Wired had an interesting
article on cell phone
use.
Talking on a cell phone
makes you drive like a retiree _ even if you’re only a teen, a new study shows.
A report from the University of Utah says when motorists between 18 and 25 talk
on cell phones, they drive like elderly people _ moving and reacting more slowly
and increasing their risk of
accidents.
“If you put a
20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell phone, his reaction times are
the same as a 70-year-old driver,” said David Strayer, a University of Utah
psychology professor and principal author of the study. “It’s like instant
aging.”
And it doesn’t matter whether the
phone is hand-held or handsfree, he said. Any activity requiring a driver to
“actively be part of a conversation” likely will impair driving abilities,
Strayer said.
In fact,
motorists who talk on cell phones are more impaired than drunken drivers with
blood-alcohol levels exceeding 0.08, Strayer and colleague Frank Drews, an
assistant professor of psychology, found during research conducted in
2003.
So if you are driving behind me
and wonder why I have started slouching down in my seat, wearing hats and why my
left blinker has been on for 5 blocks… I am on my cell
phone.
