Hands-Free Cell Phones on the Road - Report Example

REPORT: HANDS FREE CELL PHONES ON THE ROAD The issue of using mobile phones is quite serious and needs to be analyzed as far as every year more and more people die from inattention on roads. Statistical evidences showed that, for instance, in the United States distracted driving has had a fatal outcome in 3,092 cases within the past year. Although, a July 2007 study by University of Chicago Booth School of Business Professor Saurabh Bhargava and Cornerstone Research Associate Vikram Pathania found that cell phone usage doesn’t measurable increase the amount of vehicular crashes (Laing 2011). However, hand-held cell phone use while driving is forbidden in most of Western countries, which sets aside a question about hands free cell phone usage. The point is that if hand-held cell phone use is an obvious kind of a driver’s distraction on a road, hands free phones seem to be less harmful and distracting. As far as such a usage of a phone lets a driver do all the required driving actions, technically there is no point to forbid the hands free cell phones while driving. Despite the seeming security of such phone usage, we usually deal with human cognitive functions while driving, so it turns out that being capable of doing automatic actions while driving isn’t quite enough. Thus, the issue should be considered from cognitive psychologists’ point of view in order to understand whether human cognitive activities like memory, attention, reasoning, and problem solving can normally deal with talking on a phone (even the hands free one) while driving. The process of driving requires complex simultaneous usage of human cognitive functions. A person needs to be concentrated on road aware of other participants of the traffic; also, the vehicle driving skills should be involved, so the person needs to remember what to do in different situations on the road and react quickly. The most important cognitive function that should be working during driving is problem solving capability, as far as people deal with human factors of other people on the road. Problem solving is a process that works by switching the two kinds of thinking (analytical and intuitive) one after another when it is needed. Because, dealing with other people, a person often needs either to analyze the further actions or act according to intuition, more spontaneously. Cognitive psychologists claim that most intellectual errors that people make happen because of the clash of two different systems of thinking (Leron&Hazzan 2009). Thus, if a person is not distracted during driving, both analytical and intuitive thinking work cooperatively providing a driver with a very high level of problem solving capability, full attention, and involving into driving process. If to add speaking on a phone to the problem solving process while driving, it could definitely cause a huge cognitive disorder. The reason is that speaking on a phone is a process of analytical thinking (because a person is supposed to listen and response) when driving is both analytical and intuitive process. Thus, if clashes of the different kinds of thinking cause intellectual errors, there is a big probability that the person who deals with such multitasking fails on the road. From this perspective, nothing but driving should be involved in driving process. Another, probably the most active, cognitive process required on the road is attention, which is also oriented to interaction with other drivers. Some studies on different types of attention came out with the conclusion that there are two types of attention central and input attentions (Johnson et.al. 1995). Central attention deals with the current process a person is involved in and process the incoming data concerning this process. Input attention deals with information that comes from some aside stimuli that accompany the main process, so this kind of attention is minor. Evidences show that if input attention is not overloaded by information, a person is able to keep both attentions balanced. But if input attention receives too much information or is being kept on some energy-intensive process, the central attention starts failing, so both major and minor processes will eventually collapse (Johnson et.al. 1995, p.366). Thus, if to presuppose that driving has the central attention, all the incoming information during the process will be processed correctly. But if to add a phone talk as a minor process, it will overload the input attention and both processes more likely will fail. Other evidences against hands free cell phones usage can be found in recent researches on the effect of visual attentional load on plasticity on human motor complex made by Australian neurobiologists and cognitive psychologists. They claim that the processes that require increased attentional demands suppress other cognitive functions because once a person deals with such processes, they can’t be distracted by anything else, otherwise the visual attention will not be kept (Kamke et.al. 2012). As far as driving process requires a very high level of visual attention, the additional process like speaking on a phone is definitely destructive for normal attention while driving. The extent to which people can focus attention in the face of distractions critically depends on the type and complexity of information load involved in their current task (Lavie 2010). If visual attention is one of the most complicated and energy-intensive, it needs a high level of concentration, especially when we deal with driving, which is a process of life-and-death matter. Considering the theory about dominance of visual attention it is important to note that the process of driving includes another crucial cognitive function of memory. Drivers should constantly keep in their minds all the road laws and follow them. Although, the researches on memory revealed that if there are distracting factors while process of remembering, a person can lose the target of remembrance (road rules) (Wright & Osborne 2005). Therefore, loosing of the target can eventually lead to forgetting of some road rules and getting into an accident. The fact that speaking on a phone while driving a car is distracting in some way is obvious, even if we consider hands free cell phones because they require the cognitive functions of listening and speaking as well as the hands-held phones. The only difference between them is that hands free cell phones allow a driver to move more freely. Although, dealing with both driving and talking on phone includes too many cognitive actions for human brain to process them simultaneously. The main function that becomes under threat and is extremely needed during driving is decision making. Several researches on human decision making revealed some significant results about how distraction can influence decision making for the worse. If a person is being involved into two simultaneous actions (driving and talking on a phone), when it comes a situation on the road, that needs to be solved immediately, the person distracted by phone conversation will more likely make a wrong decision (Noll & Krier 1990). The reason why this happens lays in cognitive psychological dual process theory. It claims that human brain strives to make decisions in the easiest way, so it can skip some information considering it as unnecessary in order to think less. If focusing on some process (driving) a brain should also handle another process (speaking), so it can give signals to the body to drive almost automatically not to waste too much intellectual energy. Thus, when it comes an accident situation such disturbance and brain’s unwillingness to solve the problem can be fatal (Leron & Hazzan 2009). The evidences presented above prove that hands free cell phone usage can be a serious distraction for drivers. First of all, it is difficult for brain to focus on different activities simultaneously. Even though a driver that uses hands free cell phone has a freedom of movements, still there are too many cognitive functions involved in doing both of the processes. Also, as far as driving requires a lot of attention and especially visual one, speaking on a phone will interrupt driving concentration and the driver will skip a lot of visual information on the road. This can lead to wrong decision making in some extreme situations. Thus, the problem solving function can work less efficient when a driver’s brain is simultaneously busy with two cognitive processes that require thinking. Despite all the possible distractions, many people manage to use hands free cell phones during driving and stay concentrated on the road. The compromise on the issue can be reached by certain limitations of hands free phones, for instance, by limiting the amount of time people can use the phones while driving. Still it is almost impossible to measure how much time people spend talking on hands free cell phones. Anyways, if to look at the issue from the point of view that driving shouldn’t be distracted by anything and a driver must be focused on the road only, it is possible to argue against hands free cell phones and forbid them as well as the hands-held ones. References Keith Laing, 2011, "LaHood Steers Clear of Hands-free Cell Phone Use While Driving Debate," viewed Jan 28, 2015 from: http://www.procon.org/headline.php?headlineID=005051 Noll, R.g. and Krier, J.E., 1990, ‘Some Implications of Cognitive Psychology for Risk Regulation’, The Journal of Legal Studies, 19(2), 747-779. Wright D.B. and Osborne, J.E., 2005, ‘Dissociation, Cognitive Failures, and Working Memory’, The American Journal of Psychology, 118(1), 103-114. Leron, U. and Hazzan, O., 2009, ‘Intuitive vs Analytical Thinking: Four Perspectives’, Educational Studies in Mathematics, 71(3), 263-278. Lavie, N., 2010, ‘Attention, Distraction, and Cognitive Control Under Load’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(3), 143-148. Kamke, M.R., Hall, M.G., Lye, H.F., Sale, M.V., Fenlon, L.R., Carroll, T.J., Riek, S. and Mattingley, J.B., 2012, ‘Visual Attentional Load Influences Plasticity in the Human Motor Cortex’, The Journal of Neuroscience, 32(20), 7001-7008. Johnston, j.C., McCann, R.S. and Remington, R.W., 1995, ‘Chronometric Evidence for Two Types of Attention’, Psychological Science, 6(6), 365-369. Read More