Here's one theory:
Watch people when it comes to phones in general.
The behavior toward phones is that phones are considered always extremely important and that means it takes priority over everything else. It's a cultural thing. People have programmed themselves into behaving as if the phone is always extremely high priority. The original reasoning for this behavior? Who knows. Maybe it's because of the novelty of phones early on allowing communication with an important favorite relative that's seen only once every 5 years that's half a continent away or something.
Just watch people. When a phone rings, people jump to answer the phone right then. It doesn't matter what they're doing or how hazardous the situation is when the phone rings. They MUST answer the phone. If it's someone elses phone ringing and that person is ignoring it, the person will start getting stressed about the ringing phone and will tell the person to answer it regardless of how important the non phone conversation is. If someone is in a conversation with another person and a phone rings, both expect their conversation to stop and allow the phone conversation to take priority no matter how awkward sitting there next to a phone yakker will be for the next half hour.
Once someone is talking on a phone, they tend to ignore everything around them. Since the phone is considered very important, whatever is being said on the phone must be important enough to concentrate on just that. Situational awareness starts going out the window when a phone is in use. Total capability of concentration is divided between driving and talking on the phone with priority instinctively, without realizing it is happening, given to the phone. Brain power is diverted to talking. First to go is primary concious control of the vehicle by letting someone else drive for them in the form of tailgating so their instincts can keep the car ahead completely in their field of view. Car ahead turns or slows, they turn or slow without knowing why. They tailgate because staying further back requires more brain power to process the image ahead for the car to mindlessly follow.
In a simple nothing conversation and they lose a little awareness like the color of the car in front of them. Something complex and they don't know what's going on around them. (no hazards detected on the drive home..nevermind the several cars that in reality had to swerve to avoid impact. Those close encounters were not detected by the phone driver) If it's personally important to them and complex, they are essentially blind.
An amusing example of severe overfocusing on the phone from a few years ago at a strip mall: A guy was yakking on the cellphone walking from the parking lot ahead of me. He crossed the busy street without looking either way and almost got squished. Then he turned and walked along the buildings...right into a 4ftx4ft concrete post. I don't mean he diverted around it, I mean he bashed his nose into the center of the post at full walking speed. The look on his face was that of someone who had no clue at all where that post came from. He was concentrating so hard on the conversation to the point that he couldn't see the post.
In an airplane, the conversations on the radio are directly supporting the flight. The conversations are also fairly superficial. "Cherokee xxxxx turn heading 220 descend and maintain 3000." The conversation is over in under 5 seconds then it's back to totally concentrating on flying for the next several minutes. That's a lot different than a long indepth conversation of your neighbors cat and how it was the neighborhood favorite and got run down by a police car chasing a murder while grandma 500 miles away was knitting a new sleeve on a favorite sweater and oh by the way that software change on compiler line # 72197 to 73421 now does blah blah blah" None of that has anything to do with operating the vehicle the driver is sitting in at the time so the person has to divert even more brain power to the conversation.
Here's an experiment I'd like to see: I'd like to see the results of those totally safe no risk situation cellphone drivers with a completely objective non participating passenger in the car with them on a straight count of near misses identified by the celldriver and real world observant passenger. Take 1000 cars on a typical cellphone driver around the city and tally up the numbers. I'd bet there is a major descrepancy between the two numbers on threat identifications.
Just a thought based on direct observation.
Interesting, and I suspect accurate for most people. I think the sense of urgency, however, is more to the point. Something can be important, yet not urgent.
Personally, I hate talking on phones. I can easily think of a hundred things more important than answering a ringing phone, and I press the "ignore" button
at least as often as I actually answer a call when the cell phone rings. I plan on celebrating my retirement by tossing all of my phones -- landline and cellular -- out the window of an airplane and into the ocean (with reasonable precautions to avoid personal injury or property damage, of course, as required by FAR 91.15).
I also have a MagicJack phone connected to an old computer that I almost never boot up except for the purpose of making a call from that number. That's the number I give to parties I really don't care to hear from, such as banks and credit card companies, utilities, most government agencies, retailers who demand a phone number before taking my money (like most online retailers), etc.
I
never answer calls to that number. Like I said, the computer it needs to work is rarely turned on. Callers can leave voice mail if they like. I do, however, occasionally make calls
from the MagicJack number to prevent the parties from grabbing my real number on the caller ID or the ANI.
Why do I say this? Because like I said earlier, I also suspect that people's estimation of the
urgency of a phone call affects their driving. Personally, I really don't remember the last time I got a truly urgent phone call, by which I mean one that couldn't wait a while or go to voice mail. I get a lot of business calls that are important, but they're usually not urgent, most often last less than two or three minutes, and usually end with either "I'm on my way" or "I'll call you when I get back to the office."
-Rich
Never mind, I won't bring that one up.
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