Do you wear a bluetooth headset in your ear?

[yg17]

Don't you think it's interesting though, how you can carry on a conversation with people in the car, and it's fine, but on the phone, it seems to be more distracting. I wonder why.

Maybe it's just my passengers that are good, but typically, with people in the car, if they see a situation that might require more concentration on driving, like bad weather or whatever, they'll keep quiet because they know you have to pay more attention. People on the phone obviously aren't able to do that because they don't know what's going on.

Also, as a driver, if I shut up for a couple minutes to give more attention to my driving, the others in the car will see why and won't question it. People on the phone tend to try to keep the conversation going.

 

[iJohnHenry]

Don't you think it's interesting though, how you can carry on a conversation with people in the car, and it's fine, but on the phone, it seems to be more distracting. I wonder why.

Because the passengers can shut the **** up when they see the driver facing a serious problem.

People on the phone have no such "insight".

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

Because the passengers can shut the **** up when they see the driver facing a serious problem.

People on the phone have no such "insight".

There were a couple of studies on this - and it showed that even with a wireless / handsfree setup - drives on the phone still had reaction times and decision skills at the same level as legally impaired drivers.

The findings were that the passengers acted as a watch-out - drawing attention to hazards they perceived.

Phones don't offer this feature. (yet). I'll try to dig up the articles. (they're about 2 years old now)

 

[rasp]

There were a couple of studies on this - and it showed that even with a wireless / handsfree setup - drives on the phone still had reaction times and decision skills at the same level as legally impaired drivers.

The findings were that the passengers acted as a watch-out - drawing attention to hazards they perceived.

Phones don't offer this feature. (yet). I'll try to dig up the articles. (they're about 2 years old now)

When I first heard this it didn't seem likely, but, afterwards I did notice that even using a headset in the car is a bit distracting.

 

[n8mac]

No, never.

I admit to talking on cell phones in the car on rare occasions, but only emergency, at stop light/parked situations. If I am on the road I always use it as a pager and say "I'm driving, I will call you back in 5 min. bye." Having long pointless conversations isn't too bright.

As far as BT goes, I can certainly understand someone using it in the car or wearing all the time if you receive many calls for business, etc. Our maintenance man has one on every-time I see him and I never heard him use it. That is what drives me crazy. Whether he is trying to act more important than everyone else or not, it doesn't look good. I don't walk around with my cell phone hanging off me. Whenever I do get a call, whomever I am with I say "Hold on I have a call" so they don't think I am talking to them. Having a BT phone shouldn't make you exempt from that simple courtesy.

 

[Neil321]

ONLY when driving