jsh1120
Silver Member
A couple of points.
First, though it seems counter-intuitive, there is considerable evidence that limiting phone use to hands-free devices does NOT make it a safer practice. In fact, hands-free phone use is just as dangerous as holding the phone to your ear.
Why might this be? And why is talking on the phone different from talking to a passenger in the car? The answer seems to be that when the driver talks on the phone (however it's done) (s)he goes to a different psychological "space" that (s)he shares with the person on the other end of the line. When both parties are in the car, on the other hand, they each are "in the same place" and respond to the traffic environment in the same way, altering their conversation to deal with their shared environment.
You can understand this if you'll think about the number of times you have to tell someone you're talking to, "Wait a sec, I have to turn here" and other such lines.
There have been multiple studies of the phenomenon and I know of no study that has found holding the phone is significantly more dangerous than using a hands free system. On the other hand, no pun intended, texting while driving is simply insane. Not only is it a danger from a distraction standpoint, it involves active use of your hands for something other than using the steering wheel. The only thing more dangerous I can imagine is giving yourself a pedicure at 70 mph.
In short, there is much less difference than one might expect between the effects of using a hands free device to chat and a handheld phone. Both are dangerous. And if I see a solitary driver chatting away to the air in their car, I avoid them. Stop talking on the d**n phone and drive!
Second, the "no call log" app corrects what I think is an error in the selection of a default action for ending a call. The assumption seems to be that the most likely next action after ending a call is to call the person you just spoke to again. In my experience this simply isn't the case. Perhaps the design was settled on to deal with AT&T and other carriers with lots of dropped calls.
First, though it seems counter-intuitive, there is considerable evidence that limiting phone use to hands-free devices does NOT make it a safer practice. In fact, hands-free phone use is just as dangerous as holding the phone to your ear.
Why might this be? And why is talking on the phone different from talking to a passenger in the car? The answer seems to be that when the driver talks on the phone (however it's done) (s)he goes to a different psychological "space" that (s)he shares with the person on the other end of the line. When both parties are in the car, on the other hand, they each are "in the same place" and respond to the traffic environment in the same way, altering their conversation to deal with their shared environment.
You can understand this if you'll think about the number of times you have to tell someone you're talking to, "Wait a sec, I have to turn here" and other such lines.
There have been multiple studies of the phenomenon and I know of no study that has found holding the phone is significantly more dangerous than using a hands free system. On the other hand, no pun intended, texting while driving is simply insane. Not only is it a danger from a distraction standpoint, it involves active use of your hands for something other than using the steering wheel. The only thing more dangerous I can imagine is giving yourself a pedicure at 70 mph.
In short, there is much less difference than one might expect between the effects of using a hands free device to chat and a handheld phone. Both are dangerous. And if I see a solitary driver chatting away to the air in their car, I avoid them. Stop talking on the d**n phone and drive!
Second, the "no call log" app corrects what I think is an error in the selection of a default action for ending a call. The assumption seems to be that the most likely next action after ending a call is to call the person you just spoke to again. In my experience this simply isn't the case. Perhaps the design was settled on to deal with AT&T and other carriers with lots of dropped calls.
