Drive, don't phone

 One of the sources of new research is the US National Highway
 Traffic Safety Administration, which has found that hands-free
 devices add to the risk.

 Jeffrey Runge, administrator of the NHTSA, is reported to be
 disturbed by the fact that states and local municipalities are
 making rules based on the misapprehension that hands-free sets
 are safe which, he told the Wall Street Journal, "is not a good
 policy".

 One recent study at the University of Utah of 48 adults in a
 driving simulator found that those on the phone missed four
 times as many exits as those talking to another passenger. An
 earlier study at the same university found that mobile phone
 users were twice as likely to miss red lights as those who did
 not have them (with no difference between hands-on and hands-free). 

 Monday July 26, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,1268942,00.html

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Ananova:  Mobile phones 'increase crash risk'

 Motorists who use mobile phones while driving - even with
 hands-free kits - are four times more likely to crash,
 researchers say.

 The study, published in the British Medical Journal and carried
 out by the US-based Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS),
 claims in-car devices do little to improve safety.

 "You'd think using a hands-free phone would be less distracting,
 so it wouldn't increase crash risk as much as using a hand-held
 phone," said Anne McCartt, vice-president for research at the IIHS.

 "But we found that either phone type increased the risk."

 The study found that male and female drivers faced the same
 increased risk of accidents by using a phone, along with drivers
 both under and over 30.

Tues 12 July 2005
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1459701.html?menu=

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 "Perceptions" note:

 Clearly these people just don't understand how the human brain
 works; they were still making wrong assumptions, that we'd
 warned against, several years after our first warnings - see

 "consciousness examined"  in Google or 

 http://www.perceptions.couk.com/conscious.html#time

--------------------------------------------------  

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