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from the just-project-camera-views-onto-the-phone dept.
Zendrive makes technology that monitors how people are driving, so they took the data from 3 million drivers taking 570 million trips over 5.6 billion miles. They found that drivers used their phones for an average of three and a half minutes in 88 out of a hundred trips. From their study:
Everyday, that’s the equivalent of people behind the wheel talking or texting on 5.6-million car rides from our sample alone. When extrapolated for the entire U.S. driving population, the number goes up to roughly 600-million distracted trips a day….This finding is frightening, especially when you consider that a 2-second distraction is long enough to increase your likelihood of crashing by over 20-times. In other words, that’s equivalent to 105 opportunities an hour that you could nearly kill yourself and/or others.
One can download PDFs of the full report and the executive summary.
So that explains the steady stream of accidents despite the prevalence of anti-lock brakes, cameras, and accident avoidance features in passenger vehicles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @03:49PM (3 children)
This is (partially) explained in TFA. The app uses smartphone sensors to determine "trips", which presumably is defined as when the app thinks you got into a car to when the app thinks you got out of the car. "Phone usage" is defined as handling the phone for some (unspecified) minimum amount of time. All phone usage during a trip is counted.
So I believe the answer to your question is "For the purposes of this study, phone usage at a red light counts as using while driving."
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday April 25 2017, @04:07PM (2 children)
So basically, this study is complete and utter bullshit.
Here's some good reasons someone might be using their smartphone in a vehicle:
1) Using a GPS navigation program like Google Maps or Waze. Do you really want people to go back to the days of trying to read paper maps while driving?
2) Person is a passenger (since it's using the sensors to determine "trips"). What kind of moron thinks a passenger shouldn't be using their phone?
3) Driver is stopped at a red light.
4) Driver is talking on the phone, using the phone's Bluetooth feature combined with the car's BT hands-free calling system.
Personally, I use my phone every time I'm in my car and I'm going farther than a few miles (i.e., other than my regular (short) commute or to my local grocery store). It's on a convenient dashboard mount, so it's constantly in view. Normally, it's always showing Google Maps.
Does this stupid study also count the usage of a car's built-in nav system as "phone use"? If not, why not? Because it's no different than using Google Maps, except that the car's system is clunkier and crappier and 5-10 years out-of-date even when brand-new.
These highly-biased anti-smartphone studies are really getting on my nerves, because they're conflating all use of smartphones with the worst uses (namely, texting while driving). It's like coming out with a "scientific study" showing that we should ban all cars today (right now, without having any viable alternatives) because a few people have used cars to drive into pedestrians.
Moreover, even texting isn't dangerous, in some cars: some cars let you compose texts by pressing a button on the steering wheel and speaking some commands and your message. On my car, I can place phone calls pretty easily that way: (button) "call John Smith" and suddenly it's dialing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @05:14PM
False dichotomy.
Nobody is. TFA describes their methodology, and the app is supposed to distinguish between passenger and driver use. That being said, I do believe their method is unreliable (as explained elsethread) which does call the results into question.
Attentiveness is still required from drivers in this situation. A study like this is right to include such usage.
Hands-free usage presumably does not count as handling.
It does not count. This study limits itself specifically to smartphone use. That's fine—even though multiple factors contribute to driver distraction it's reasonable to ask questions about specific issues.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @01:00AM
was I the only one that actually pulled over to read the map I had tucked in the passenger side door?