August 27, 2012 | 10:22 AM |

It’s The Driver, Stupid: So Don’t Blame The Cell Phone

FILED UNDER: Personal Health, cell phones, driving, safety, technology

(Marilyn M./flickr)

Bad news for those comforted by laws that restrict cell phone use while driving: it’s not the technology causing the problems, it’s the aggressive, bad drivers, a new report from MIT suggests.

The Boston Globe reports:

People who chat behind the wheel often drive more aggressively even after they hang up, according to a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,

“The people who are more willing to frequently engage in cellphone use are higher-risk drivers, independent of the phone,” said Bryan Reimer, associate director of MIT’s New England University Transportation Center. “It’s not just a subtle difference with those willing to pick up the phone. This is a big difference.”

Reimer and a team of MIT researchers studied the behavior of 108 Greater Boston drivers. About half acknowledged frequent phone use when driving; the rest said they rarely used their phones behind the wheel.

And though none of the drivers used phones during the tests, the frequent callers tended to drive faster, change lanes more often, and spend more time in the far-left lane than those who rarely used their phones. The frequent callers were also more likely to accelerate rapidly and to slam on the brakes.

(Is this phenomenon worse in Boston, where drivers are notoriously aggressive, I wonder? Based on my trip back from the Cape yesterday — where drivers drifted into the left lane obliviously, without signaling, and young-looking drivers gossiped and texted in traffic, I’d say yes.)

About the author

Blogger, CommonHealth Rachel Zimmerman worked as a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal for 10 years, most recently covering health and medicine out of the paper’s Boston bureau. Rachel has also written for The New York Times, the (now-defunct) Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the alternative newspaper Willamette Week, in Portland, Ore., among other publications. Rachel co-wrote a book about birth, published by Bantam/Random House, and spent 2008 as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Rachel lives in Cambridge with her husband and two daughters. View all posts by Rachel Zimmerman →

  • Stephen

    The headline and lead sentence of this article are completely misleading – the real point seems to be that cellphone use is a good indicator of bad drivers, or a gateway to worse driving. Of course I blame the cell phone, as would anyone who looks to discover the behavior of drivers wandering over the dividing lines or staying stopped when the light turns green – surprise, they’re all on the phone!

    Using a cell phone while driving should be a first-line offense, one that the police could use to stop and ticket a driver, like any other moving violation. This would not only solve our budget deficits in one fell swoop, but would also fine and limit already bad drivers from becoming worse.

  • David C. Holzman

    I would also add that a fast driver isn’t necessarily a bad driver or an unsafe driver. Nor is a lane changer necessarily a worse driver. Lane changers are probably more alert than the sorts of drivers who like to get into one lane and stay there at constant speed so they can turn off their brains. Lane changers are often people who pull left to pass, and then go back into the right lane (me, for example). I’d like to know more about how this MIT study worked before I give it any credence.

  • David C. Holzman

    Well, OK, they’re more risky drivers to begin with, but taking your eyes off of the road for more than two seconds drives the risk of accident up roughly 20-fold according to the Virginia Tech studies where they stuck videos in cars and trucks for extended periods of time so that they could observe the drivers. Force the aggressive cell phone users to leave their phones in the trunk (which is what behavioral economists say you should do if you’re prone to using the phone) and at least their eyes will stay on the road.

    The scariest thing–the thing that makes me fearful of cycling on the road, although I logged 10s of thousands of miles in city traffic in the ’70s, ’80s, and early ’90s–is the texting. They have to take their eyes off the road to do several operations, which, according to both common sense and the VA Tech studies, is a recipe for disaster. And when I drive, I see people texting and driving all the time. It would be nice if the cops started looking for them, and handing out those $100 fines.

    • Craig

      I agree, texting while driving has become a major problem and can be a real distraction. I feel the PSA’s that have been out recently have changed the mind of many showing the texts people were sending or receiving just before being involved in a forever life changing accident. It’s just not worth the risk to yourself or others.