2012 Distracted Driving news

News and Information related to Distracted Driving
MSI
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2012 Distracted Driving news

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Department of Transportation Proposes 'Distraction' Guidelines for Automakers
The proposed Phase I distraction guidelines include recommendations to:
Reduce complexity and task length required by the device;
  • Limit device operation to one hand only (leaving the other hand to remain on the steering wheel to control the vehicle);
    Limit individual off-road glances required for device operation to no more than two seconds in duration;
    Limit unnecessary visual information in the driver's field of view;
    Limit the amount of manual inputs required for device operation.
The proposed guidelines would also recommend the disabling of the following operations by in-vehicle electronic devices while driving, unless the devices are intended for use by passengers and cannot reasonably be accessed or seen by the driver, or unless the vehicle is stopped and the transmission shift lever is in park.
  • Visual-manual text messaging;
    Visual-manual internet browsing;
    Visual-manual social media browsing;
    Visual-manual navigation system destination entry by address;
    Visual-manual 10-digit phone dialing;
    Displaying to the driver more than 30 characters of text unrelated to the driving task.
See the Docket No. NHTSA-2010-0053, Visual-Manual NHTSA Driver Distraction Guidelines for In-Vehicle Electronic Devicesfull report

2012: New year, new thread. For additional information please see these 5 other threads on the topic:
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Re: 2012 Distracted Driving news

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March 27, 2012: Chapel Hill, NC council bans cell-phone use while driving
  • Talking on a cell phone while driving in Chapel Hill becomes illegal June 1.
    The town became the first in the nation to pass an ordinance outlawing talking on both hand-held and hands-free cell phones while driving. After two years of discussion on the issue, the council voted 5-4 Monday night.
    The ordinance applies to all streets town-wide, including state-owned roads. Drivers would be allowed to make emergency calls, and calls with a spouse, parent or child. Violators will be fined $25.
    Council member Donna Bell said the ban is a good first step in continuing a conversation about driving safety. She said she hopes the General Assembly will soon follow with a statewide law.
    "I wish that this was broader, but I think that this is a first step," she said.
    The ban defies an opinion from the state attorney general's office that the town lacks the authority to prohibit talking on cell phones while driving.
    Town Attorney Ralph Karpinos wrote the state attorney general last year asking if the town had the statutory authority to regulate cell phone use.
    Assistant Attorney General Jess Mekeel said no.
    The National Transportation Safety Board sent a letter of support to Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt in February supporting a ban.
    Evanston, Illinois, has a ban on hands-held cell phones while driving and is currently considering banning hands-free as well.
    The home of Northwestern University has a population of 77,000 residents compared to Chapel Hill's 58,000, she said. In the two years since it enacted the ban on hand-held cellphones while driving, accidents have decreased 17.6 percent, Chapel Hill Town Council member Penny Rich has said.
    Evanston fines people $50 per offense, up to $200 if a person using a cellphone gets into an accident
Read more here: Chapel Hill, NC council bans cell-phone use while driving
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Re: 2012 Distracted Driving news

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April 4, 2012: West Virgina Enact Tough Bans on Text Messaging and Hand-Held Cell Phone Use While Driving

The measure passed will allow police to pull over and ticket drivers for texting starting July 1. A year after that, talking on a phone that’s not hands-free will also become a primary offense.
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Re: 2012 Distracted Driving news

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April 26, 2012: Reuters: U.S. ban sought on cell phone use while driving
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood called on Thursday for a federal law to ban talking on a cell phone or texting while driving any type of vehicle on any road in the country.
Tough federal legislation is the only way to deal with what he called a "national epidemic," he said at a distracted-driving summit in San Antonio, Texas, that drew doctors, advocates and government officials.
see the full article U.S. ban sought on cell phone use while driving
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Re: 2012 Distracted Driving news

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May 29, 2012: NY Times Employees Are Getting the Word About Safer Driving
From the article:
  • About a year ago, the National Safety Council, a nonprofit advocacy group, contacted Fortune 500 companies on their policies. Of the 150 or so companies that responded, 20 percent had a full cellphone ban in place, said David Teater, the group’s senior director of transportation strategic initiatives. He added that the council had seen an increasing number of companies adopt the policies in recent years. Still, there is no comprehensive data on how many companies have cellphone policies, he said.
    The council also recommended a complete ban for all cellphone use while driving, because of more than 30 studies that found hands-free devices were no safer than hand-held because they did not eliminate distractions.
    Jack Hanley, executive director of the Network of Employers for Traffic Safety, a nonprofit public-private partnership said, “I think there is a sense of urgency” among companies to put distracted-driving policies in place. Currently, 52 of the 54 members responding to the group’s 2011 survey have adopted some cellphone policy. Of those, 22 have enacted total bans. Mr. Hanley’s organization provides road safety materials and data, but does not set policy.
    Last month, the National Safety Council released a white paper that found that employers were increasingly being held liable in cases when employees were involved in crashes where cellphone use was a factor, both during work and in nonwork hours, and using both company and personal cars. The report detailed many cases where companies had paid awards of more than a million dollars. Employers can also be held liable for actions that are allowed by federal and state laws, according to the report.
see the full article: Employees Are Getting the Word About Safer Driving
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Re: 2012 Distracted Driving news

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June 13, 2012: From Science Daily: Videogamers No Better at Talking While Driving
A study by the Visual Cognition Laboratory at Duke University wanted to see whether gamers who have spent hours in front of a screen simultaneously watching the map, scanning doorways for bad guys and listening to the chatter of their fellow gamers could answer questions and drive at the same time. The finding: not so much.
Full paper: Abstract
  • With modern technological advances, we often find ourselves dividing our attention between multiple tasks. While this may seem a productive way to live, our attentional capacity is limited, and this yields costs in one or more of the many tasks that we try to do. Some people believe that they are immune to the costs of multitasking and commonly engage in potentially dangerous behavior,
    such as driving while talking on the phone. But are some groups of individuals indeed immune to dual-task costs? This study examines whether avid action videogame players, who have been shown to have heightened attentional capacities, are particularly adept multitaskers. Participants completed three visually demanding experimental paradigms (a driving videogame, a multiple-object-tracking task, and a visual search), with and without answering unrelated questions via a speakerphone (i.e., with and without a dual-task component). All of the participants, videogame players and nonvideogame players alike, performed worse while engaging
    in the additional dual task for all three paradigms. This suggests that extensive videogame experience may not offer immunity from dual-task costs.
Discussion (the first paragraph only...see article for more..)
  • In the present study, we examined whether VGPs would be less susceptible to dual-task costs than NVGPs. Our participants completed three attentionally demanding paradigms, each with and without a distracting dual-task component. All of the participants, VGPs and NVGPs alike, performed worse during the dual-task condition, and there were no differences in how the VGPs and NVGPs were affected.
    These findings suggest that while some cognitive skills obtained from extensive gaming may be transferrable (see Bavelier et al., 2011; Green & Bavelier, 2012), under cases of high attentional demand across modalities, VGPs can be just as hurt as NVGPs.
    These results both complement and challenge previous findings, making it necessary to address several possible concerns. First, the trivia questions were designed to keep participants engaged in the dual task rather than to mimic a phone conversation. That said, the costs were similar to those reported elsewhere (Drews, Pasupathi, & Strayer, 2008). Second, although the analyses including all participants revealed dual-task costs for all three paradigms, the analyses limited to just VGPs and NVGPs revealed only a marginal difference for the driving paradigm. The change for this one paradigm was likely due to reduced power in the more limited sample. Importantly, however, the interaction between gaming status and task was not significant, indicating that all participants took more time to complete the tracks in the dual-task condition...
(2012). Cognitive Pitfall!: Video game players are not immune from dual-task costs Donohue, S., James, B., Eslick, A. N., & Mitroff, S. R.
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