jennyema
Chef Extraordinaire
Yes, I read your post. If we believe that theory, then we have to believe that no one ever had an accident before cell phones, no one was or is now distracted while carrying on a conversation before cell phones, that if no one was allowed to even bring cell phone into a car at all, there would never be another distraction caused accident..
The study was all about interactive conversations on a telephone being a different sort of distraction than other conversations. So I'm not sure I understand your point.
"Likewise, it is easy to equate talking to a friend on a cellphone with talking to a friend in the passenger seat. But a December report in The Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied debunked that notion. Utah researchers put 96 drivers in a simulator, instructing them to drive several miles down the road and pull off at a rest stop. Sometimes the drivers were talking on a hands-free cell phone, and sometimes they were chatting with a friend in the next seat.
Nearly every driver with a passenger found the rest stop, in part because the passenger often acted as an extra set of eyes, alerting the driver to the approaching exit. But among those talking on the cellphone, half missed the exit.
“The paradox is that if the friend is sitting next to you, you drive safer,” Dr. Strayer said. “When you talk to that person on a cellphone, you’re much more likely to be involved in an accident.”
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