[LINK] Mobile phone use set to be banned in vehicles

[Birch, Jim]

Steven Clark wrote:

>How many of those people are paying more attention to the call than the
car?

The evidence is in on this one: talking on a mobile phone lessens the
attention available for watching the road and traffic and increases
accident risk.  Hand-held or hands-free makes no difference.

Talking on a phone is significantly worse than talking to a passenger in
the car.  This is thought to be because of using a phone requires an
imagining of the context of the remote person - though this is difficult
to establish unequivocally.  Also, several studies have found that the
impact is worse in undemanding driving conditions, possibly because
people will treat the call as their primary task when the driving seems
easy. 

Phone records are used in US civil and criminal court cases, not sure
what happens here but there's a lot less court involvement in traffic
accidents due to the limits on civil claims and the "own costs"
agreements between insurance companies.

- Jim 


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