parking rates/taxes make a lot more sense than creating a new internal toll system for Manhattan–both logistically and politically? My understanding is that congestion pricing makes sense for London where a lot of the traffic is parents dropping kids off at schools, but is not really necessary for a place where the traffic is mainly people driving to work.
October 1st, 2009 at 9:49 am
Actually, even so innocuous a task as changing the CD in a vehicles CD player is a non trivial operation. First, one has to expel the current CD from the player, extract it and place it in its jewel case. One then has to open the jewel case of the next CD, extract it, and insert it into the player. Aside from the fact that this requires drivers in the US to take their right hand off the steering wheel (in India, Japan, and Great Britain, they would have to take their left hand off the steering wheel), trying to perform these operations while still paying attention to the driving task and keeping ones’ eyes on the road is distinctly non-trivial. I am personally considering replacing the CD player that came with the car with one that will play back MP3 recorded CDs. MP3 recorded CDs can store from 5 to 7 hours of music, depending on the recording bit rate, as opposed to the 80 minutes of music on a conventional CD.
October 1st, 2009 at 9:57 am
Njorl:
If we made penalties much more severe for causing accidents
while drunk or distracted, I would be in favor of
eliminating drunk driving laws. Also make insurance not pay out when drunk would be another real motivator – and have it say so in big print.
MattY: is there any evidence (i.e. accident statistics) that big truck drivers have become more dangerous in the past few years due to distracted driving? I was under the impression that commercial drivers as a class are remarkably safe ones. In spite of people saying they are scared to be in big-rig traffic, those guys are generally really good at their jobs.
Vehicle traffic in the US is incredibly safe. You can expect to drive about 67 million miles before being killed in an accident – which works out to 127 years at 60 mph, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.
There are a LOT of drivers, driving a LOT of miles in the uS so many people die on the roads, but it is a big country.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:02 am
“Truckers, plumbers, delivery drivers and others are tethered to dispatchers with an array of productivity devices, including on-board computers that send instructions about the next job and keep tabs on drivers’ locations. Such devices can require continual attention — distracting drivers who are steering the biggest vehicles on American roads.”
They left out “police officers.” Seems like a pretty big omission to me. In most urban areas police have in-car laptops that perform all of these functions.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:02 am
Are you assuming that all those other activities are automatically subsumed under “reckless driving”? Because in court, that would have to be litigated and a judge would have to decide. Which would then be promptly castigated as “legislating from the bench”.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:08 am
I keep banging this drum, but by simply increasing parking rates you accomplish the same thing as a congestion tax without having to add an entirely new layer of bureaucracy (and technology) to collect it.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:09 am
#4: That’s because you obviously haven’t wintered in Toronto (don’t even get me started on Ottawa). Our average January low is -9C, as opposed to Stockholm’s daily average January low of -5C.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:22 am
I agree with Njorl on this.
I’m not convinced congestion pricing would help reduce texters as I think most of them do it out of habit/addiction rather than simply needing to work while stuck in traffic.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:33 am
Ultimately unpriced crowded roads are genuinely contrary to the interests of the vast majority of people, it’s just that historically the technology hasn’t existed to do congestion pricing in a reasonable way.
No, they’re genuinely contrary to the interests of the vast majority of people in areas where good alternatives exist. Since that describes only a fortunate few (a fortunate few you have apparently been lucky enough to number yourself among for your entire life), this is not a generally true statement.
It’s like a fish suggesting we should put a modest tax on breathing air; wouldn’t we all be better underwater?
October 1st, 2009 at 10:37 am
I can’t imagine anything more miserable than having to take public transport (wait for the bus or walk to the train station) in Stockholm in the dark dead of an artic winter, when you have a Volvo with heated seats and remote start.
Stockholm’s climate is a lot like NYC’s.
October 1st, 2009 at 11:11 am
12: I don’t see why an increase or decrease in the number of accidents or fatalities is relevant, as there’s more than one independent variable there. The rate can decrease despite an increase in one specific dangerous activity.
October 1st, 2009 at 11:22 am
I remember sci-fi writers thought we would have flying cars by now. Given the problems with distracted driving, I am glad we don’t.
October 1st, 2009 at 11:30 am
“I keep banging this drum, but by simply increasing parking rates you accomplish the same thing as a congestion tax without having to add an entirely new layer of bureaucracy (and technology) to collect it.”
No you don’t. In London, the main reason they went with a congestion tax is that a huge proportion of traffic in central London was just travelling through, without parking. A congestion charge, in theory, clears the roads for people who actually have to be there, or at least makes other people pay for their non-bypassing. The other reason being that there just isn’t much parking space within the congestion charge zone.
October 1st, 2009 at 11:32 am
It’s funny that any law against driving while distracted would have to be enforced by the police, who here in Portland now drive around with their eyes basically glued to big blue computer screens in front of the radio.
October 1st, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Doshaburi:
Yet another application for the blue screen of death.
October 1st, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Oops, Phil at 13 had it.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:01 pm
In the case of interstate truckers, on-board computers were introduced, at least partly, to regulate how far and how fast drivers go — to keep them from speeding and from driving too many hours at a stretch. To improve safety, in other words. I don’t know of any studies, but it would be ironic if the computers were having the opposite effect.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:49 pm
NYC isn’t London or Stockholm.
The city already has congestion pricing by virtue of the tolled water crossings. Toll the free East River crossings, co-ordinate demand pricing and be done with it.
Bloomberg got his hand slapped for an overly complex bit of political overreach.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Don’t they have technologies that block cell phone reception? Can’t such technology be adapted for automobiles? I vaguely recall that some theaters have adopted this…
Anyway, I have no confidence that passing a law is likely to solve this problem. I think it needs a technological fix.
Vehicle traffic in the US is incredibly safe.
Not by rich world standards, though, is it? I mean, US road safety is arguably adequate, but nothing to brag about, I suspect.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:53 pm
You they never say if it’s more dangerous than talking to someone in your car and if so, why and how much more?
October 1st, 2009 at 2:01 pm
28:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
We beat a few OECD countries in fatalities per kilometer traveled, like Israel, Iceland, Ireland (something about countries starting with an I), as well as most East Asian countries for which data is available. We’re roughly equivalent to Austria and Canada, but Western Europe on the whole is clearly much safer.
So if you define “incredibly” as “average,” then yes, we’re incredibly safe on the road.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Talking on your cellphone, even with a hands-free set, is every bit as dangerous as driving drunk. But the penalties are much different. Kill a kid driving drunk, and you’ll never see the light of day again. Kill a kid talking on your cellphone, and you’ll never see jail. But either way, that kid is still dead and you killed him. But as long as you’re on your cellphone, society says it’s perfectly okay to kill children. That really needs to change.
October 1st, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Another week, another pro-congestion-tax post.
The only thing wrong with congestion taxes that Matt considers worth addressing is the fact that there tends to be initial opposition. And that tends to die down, so whatever.
October 1st, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Re: Studies show that someone who talks on the phone while driving is four times more likely to crash,
I would be interested to know what the stats are for drivers having conversations with their passengers. Seems to me that if talking while driving is distracting it shouldn’t matter if the speech is moderated by technology or by the intervening air.
Re: Don’t they have technologies that block cell phone reception? Can’t such technology be adapted for automobiles?
Probably. But cost issues aside, I doubt such technology could ne localized to a single car. Imagine how POed everyone would be (and quite rightfully) if they couldn’t use their cellphone within 25 yards of a busy roadway. Also, there are true emergencies when you would want people to be able to call for help.
October 1st, 2009 at 9:44 pm
The vast majority of people talkig/texting on their smart phones do not get into accidents. Instead they act just like your “not on the phone” inconsiderate drivers – abrupt lane changes, poor behavior at lights/intersections, meandering about their lane. I would be in favor of insurance companies setting their rates so anyone who caused an accident while on their phone ended up with very high premiums but it isn’t going to make much difference in the daily commute.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:50 am
These Yglesias anti-driving threads are a riot. A perfect circle jerk as commenters try to top each other with ever more draconian and unrealistic behavior bans. “Ban texting!” “No, ban ALL cell phone use!” “Plus, ban DVD players!” “Not just DVD players, ban CD players too!” “Bah, ban ANY sort of car stereos!” “Don’t forget to ban iPods!”
Leaving aside the silliness of imagining any of the non-texting stuff could actually pass a legislature, I can see none of you have ever tried driving across Kansas with nothing to listen to but road noise. Or, for the commenter suggesting we put up deliberate radio interference along roadways (bet emergency responders would love that), bear in mind this prevents passengers from using electronic devices as well, despite the fact that they aren’t endangering anybody.