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2014-05-20 08:20:20
By Colin Barras
Phoning while behind the wheel is often blamed for road deaths, says Colin
Barras, but is keeping connected in a car always dangerous?
It s perhaps one of the most flouted rules of the road. Despite bans in many
places, more than half of US drivers admit to using a mobile phone at least
some of the time while driving, according to a report last week.
So what does the evidence say about the risks? And could a new generation of
connected cars make phoning on the road safer?
As long as there have been hand-held phones, there has probably been a desire
to use the devices in cars and as smartphones and tablet computers become
more powerful and versatile, that desire is only getting stronger.
It s quite a unique situation, says Stewart Birrell of the Warwick
Manufacturing Group at the University of Warwick in Coventry, UK. Most
innovation is first developed by manufacturers and then people can use it. But
it s users who are pushing to be able to use smartphones in cars, and
manufacturers are following.
Using your phone at night when there s less traffic isn t as dangerous as
during rush hour, new research suggests (Thinkstock)
Perhaps those manufacturers shouldn t: one estimate suggests 6% of all crashes
on roads in the US occur because drivers are distracted by their mobile phones.
This equates to about 12,000 serious injuries and 2,600 deaths on US roads each
year.
A solution might be to equip cars with technology that can prevent crashes even
if the driver is distracted.
Some cars now come with technology that allows drivers to pay less attention to
the road and perhaps more attention to their phones. Adaptive cruise control,
for instance, uses radar to automatically adjust the speed of a car so that it
matches the speed of the vehicle in front. Automatic lane control systems
promise to take care of steering, using the feedback from cameras trained on
the road ahead to keep the driver safely in their lane. And collision-avoidance
systems rely on lasers and cameras to sense emergencies and avoid the risk of a
serious accident.
Increased risk
Perhaps understandably, these devices have their critics. Manufacturers seem
to be aiming to produce hi-tech and hence ultimately fallible solutions to
problems that wouldn't exist in the first place if people took proper
responsibility for their moral obligations as drivers to concentrate on what
they are doing, says Graham Hole at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK.
There is certainly a wealth of evidence that using a mobile phone increases a
driver s risk of being involved in a crash whether those phones are handheld
or hands-free. Some studies suggest either type of phone quadruples the risk of
crashing. Other studies, however, disagree. A year ago, for instance, social
scientists concluded that using a mobile phone need not raise the risk of a
crash if the driver makes the call late at night when traffic is thin. Another
study last year went even further, suggesting that phone conversations can
lessen the risk of a crash if a driver is fatigued.
Driving can be boring, and if you re driving late at night when there s little
traffic around you might get tired and switch off, says Birrell. If you give
people a secondary task at these times of cognitive underload it might improve
their driving performance although the secondary task has to be sensible.
New technology might prevent us from being able to take a call at all while we
are behind the wheel (Thinkstock)
Few can doubt that there are times when drivers should avoid taking or making a
call: driving demands our full attention at a busy intersection, or near a
school at the end of the school day. But studies show that in other, less
demanding situations, driving may tax only between 50% and 70% of our attention
suggesting, that at these times, we might have plenty of 'spare' attentional
capacity to direct elsewhere.
Birrell s research reaches a similar conclusion. He recently co-designed a
smartphone app called FootLITE that, among other things, provides visual
warnings to the driver if they are drifting out of their lane or getting too
close to the car ahead. In tests with the app running on a smartphone mounted
on the dashboard, Birrell found that drivers spent around 4% of their time
glancing at the app but they also spent the same amount of time glancing at
the road or in their mirrors as drivers not using the app. Even if it s at a
subconscious level, drivers may interact with in-car technology only when it is
relatively safe to do so.
Crash calls
The trouble is, drivers may not apply this criterion to phone use. Paul Green
at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor looked at crash statistics released
by the National Police Agency of Japan they suggest 45% of phone-related
crashes occur when the driver is receiving a call. Green thinks people tend to
abandon any task even focusing on the road while driving in an effort to
answer a ringing phone. If this lapse in attention comes at a critical point
that demands the driver s full attention, they run the risk of crashing.
This may be why talking to car passengers is less risky than talking to someone
on the phone, says Green. A passenger is more aware of the road conditions and
may stop talking when those conditions become demanding.
With that in mind, perhaps one in-car device above all might help people stay
connected without compromising driving safety: a workload manager. Such a
device would act like a virtual passenger, pooling all the information made
available through sensors the car s speed, its location on the road network
and the time of day, for example to decide whether or not to distract the
driver with information, including phone calls.
Some experts believe adding more automation to our cars will only make us worse
drivers (Science Photo Library)
Some cars already have basic workload managers. Volvo, for instance, has
introduced technology which blocks phone calls when the driver is turning or
changing lanes. As cars join the internet of things and become connected to
each other and to the world around them, workload managers could become better
at identifying critical times where the driver shouldn t be distracted.
Birrell says vehicle-to-vehicle communication could tell the car whether the
road ahead is busy with traffic, for instance, while vehicle-to-road
communication could warn if the traffic lights the driver is approaching are
about to change. Both situations might trigger a workload manager to block
calls. If the information is used to improve situational awareness, that s a
positive thing, he says.
But the information from vehicle-to-vehicle communication may be used
differently. Manufacturers may be tempted to use it to automate even more of
the driving process and lighten the driver s workload further. Both Birrell and
Hole think such a move is unwise. It could be argued that since many humans
are not very good at driving, it might be better to relieve them of the task as
much as possible by automating it, says Hole. However it will be many years
before computing systems are able to process visual information as skilfully as
a human.
Until driverless cars are ready for mainstream use, Hole says motorists will
have to accept ultimate responsibility for their actions on the road which
means they might have to get used to cars that talk to other vehicles in order
to prevent drivers talking on their phones. As Hole says: The solution for
drivers who don't want to bother paying attention to their driving is: get a
bus.