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Talking to Your Car Is Just As Dangerous As Talking on Your Phone

We only have so much attention to give.
Photo via Jim Legans, Jr./Flickr

Nothing says "I'm a sad dad with a closet full of trade show polo shirts" like a Bluetooth earpiece, and yet many of us put up with them because, for the most part, hands-free devices are still legal to use while driving. But laws aside, is having a phone conversation through a headset or an in-car system safer than talking on the old phone? That's doubtful.

A new study conducted on the behalf of AAA has brought the debate back to life by saying that hands-free devices aren't a safe alternative to chatting while driving. The study headed by University of Utah psychology professor David Strayer concludes that it's not a lack of free hands that makes talking and driving dangerous, it's the simple fact that you're splitting your attention between the road and arguing over dinner plans.

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The study had 20 men and 18 women, all college aged, conduct a variety of tasks while driving in a simulator to measure just how much mental effort they had leftover for driving. The study includes a variety of metrics to quantify varying mental workload, but the graph at right sums up the trends nicely.

Driving alone and without devices was given a baseline workload level of 1. You can see that adding in the radio or book on tape increases mental workload, while talking on a cell phone is about the same as talking to a passenger, while speak-to-text programs were even higher. (OSPAN is a specific cognition test you can read about here.)

What's it all mean? Well, we have a limited number of things we can focus on, and adding more things to deal with—a favorite song, your significant other—means it takes more mental work to keep up with them all. And more mental work means a higher chance that we'll miss something, such as the car pulling out in front of you. So yeah, talking or texting while driving, even if it's hands-free, is more dangerous than not.

Pretty obvious, right? I mean, the chairman of the NTSB recommended a ban on hands-free devices over a year ago, and Strayer himself first published a study showing the relationship back in 2006. But actually banning hands-free devices in the name of eliminated driving distractions has faced resistance from everyone from nanny staters to liberal suburbanites.

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Automakers, which continue to spend tons of research dollars competing for the smartest in-car systems to integrate cell phones, assuredly don't want a ban. The trend in cars is towards our smartphones having more control over everything, not less, which means our future will involve us spending a lot of time talking to our various devices and, well, being distracted.

Yes, it's worth noting that voice-activated Bluetooth connections and talk-to-text systems are risky to use while driving, if only because there are so many shitty drivers out there who spend more time yelling at their dashboard than focusing on the road. Drivers need to know that distracting yourself with anything—a phone call, a burrito, grooming your dog in traffic—is going to limit their ability to pay attention to the two-ton behemoths zipping around them.

But it's also important to note that it's extremely rare that there's nothing distracting us from driving. Is talking on a phone more dangerous than not? Of course. But so is driving around your screaming kids to baseball practice, talking to your girlfriend on your way to dinner, or wondering what year that rad Datsun that drove past is.

That is where conversations about banning driving distractions fall short. Yes, we should all be keeping as many distractions as possible out of our cars, and yes, you're a jackass if you text while you drive. But the problem isn't the phones themselves, as holding a conversation with a passenger can be just as distracting. The problem is us humans.

The regulatory reality is that people are more likely to give up fumbling with their phones if you ban them. (Here's a better idea for a ban: Let's axe windows and sound insulation in cars, so people realize just how fast they're going. Any of you who have driven an old tin can know what I'm talking about.)

But it'd be nice if there was more focus on the fact that driving is an inherently dangerous act, one which may end up with your or others dead, and one which becomes more dangerous if you don't pay attention to the incredibly powerful machine you're piloting.

@derektmead