Hands on Driving.

California legislation outlawing driving whilst holding a mobile phone went into effect today, as well as prohibiting drivers under the age of 18 from using any mobile phone device while operating a vehicle. The California DMV has a handy FAQ about the new legislation. The new law doesn't prohibit text messaging though, nor other distractions such as shaving or eating. Many have already derided the law as ignoring the real distraction behind mobile phone use in cars - talking on the phone.

A recent article entitled "A meta-analysis of the effects of cell phones on driver performance" examines research and literature about mobile phones and driving to asess their affect on traffic safety. Talking on the phone is only one in a list of many distractions which affect a driver's performance, yet most legislation has targeted mobile phone use exclusively.

Is it a conspiracy to get people to buy new phones with Blue Tooth or a pretext for drivers to be stopped and searched? Hopefully neither.

Head Injuries on the Rise in Pennsylvania

In 2003, Pennsylvania repealed its universal helmet law. If you're over 21 and you have more than two years' riding experience, you can now ride without a helmet in Pennsylvania. The authors of a paper to be published in the August 2008 issue of the American Journal of Public Health found a 32% increase in head injury deaths and a 42% increase in head injury-related hospitalizations in the two years after the helmet law was repealed -- and that's after taking into account the increase in motorcycle registrations. A University of Pittsburgh press release summarizes the finding of the report, "Changes in Motorcycle-Related Head Injury Deaths, Hospitalizations,and Hospital Charges Following Repeal of Pennsylvania’s Mandatory Motorcycle Helmet Law," was co-authored by Kristen J. Mertz and Harold B. Weiss of the Department of Neurological Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh.

According to an article in Hanover, PA's Evening Sun, 20 states have laws requiring all motorcycle riders to wear helmets, while 27 states have laws that require minors or passengers to wear head protection. Iowa, Illinois and New Hampshire have no helmet laws.

In-Vehicle Alcohol Detectors for the Masses

The rate of repeat DWI offenses has been cut by over 40% in the U.S. and Canada by the use of ignition interlock devices. These are small, hand held breathalyzers that work in conjunction with an aftermarket ignition cut-off switch which allows a driver to start their car only if they pass their on-the-spot blood alcohol content test. 37 states now offer ignition interlocks as an alternative to license suspension for many DWI offenders.

The success of this program has prompted the Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to explore the feasibility of alcohol detection systems for all cars. Such a system would need to be, according to the newly launched Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety website, "far less intrusive – they must not impede sober drivers from starting their vehicles. They would need to be capable of rapidly and accurately determining and measuring alcohol in the blood."

Sources: AutoWeek, 1 800 DWI LAWS.

Image: AutoWeek

Risk Compensation Rumble

The recent issue of "Status Report" (42:10, pp 6-8) from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has a polemical article against "risk compensation" approaches to safety restraint legislation. In the article, "Risk Compensation Theory Keeps Popping Up Where It's Wholly Irrelevant," authors argue that the introduction of new safety features does not inherently alter driving behaviors for the worse. It is noted that, in response to a recent article on risk compensation in the statistical analysis journal "Significance,"

To believe [risk compensation concerning safety restraints in automobiles] you'd have to believe that people have a certain tolerance for risk and that their levels of risk are regulated by a homeostatic mechanism so that, if forced to "consume" more safety than they voluntarily would choose, people will balance the safety increase by taking more risk. It's a stretch, isn't it? (p 6)

The article being argued against, "Seat Belt Laws- Repeal Them?" (pdf format, requires subscription) is written by a professor emeritus from the geography department of UCL, John Adams. Prof. Adams explains that

"the evidence with respect to seat belts suggests that the law had no effect on total fatalities but was associated with a redistribution of danger from car occupants to pedestrians and cyclists. (p 89)

Finally, an article in Accident Analysis and Prevention presents some quantitative research on the matter (found here, in pdf and subscription required).

NHTSA Establishes Gag Rule

Employees of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration may no longer be directly quoted in the press. This new policy was enacted by NHTSA's head, and Bush appointee, Nicole R. Nason. Now only Nason can issue official statements ... something she has yet to do.

How Safe are the Streets in San Francisco?

The Streets of San Francisco are making headlines again. This is not an invitation for you to sit down in front of your TV & be captivated by the 1970s detective series. Rather, it is to bring awareness to traffic safety concerns in San Francisco and the puzzling rise in the number of fatal traffic collisions in the city this year. Check out the August 23 front page article in the San Francisco Chronicle for a look at accident statistics involving pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists, and what city officials plan to do to deal with this current surge in collisions.

Officials contend, however, that data for this year alone should not discredit the enforcement efforts of the past several years which have led to a significant reduction in injury collisions.

What can city officials do to ease the situation? They might consider consulting the Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety Indices developed by researchers at FHWA’s Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center. The indices provide a set of models that allow practitioners to identify those intersections that present the most safety concerns to pedestrians and bicyclists.

Further collision trends and analyses can be found in the San Francisco Collision Report
while a report by UCSF’s San Francisco Injury Center and the Department of Public Health
provides overall injury statistics, with a chapter devoted to motor vehicle and traffic-related injuries.

Segway Driver Attacked By Wild Turkeys!

According to KTVU.com, "Wild turkeys went after Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory technician recently as he rode his Segway to the office.

They chased him and pecked at him according to a local television reporter who witnessed the entire incident.

The turkeys have wandered the grounds of the lab for years, but they've apparently gotten very bold lately."

Link between cellphone yakking and accidents questioned

Conventional opinion, and most previous research, on cellphones and driving has been challenged by Saurabh Bhargava and Vikram Pathania, graduate students of economics at UC Berkeley. Their report "Driving Under the (Cellular) Influence: The Link Between Cell Phone Use and Vehicle Crashes" summarizes their study of crash statistics and cellphone usage by drivers between 1987 and 2005 in all U.S. states. They were surprised to find little correlation between crashes and cellphone use.
A summary of the research, including Bhargava and Pathania's ideas on how their findings might be explained, can be found on the UC Berkeley news site.

I-35W Bridge Collapse Myths And Conspiracies

I-35W Bridge Collapse Myths And Conspiracies

By John A. Weeks III

http://www.johnweeks.com/i35w/i35wmyths.html

Fuel economy and traffic safety

The International Council on Clean Transportation in Washington D.C. has just issued a report, "Sipping Fuel and Saving Lives" that shows how new design methods for increasing automobile fuel efficiency also increase general traffic safety.

Does your car have a Black Box?

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced yesterday that "automakers must inform customers if their vehciles are equipped with an Event Data Recorder (EDR)."

The new federal rule, which takes effect starting with model year 2011 cars, will require automakers who have chosen to install EDRs to note in the owner’s manual that the safety monitoring equipment has been installed.

The rule also includes new requirements designed to ensure that the data collected by EDRs can be used to improve highway safety. For example, the rule requires EDRs to be more durable to protect data during a crash. The rule also requires automakers to collect the same type of crash data if they chose to install an EDR (see attached list for all data elements).

A pdf of the full notice can be found here.

via /.

NHTSA's Multitaskers of Horror!

Last month news agencies reported about NHTSA's report about distracted drivers. The report, entitled The Impact of Driver Inattention On Near-Crash/Crash Risk tracked 100 vehicles equipped with video and sensor devices for one year.
A brief analysis of the study shows:

• Drowsiness is a significant problem that increases a driverÂ’s risk of a crash or near-crash by at least a factor of four. But drowsy driving may be significantly under-reported in police crash investigations.
  
• The most common distraction for drivers is the use of cell phones. However, the number of crashes and near-crashes attributable to dialing is nearly identical to the number associated with talking or listening. Dialing is more dangerous but occurs less often than talking or listening.
  
• Reaching for a moving object increased the risk of a crash or near-crash by 9 times; looking at an external object by 3.7 times; reading by 3 times; applying makeup by 3 times; dialing a hand-held device (typically a cell phone) by almost 3 times; and talking or listening on a hand-held device by 1.3 times.
  
• Drivers who engage frequently in distracting activities are more likely to be involved in an inattention-related crash or near-crash. However, drivers are often unable to predict when it is safe to look away from the road to multi-task because the situation can change abruptly leaving the driver no time to react even when looking away from the forward roadway for only a brief time.