In a previous job I was involved in the health & safety of young people on work experience, however since changing jobs I still receive information from organisations involved in giving advice about health & safety. Normally I ignore the information sent through and end up trashing it as soon as it has entered my inbox.

Today was different as I received from Barbour Briefing the following article about an American study comparing drivers who use mobile phones and drink drivers. Now in my last post I rambled on about the power of the press to represent half the facts as a full story and it kinda links into Harry’s post about Left Behind and its factual inaccuracies.

There were 40 volunteer drivers recruited for the study - 25 males and 15 females. Participants were aged between 22 and 34 years, with the average age being 25. Some of the volunteer drivers, using a driving simulator, were intoxicated from ethanol to compare their performance against the volunteer mobile phone drivers. Those drivers conversing on a hand-held or hands-free mobile phone had delayed braking reactions and were involved in more traffic accidents than when they were not using the mobile phone. In comparison, the intoxicated drivers displayed a more aggressive driving style, following closer to the vehicle immediately in front of them and applying more force when braking.

Compared with undistracted drivers, the study found that drivers who talked on either hand-held or hands-free mobile phones:

drove slightly slower
were 9% slower to hit the brakes
displayed 24% more variation in following distance as their attention switched between driving and conversing
were 19% slower to resume normal speed after braking
were more likely to crash. Three study participants drove into the back of the pace car - all were talking on mobile phones and none were drunk.

In terms of the intoxicated drivers:

drivers drunk at the 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level drove slightly slower than both undistracted drivers and drivers using mobile phones, although more aggressively
they followed the pace car more losely
were twice as likely to brake only four seconds before a collision would have occurred
hit their brakes with 23% more force.

Based on the controlled conditions of this study, the researchers conclude that the impairments associated with using a mobile phone while driving can be as profound as those associated with driving while drunk. It is suggested that the safest course of action would be not to use a mobile phone at all whilst driving, and is acknowledged that regulation and better driver education that addresses driver distraction will be essential for safety on the roads.

40 people is not a lot to base a theory on, they might just have been all cr@p drivers! How many were drunk? What was the alcoholic equivalence to the ethanol consumed (was it like Budweiser in which the case the old joke about it being like having sex in a canoe comes to mind – answers on a postcard to the usual address)? Why combine hand-held and hands-free we already know that hand-held mobile phone users have become pariahs in our modern society. A much more sensible comparison would have been between drunks and hands-free mobile users, or would that not give them the desired results?

Yes we should reduce road deaths and yes mobiles are probably a distraction, but so are those England flags, magic trees and attractive people walking along the side of the road. What about kids in cars they are a distraction, maybe we should ban kids from cars just incase they cause accidents. You can’t ban everything so lets start by insisting all drivers wear blinkers (yes like those that horses have).