Another thing that is commonly people ask often times is, well, what about talking to a passenger, if talking on a cell phone is a problem, what about talking to a passenger? And we've actually found that passenger conversations are again no where near as distracting as talking on a cell phone.
Partly reason for the passenger conversation difference is that a passenger often times knows what the driving conditions are like and they will help the driver out, they might point out hazards. They might say here's your exit and they might stop talking if driving becomes difficult.
So, the entire nature of the conversation is changed when you've two people in the same environment and in the same vehicle and all those kinds of things that the person is talking to the driver can do when they're in the vehicle, aren't possible really to be done with a cell phone because the person on the other end of the cell phone has no idea what the driving conditions are like.
You were terrific. These are great answers, great information. Let me ask you to elaborate on one thing if you could and that is what kinds of when you say drivers are impaired when they're on cell phone, if you could elaborate a little bit on that, I know some of your research has shown that they are just as impaired as drunk drivers in some cases, but if you could elaborate on the kinds of ways that they are impaired and the kinds of things you measure on the way the people are impaired and elaborate on that analogy to drunk drivers in a few words.
Very well. So, how are people impaired? Well, first off just in terms of crash risk, they're much more likely be involved in an accident. Someone who is talking on a cell phone is about 4 times more likely to be involved in an accident. There are a number of other things that are related to that, that probably outcome together to kind of make somebody more likely be involved in an accident.
First is that the reaction times, when someone is talking on a cell phone, are significantly slowed so that if you look at how long it takes somebody to hit the brakes if something critical, requires some kind of a ways of action or some kind of a braking response. It takes people significantly longer to hit the brakes.
We know that in terms of maintaining vehicle control that people are less able to maintain their vehicle in the middle area lane where they belong when they're talking on a cell phone and that that this level of impairment is in some cases every bit is pronounced so that you can see someone who's driving at a point away to an alcohol level, that is the cell phone driver and a drunk driver at least in terms of crash risk have the same level of crash risk.
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