Scientists endorse
driver cellphone proposal
By M. Alex Johnson, msnbc.com
Medical scientists strongly
endorsed the National Transportation Safety Board's recommendation Tuesday to
ban nearly all use of cellphones and other portable electronics by drivers,
saying the gizmos are just too distracting for the limited multitasking power
of the human brain.
"I wholeheartedly support a
ban on personal electronic devices, which provide an unprecedented degree of
distraction that's very dangerous," said Dr. Lisandro Irizarry, chairman
of the emergency department at the Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York.
NTSB:
Ban cellphones, texting for drivers
NTSB: Ban cellphones, texting for drivers
DEC
14
The National Transportation Safety
Board wants all 50 states to ban personal electronic devices for drivers. NBC's
Tom Costello reports.
"Everyone from teenagers to
senior citizens is texting," he said in an email to msnbc.com. "It's
very easy to get distracted, especially when driving, and end up in the
ER."
The NTSB's recommendation
specifically said so-called hands-free devices, like Bluetooth headsets, don't
solve the problem and should be part of the ban.
That sounds great to Dr. Marcel
Just, director of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon
University in Pittsburgh, a neuroscientist who has studied how using cellphones
impairs driving ability.
"Use of cellphones while
driving — handheld or not — is really a hazard, a threat to public
safety," Just told msnbc.com. "It costs lives."
The problem is that people think
they're better drivers than they really are, and so they believe they can
multi-task behind the wheel.
"When you're driving, it
feels kind of automatic, so it feels like you're not doing anything, but it's
not true," Just said. "Various parts of your brain are working
on scanning the road ahead, maintaining your speed, maintaining your lane — all
of those things are being done even when it feels like it's not.
Obviously, we can do two things at
the same time," he said. "But the critical point is we can't do them
as well at the same time."
Processing a conversation with another person
consumes 37 percent of the energy that's normally allocated to driving, Just's
research indicates. That's "a very, very large percentage that has serious
consequences for safety," he said.
While carrying on a conversation
in person with a passenger is distracting, "typically there isn't quite as
much a social onus on continuing the conversation," he said.
In other words, a passenger who's
in the car with you knows enough to shut up if you encounter a hazard on the
road. But "with a person on the other end of a cellphone, they don't know
to stop talking if something happens," he said.
While he hasn't quantified the difference,
Just said, he's convinced "it's worse with a cellphone."
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