Driving While Talking More Dangerous Than Driving While Drunk

from the so-what-to-do dept

Yet another study about the effects of driving while talking on a mobile phone. This one claims that driving while talking on a mobile phone is more dangerous than driving while drunk. Not to defend either practice, but the study used the bare minimum of drunkenness as the standard – and a fair number of drunk driving accidents seem to occur when someone is much drunker than the minimum standard. There is no equivalent that makes driving-while-yakking increasingly dangerous the more you do it. Other studies have shown that, on the list of “driver distraction accidents” mobile phones are still very far down the list, well after “adjusting the radio”. I’m not sure what the answer is – and maybe mobile phones should be banned while driving, but it does open up a slippery slope argument about what you can do while driving.


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Comments on “Driving While Talking More Dangerous Than Driving While Drunk”

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2 Comments
Mouhamad A. Naboulsi (user link) says:

I disagree

I disagree with this conclusion. The facts are that drinking not only reduces the judgement, but also the physical reaction time. In fact, they are out of sync with the “Real Time” conditions.

While Involved-Long-Emotional conversation and Hand held phones effect both (Cognitive and Physical) reaction time, they are no where near as dangerous as driving drunk.

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