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November 27, 2004
The virtual passenger
First, we had the problem of people driving while talking on their mobile phones -- and distractedly mowing down old ladies like dry grass. So we figured out a solution: Laws that demanded people use hands-free headsets or voice-activated phone dialers.
But as it turns out, not only does this new tech not improve the situation, it might actually make it worse. A recent study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that people who use hands-free phones are just as likely to plough through grandma and her walker as those who hold the phone in their hands. Indeed, people using hands-free tech made errors in dialing 40 per cent of the time, compared to only 18 per cent of the time when they held the phone; and of course, the more frustrated they are, the more dangerous they are.
As the New York Times reports:
The study concluded that in most cases, drivers "overestimated the ease of use afforded by hands-free phone interfaces."
Drivers can be easily distracted, even when they have both hands on the wheel. "In many cases, it's the amount of brain power you're using," said David Champion, the senior director of auto tests for Consumer Reports. "Even if you're using a hands-free phone, you're using quite a bit of brain power to actually have a discussion."
Actually, I think they're doing the wrong research. I don't think we'll learn much by comparing the distraction levels of hands-free drivers versus phone-holding ones. Here's a more interesting research idea: Compare the distraction levels of drivers who are talking on a mobile phone, versus drivers who are talking to someone else in the car.
Why? Because this would clarify what's really at stake here: The physical context of the person you're speaking to.
What I mean is this: If I'm driving a car and you're riding shotgun, we can carry on a conversation, but you're present in the situation. So if something dangerous is about to happen, you can react. Indeed, since you're a second pair of eyes, you can actually help me avoid danger -- by noticing if I'm driving too fast, or about to rear-end someone because I'm looking off to the side. And since you're riding in the car, your safety is at risk the same as mine is, so you've got a powerful incentive, however subconscious, to monitor the situation and make sure I'm driving reasonably well. Even if the conversation is distracting me, I get some benefit from the person I'm talking to being physically there.
But if I'm talking to you on the phone, I get all the distraction -- with none of the help driving. Worse, the conversation is asymmetrical: Whereas I might be only half paying attention because I'm driving, you're fully engaged in the conversation, and that emotional center of gravity drags me even further away from where I am, which is in a car. In a sense, your physical environment -- sitting at home, in a bathtub, in a bar, wherever -- infects my environment. That's why I'd be interested to see data comparing driving quality between a driver who's talking to a passenger, and a driver who's talking to someone on the phone.
I suspect we'd find that a driver talking to a passenger performs better. And that would suggest something really cool: That we could make a phone conversation safer by making it more like an in-car conversation.
We could, for example, try to immerse the conversational partner in the driver's situation -- to use telepresence technology to let them virtually "be" in the car. For example, you could be sitting at home talking on the phone to me while I drive, and looking at a screen that shows you a 360-degree view out the windows of my car. You'd be pulled into my situation. And that would probably make you a safer person to have a conversation with. You might well pick up on some dangerous stuff that I'm not seeing.
Of course, this might not work at all. If someone experiences my car ride solely through a screen, it might seem like a video game, and they might actively downplay dangerous driving situations I'm in, because it all seems so unreal.
Either way, the point remains the same. Whenever we talk about how to make a driving conversation safer, all we talk about is modifying the behavior of the person driving. Why not try to modify the behavior of the person on the other end of the line?
Posted by Clive Thompson at November 27, 2004 04:22 AM
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Clive,
very interesting idea!
Posted by: bud at November 27, 2004 8:26 AM
Okay, that works nicely if one person is ensconced on their couch, but realistically, a good chunk of the time I'm sure the second person is also on a cellphone somewhere. Bad enough if the second person was just walking down the street - imagine if the second person was driving too!
And you omitted an important passenger behaviour: if there is congestion or the driver is trying to do other high-attention tasks, the passenger usually shuts up. This can be easily modeled by the driver telling the person on the other end of the cellphone conversation that they are driving and have to go. However, having been nearly beaned by my share of cellphone-distracted drivers, I'm not too optimistic about that happening...sigh.
This is an interesting concept, though...I like the idea of conveying the complexity of the driving situation to the person on the other end of the cellphone through a means that doesn't require the complicity of the driver. But maybe something that is lower bandwidth than a full-immersion type experience would be more appropriate.
Posted by: debcha at November 27, 2004 9:45 AM
What you're flagging (and a nice link to the blog title btw) is the terrible job cellphones do in handling context. Our culture developed phone manners and behavior around knowing where the person on the other end was, because where else could they be?
Now, the person could be anywhere and doing anything (and we've all been in public restrooms and heard our neighbor pick up a call from an adjoining stall, right?) and their partner in conversation won't know. All sorts of communication negotiation takes place that wasn't there before, and much of it unsuccessful, given the problems we have with OTHER people using their phone in a setting we don't accept (as just one example).
Posted by: Steve Portigal at November 27, 2004 11:48 AM
What you're flagging (and a nice link to the blog title btw) is the terrible job cellphones do in handling context. Our culture developed phone manners and behavior around knowing where the person on the other end was, because where else could they be?
Now, the person could be anywhere and doing anything (and we've all been in public restrooms and heard our neighbor pick up a call from an adjoining stall, right?) and their partner in conversation won't know. All sorts of communication negotiation takes place that wasn't there before, and much of it unsuccessful, given the problems we have with OTHER people using their phone in a setting we don't accept (as just one example).
Posted by: Steve Portigal at November 27, 2004 11:50 AM
sorry about the double post - I got an error when I submitted the comment - went back and refreshed to see if it still went thru - it didn't, so I submitted again, checked again in a fresh browser and there were two copies. Sorry. Feel free to delete this and the second comment if you want (heck, it's your blog!)
Posted by: Steve Portigal at November 27, 2004 11:52 AM
Clive,
You either never cease to astonish me, or you have very little journalistic integrity! I imagine it's the former.
The reason this study by the NHTSA is so interesting to me is because it's actually a confirmation of a study in cognitive psychology published about a year ago! It's one of those rare cases where the real-world validity of a study performed within the confines of a laboratory is just as high as the scientific validity. The experimenters were using computer tasks, namely, trying to keep a cursor on dot moving randomly on a screen. Participants performed this task while talking on a hand-held phone or a hands-free phone. And they found the exact same results as this NHTSA study. Hands-free talking is as big a detrement to performance as hand-held talking.
The reason you astonish me, Clive, is that your passenger theory is exactly the same as theirs. Namely, that real passengers adapt their conversations to the driving conditions. People monitor their conditions and the performance of the driver and adapt the conversation accordingly.
I don't think they had tested this theory in the paper I read, but don't be surprised if they come out with a new study very soon confirming exactly what you're predicting.
There are two things we can conclude from this:
1) Collision Detection is as insightful as most scientific journals, and twice as entertaining.
2) People who talk on any kind of phone while they drive shouldn't be aloud to drive. Either that or they should be paying the insurance premiums of all the other good drivers.
Is it just me, or do people feel that their phone conversations are so much more important now that everyone has cell phones? I've heard these conversations. They're really not.
Posted by: Steve at November 27, 2004 3:29 PM
Clive,
This is one of the craziest posts I've seen on this blog in a long time. I think some of the other commentators made good points about the research, but -- transmitting telepresense information?? Would there ever be a market for something like that?
I'm an NYS driver, and I think we were one of (if not the) first to have a law against using cell phones while driving. I have to say I was glad when the law came into effect. Personally, my experience has been that using a hands free device left me feeling reasonably safe about my own driving, where as holding a phone did not. I always assumed this was just because I was putting a lot of effort into small motor control to keep my phone next to my ear while going over bumps and dips and what have you. With the hands free, I'm mainly focused on the road, and the conversation gets second priority no matter what. More importantly, I always felt equally distracted between having a passenger in the car and talking on a hands free device.
Now, whether or not I actually am equally distracted remains to be seen. It's probably just silly gut instinct, but I would like to believe I have some gauge of how good my own driving is - I know when I'm messing up. I wonder how to reconcile these ideas?
Posted by: Peter at November 27, 2004 4:53 PM
Your reasoning is sound--although I might add that another troublesome characteristic of mobile phone coversations while driving is that the other party is less likely to wait patiently when the driver falls silent (while concentrating on avoiding certain death), as the other party may think the silence is due to poor signal and start yapping "Hello? Are you still there?"
I gather your proposed solution is a theoretical example, so I won't attempt to list the impracticalities of such as others have done--I'm sure you're well aware of them.
Your conclusion--that we should look at modifying the behaviour of not just the driver, but also the other party--I wholeheartedly agree with.
Perhaps an educational campaign alerting folks to the risks of using mobile phones, even hands free ones, when driving, reminding people that, when speaking to someone who is driving, one should always remain sensitive to the situation.
Of course, only the foolish, the forgetful, and the supremely self-indulgent don't already make allowances for such a situation, but unfortunately, those three categories encompass a frightfully large chunk of the populace.
Posted by: Simon at November 27, 2004 8:27 PM
Steve E:
Collision Detection is only twice as entertaining as most scientific journals? Man, I must be reading the wrong journals. :)
I don't know if anyone else has tried this experiment at home, but I was talking on my cellphone while walking somewhere and I realized that I only was paying the minimum of attention to my surroundings. Since the hands-free/handheld distinction is clearly irrelevant to a pedestrian, it was likely that it was the conversation itself that was distracting. While I am not going to extrapolate from my experience to everyone else, it was pretty clear to me that a) it's a good experiment to demonstrate to oneself one's personal susceptibility to distraction and b) I'm not going to be the person talking on my phone while driving.
Posted by: debcha at November 27, 2004 9:32 PM
One would hope nthat the NHTSA will place regulations, similar to the seatbelt and airbag laws, on car-cellphone usage. we now have proximity detectors regularly install in our vehicles and with the speedos and traction control anti-lock braking we can actually have our cars take over when braking speed laws, crossing over dotted lines, losing control of the vehicle or encroaching on other cars "safe zones" much like breathalyzer kill switchs for multi dui offenders maybe the cars should disable the phone and slow itself down admonish the driver with a loud klaxon and even turn itself off. or possible self destruct the phone in the ear of the driver.....loudly
Posted by: Jim at November 28, 2004 6:51 PM
Excellent comments all around here! Debbie, great point about the fact that I'm assuming the conversational partner is immobile and undistracted themselves. Things get much, much worse if the partner is themselves in a situation of sensory bombardment -- then, going by the idea that each person's environment infects the other, you get what is essentially an experiential mashup: Distractions multiplying distractions. Yiiii! Also, that experiment of examining your own distractedness while walking and mobile-phone-talking is brilliant.
Steve P., yes, precisely, this is a question of context. And it occurs to me that one of the problems with mobile phones is that we engineered them based on an original model -- the stationary, home-or-office-based phone. Those phones had obvious built-in context, so when you called someone from your house, your conversational partner didn't need to speculate on where you were, and vice versa. Mobile phones don't have this luxury, but designers fell into the McLuhanesque design trap: They assumed the content of the new media would be the same as the content of the old media. And they're not, in subtle ways.
Steve E., heh, thanks for the compliment -- because in fact I didn't know that study existed! If you find the names of the authors and the name of the paper, let me know, because I'd love to blog it!
Peter, ahahahah, yes, it is a crazy post, heh. But keep in mind, when I say "telepresence information", I don't *necessarily* mean a full video feed for your conversational partner, showing the road-view of your car. Telepresence just means "some sense of a location remote from you", so one could easily imagine something different: For example, an audio or video cue on your phone that lets you know, when you connect to someone on a phone, if they're driving. In fact, in the area of "presence management", some designers I've met are already working on phone apps that would let you know where someone was before you called them. When you pick up the phone to call someone, the screen lets you know what state they're in -- i.e. walking down the street, driving a car, sitting at home, sitting at work. That little bit of information alone might be enough to usefully modify the behavior of the conversational partner and make them more sensitive to the needs of someone driving and talking at the same time.
Because Simon is precisely right when he points out that that "the other party is less likely to wait patiently when the driver falls silent (while concentrating on avoiding certain death), as the other party may think the silence is due to poor signal and start yapping 'Hello? Are you still there?'" That's exactly what I'm talking about. Mobile-phone etiquette -- on both sides of the fence, both users and conversation partners -- always puzzled me for a long time. Why did people continue to misuse them, bellowing into them in public, or, yes, barking at people who were otherwise dangerously distracted, such as driving? For a long time I though, well, it's just because people are idiots, of course. But then I realized that, no, it's because mobile phones have been horribly designed. (The problem of people yelling into phones is, as I've blogged about before, caused by the fact that mobile phones have no phone-ness to them -- they no longer look like phones and thus do not inspire in us any confidence that the device is listening to us, which is why we bellow into them even though we *know* it isn't necessary.)
(And yep, Simon, I knew my "solution" was impractical -- I was only trying to get across the idea of engineering phones to modify the behavior of the conversational partner.)
Jim, heh, an explode-upon-use phone would be a drastic solution to this problem. But given how strongly many feel about the topic, at least some people would support it.
Posted by: Clive at November 29, 2004 6:23 AM
Debbie - I agree phoning while walking around isn't a problem - so what about some kind of table comparing different forms of transport and the effect taking a phone call makes? Phoning while piloting a helicopter x times as difficult as when cycling (say).
I'd wonder if there was some effect about the subject too: I certainly have to stop walking if I'm doing arithmetic or memory-intensive tasks - but being creative: I walk faster!
Posted by: joolz at November 29, 2004 7:27 AM
I think simply cell phone distract the driver to a certain degree, some more than others. The more distraction the more dangerous. You're just playing your luck sometimes, when you get distracted for 1 seconds, most people get lucky and nothing dangerous happens within that second. The more seconds that you are distracted accumlates and the chance of an accident increases.
Posted by: Joe at December 2, 2004 7:58 PM
Hands free phones are better than holding one because with 2 hands availiable at all times you can be at control of your car at a faster reaction time.
Posted by: Joe at December 2, 2004 8:01 PM
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Clive,
very interesting idea!
Posted by: bud at November 27, 2004 8:26 AM
Okay, that works nicely if one person is ensconced on their couch, but realistically, a good chunk of the time I'm sure the second person is also on a cellphone somewhere. Bad enough if the second person was just walking down the street - imagine if the second person was driving too!
And you omitted an important passenger behaviour: if there is congestion or the driver is trying to do other high-attention tasks, the passenger usually shuts up. This can be easily modeled by the driver telling the person on the other end of the cellphone conversation that they are driving and have to go. However, having been nearly beaned by my share of cellphone-distracted drivers, I'm not too optimistic about that happening...sigh.
This is an interesting concept, though...I like the idea of conveying the complexity of the driving situation to the person on the other end of the cellphone through a means that doesn't require the complicity of the driver. But maybe something that is lower bandwidth than a full-immersion type experience would be more appropriate.
Posted by: debcha at November 27, 2004 9:45 AM
What you're flagging (and a nice link to the blog title btw) is the terrible job cellphones do in handling context. Our culture developed phone manners and behavior around knowing where the person on the other end was, because where else could they be?
Now, the person could be anywhere and doing anything (and we've all been in public restrooms and heard our neighbor pick up a call from an adjoining stall, right?) and their partner in conversation won't know. All sorts of communication negotiation takes place that wasn't there before, and much of it unsuccessful, given the problems we have with OTHER people using their phone in a setting we don't accept (as just one example).
Posted by: Steve Portigal at November 27, 2004 11:48 AM
What you're flagging (and a nice link to the blog title btw) is the terrible job cellphones do in handling context. Our culture developed phone manners and behavior around knowing where the person on the other end was, because where else could they be?
Now, the person could be anywhere and doing anything (and we've all been in public restrooms and heard our neighbor pick up a call from an adjoining stall, right?) and their partner in conversation won't know. All sorts of communication negotiation takes place that wasn't there before, and much of it unsuccessful, given the problems we have with OTHER people using their phone in a setting we don't accept (as just one example).
Posted by: Steve Portigal at November 27, 2004 11:50 AM
sorry about the double post - I got an error when I submitted the comment - went back and refreshed to see if it still went thru - it didn't, so I submitted again, checked again in a fresh browser and there were two copies. Sorry. Feel free to delete this and the second comment if you want (heck, it's your blog!)
Posted by: Steve Portigal at November 27, 2004 11:52 AM
Clive,
You either never cease to astonish me, or you have very little journalistic integrity! I imagine it's the former.
The reason this study by the NHTSA is so interesting to me is because it's actually a confirmation of a study in cognitive psychology published about a year ago! It's one of those rare cases where the real-world validity of a study performed within the confines of a laboratory is just as high as the scientific validity. The experimenters were using computer tasks, namely, trying to keep a cursor on dot moving randomly on a screen. Participants performed this task while talking on a hand-held phone or a hands-free phone. And they found the exact same results as this NHTSA study. Hands-free talking is as big a detrement to performance as hand-held talking.
The reason you astonish me, Clive, is that your passenger theory is exactly the same as theirs. Namely, that real passengers adapt their conversations to the driving conditions. People monitor their conditions and the performance of the driver and adapt the conversation accordingly.
I don't think they had tested this theory in the paper I read, but don't be surprised if they come out with a new study very soon confirming exactly what you're predicting.
There are two things we can conclude from this:
1) Collision Detection is as insightful as most scientific journals, and twice as entertaining.
2) People who talk on any kind of phone while they drive shouldn't be aloud to drive. Either that or they should be paying the insurance premiums of all the other good drivers.
Is it just me, or do people feel that their phone conversations are so much more important now that everyone has cell phones? I've heard these conversations. They're really not.
Posted by: Steve at November 27, 2004 3:29 PM
Clive,
This is one of the craziest posts I've seen on this blog in a long time. I think some of the other commentators made good points about the research, but -- transmitting telepresense information?? Would there ever be a market for something like that?
I'm an NYS driver, and I think we were one of (if not the) first to have a law against using cell phones while driving. I have to say I was glad when the law came into effect. Personally, my experience has been that using a hands free device left me feeling reasonably safe about my own driving, where as holding a phone did not. I always assumed this was just because I was putting a lot of effort into small motor control to keep my phone next to my ear while going over bumps and dips and what have you. With the hands free, I'm mainly focused on the road, and the conversation gets second priority no matter what. More importantly, I always felt equally distracted between having a passenger in the car and talking on a hands free device.
Now, whether or not I actually am equally distracted remains to be seen. It's probably just silly gut instinct, but I would like to believe I have some gauge of how good my own driving is - I know when I'm messing up. I wonder how to reconcile these ideas?
Posted by: Peter at November 27, 2004 4:53 PM
Your reasoning is sound--although I might add that another troublesome characteristic of mobile phone coversations while driving is that the other party is less likely to wait patiently when the driver falls silent (while concentrating on avoiding certain death), as the other party may think the silence is due to poor signal and start yapping "Hello? Are you still there?"
I gather your proposed solution is a theoretical example, so I won't attempt to list the impracticalities of such as others have done--I'm sure you're well aware of them.
Your conclusion--that we should look at modifying the behaviour of not just the driver, but also the other party--I wholeheartedly agree with.
Perhaps an educational campaign alerting folks to the risks of using mobile phones, even hands free ones, when driving, reminding people that, when speaking to someone who is driving, one should always remain sensitive to the situation.
Of course, only the foolish, the forgetful, and the supremely self-indulgent don't already make allowances for such a situation, but unfortunately, those three categories encompass a frightfully large chunk of the populace.
Posted by: Simon at November 27, 2004 8:27 PM
Steve E:
Collision Detection is only twice as entertaining as most scientific journals? Man, I must be reading the wrong journals. :)
I don't know if anyone else has tried this experiment at home, but I was talking on my cellphone while walking somewhere and I realized that I only was paying the minimum of attention to my surroundings. Since the hands-free/handheld distinction is clearly irrelevant to a pedestrian, it was likely that it was the conversation itself that was distracting. While I am not going to extrapolate from my experience to everyone else, it was pretty clear to me that a) it's a good experiment to demonstrate to oneself one's personal susceptibility to distraction and b) I'm not going to be the person talking on my phone while driving.
Posted by: debcha at November 27, 2004 9:32 PM
One would hope nthat the NHTSA will place regulations, similar to the seatbelt and airbag laws, on car-cellphone usage. we now have proximity detectors regularly install in our vehicles and with the speedos and traction control anti-lock braking we can actually have our cars take over when braking speed laws, crossing over dotted lines, losing control of the vehicle or encroaching on other cars "safe zones" much like breathalyzer kill switchs for multi dui offenders maybe the cars should disable the phone and slow itself down admonish the driver with a loud klaxon and even turn itself off. or possible self destruct the phone in the ear of the driver.....loudly
Posted by: Jim at November 28, 2004 6:51 PM
Excellent comments all around here! Debbie, great point about the fact that I'm assuming the conversational partner is immobile and undistracted themselves. Things get much, much worse if the partner is themselves in a situation of sensory bombardment -- then, going by the idea that each person's environment infects the other, you get what is essentially an experiential mashup: Distractions multiplying distractions. Yiiii! Also, that experiment of examining your own distractedness while walking and mobile-phone-talking is brilliant.
Steve P., yes, precisely, this is a question of context. And it occurs to me that one of the problems with mobile phones is that we engineered them based on an original model -- the stationary, home-or-office-based phone. Those phones had obvious built-in context, so when you called someone from your house, your conversational partner didn't need to speculate on where you were, and vice versa. Mobile phones don't have this luxury, but designers fell into the McLuhanesque design trap: They assumed the content of the new media would be the same as the content of the old media. And they're not, in subtle ways.
Steve E., heh, thanks for the compliment -- because in fact I didn't know that study existed! If you find the names of the authors and the name of the paper, let me know, because I'd love to blog it!
Peter, ahahahah, yes, it is a crazy post, heh. But keep in mind, when I say "telepresence information", I don't *necessarily* mean a full video feed for your conversational partner, showing the road-view of your car. Telepresence just means "some sense of a location remote from you", so one could easily imagine something different: For example, an audio or video cue on your phone that lets you know, when you connect to someone on a phone, if they're driving. In fact, in the area of "presence management", some designers I've met are already working on phone apps that would let you know where someone was before you called them. When you pick up the phone to call someone, the screen lets you know what state they're in -- i.e. walking down the street, driving a car, sitting at home, sitting at work. That little bit of information alone might be enough to usefully modify the behavior of the conversational partner and make them more sensitive to the needs of someone driving and talking at the same time.
Because Simon is precisely right when he points out that that "the other party is less likely to wait patiently when the driver falls silent (while concentrating on avoiding certain death), as the other party may think the silence is due to poor signal and start yapping 'Hello? Are you still there?'" That's exactly what I'm talking about. Mobile-phone etiquette -- on both sides of the fence, both users and conversation partners -- always puzzled me for a long time. Why did people continue to misuse them, bellowing into them in public, or, yes, barking at people who were otherwise dangerously distracted, such as driving? For a long time I though, well, it's just because people are idiots, of course. But then I realized that, no, it's because mobile phones have been horribly designed. (The problem of people yelling into phones is, as I've blogged about before, caused by the fact that mobile phones have no phone-ness to them -- they no longer look like phones and thus do not inspire in us any confidence that the device is listening to us, which is why we bellow into them even though we *know* it isn't necessary.)
(And yep, Simon, I knew my "solution" was impractical -- I was only trying to get across the idea of engineering phones to modify the behavior of the conversational partner.)
Jim, heh, an explode-upon-use phone would be a drastic solution to this problem. But given how strongly many feel about the topic, at least some people would support it.
Posted by: Clive at November 29, 2004 6:23 AM
Debbie - I agree phoning while walking around isn't a problem - so what about some kind of table comparing different forms of transport and the effect taking a phone call makes? Phoning while piloting a helicopter x times as difficult as when cycling (say).
I'd wonder if there was some effect about the subject too: I certainly have to stop walking if I'm doing arithmetic or memory-intensive tasks - but being creative: I walk faster!
Posted by: joolz at November 29, 2004 7:27 AM
I think simply cell phone distract the driver to a certain degree, some more than others. The more distraction the more dangerous. You're just playing your luck sometimes, when you get distracted for 1 seconds, most people get lucky and nothing dangerous happens within that second. The more seconds that you are distracted accumlates and the chance of an accident increases.
Posted by: Joe at December 2, 2004 7:58 PM
Hands free phones are better than holding one because with 2 hands availiable at all times you can be at control of your car at a faster reaction time.
Posted by: Joe at December 2, 2004 8:01 PM