Quote from thisnameistaken :

I can imagine why though. It's harder to communicate over the phone.

Because in person you have body language and expressions to read as well, so you don't need to think about it as much. On the phone your brain has to work out extra detail that it wouldn't normally need to bother with.

Sometimes I can understand it's necessary to have urgent contact available. GPs on-call, fair enough. If you or your partner is expecting a baby, I'll accept needing the phone around. But there's just no need for it most of the time.
These people who you see getting onto buses talking and they talk all the time they're on and they get off still talking - what did they do before they had a mobile phone? Surely they didn't shut the hell up?

It's simple, no talking on your mobile phone full stop whilst driving, it distracts your concentration on the job at hand (Driving) and can be equivalent to 3 pints of beer (Mythbusters anyone?).

It irritates me when I see someone on a mobile phone driving passed or on roundabouts, they aren't looking around the junction to see what is about to hit them, they just plough on regardless of what's happening and are focused on their conversation. How many of you have seen Police shows where they pull up next to someone on the phone, and can be beside them for a good 20 seconds before they even look!

Quote from thisnameistaken :

talking to a passenger to talking on a phone and the results were pretty conclusive - phone conversations are a bigger distraction than you maybe realise.

Broadly speaking I can agree on that - though I think it depends from the content of the conversation.

I voted for handsfree, especially wireless. It's far less intrusive than messing with the A/C controls.

Quote from NightShift :

Broadly speaking I can agree on that - though I think it depends from the content of the conversation.

Well surely if you're going to have a telephone conversation while driving a car it must be a matter of some importance!

Not necessarily, if your SO just calls in to tell she'll be late, it's ok. Takes little time and does not require any hard thinking or focusing my attention away from the road: an SMS would be worse.

OTOH what if, as a passenger, she suddenly decides to announce she's pregnant? It's hard to make generalizations

Quote from NightShift :

OTOH what if, as a passenger, she suddenly decides to announce she's pregnant?

Yeah that would be distracting. It's hard to drive while unbuckling the passenger's seatbelt, opening their door and pushing them out of the moving car.

The only thing that I tolerate is: "Not now, I'm driving.", though I usually just let it ring or just hang up.
Hands free seems fine with me, doesn't really require more attention than the chat with your co-driver.

Come on! I get distracted while using the cell phone even in GTA IV!

I can say at least 95% of my car crashes in GTA IV comes from when I was using the cell phone at the same time I was driving. After so many crashes (and some of them fatal), now when I need to use the cell phone in the game I just stop or park the car somewhere near and just then use it
I don't want to lose any more cars (nor die! I've already wasted $210,000 with health care )

Quote from thisnameistaken :

There was some experiment done to compare talking to a passenger to talking on a phone and the results were pretty conclusive - phone conversations are a bigger distraction than you maybe realise.

I can imagine why though. It's harder to communicate over the phone.

Ive seen several reports (sady I can't find any references) regarding this, all had similar results:

Talking to someone in the car - little distraction
Talking on the phone - huge distraction
Talking on the phone with handsfree - huge distraction but marginally better than w/o handsfree

I would guess texting is the same as talking on the phone with the added not looking at the road. (like Velociround I know what happens when I try to read text while driving in gta4, and that I miss most of the spoken dialogue if I drive fast while someone calls me)

I've had two work mates wreck their cars while on the phone, one tried to go through a newly built roundabout at 70kph (managed to break the speed down to avoid any injury), the other drove into a lamp post on the parking lot (still so fast the car was unrepairable)

I have to say that those who say that using hands free is the same as talking to a passenger concerning distraction have either

a) not used hands free phones

b) not talked to passengers

or c) not talked at all due to no social life worth mentioning.

I for one am pretty fine when I talk to someone in the car, but when using a phone, somehow, and it is actually a mystery to me why, it takes much of my concious awareness. Quite often, even while walking, I have hardly any recollection of the way I took between the start and the end of the conversation, which in turn makes me think that most of my brain capacity was preoccupied with phoning.

i never use my phone while driving, its just stupid...


anyone doing so should crash and die a slow + painful death...