| ceg <curt.guldenschuh@gmail.com>: Aug 16 11:25PM On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 18:10:06 -0500, Muggles wrote: > I highly doubt it's any more distracting than playing music might be. If that is the case, that cellphone usage is *not* distracting, then, instantly, that would *solve* the paradox. But, then, how do we reconcile that observation with the fact that (unnamed) "studies show" that cellphone use is "as distracting as driving drunkly"? The *new* paradox looms - which is - if cellphone use isn't distracting, then why do "studies show" that it *is* distracting (as drunk driving)? Nothing makes sense in all these arguments. There is very little intelligent discussion. So, maybe the solution to the paradox is, as you said, "it really doesn't matter" whether someone is using the phone while driving, or not, with respect to accident rates in the USA??? But that flies against "common wisdom". |
| Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com>: Aug 16 04:47PM -0700 On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 22:49:38 +0000 (UTC), ceg >Overall accident statistics for the USA are very reliable, since they are >reported by police, insurance companies, and by individuals. Most people lie on accident reports to avoid potential complications with insurance payments. For example, few will admit that it was their fault when the traffic policeman is standing there just waiting for a confession and to deliver an expensive ticket. Anecdote time. While going to medical skool, a doctor friend worked in the coroners office of a large city. Like all large cities, the coroners office had a steady stream of deadbeats, bums, winos, and homeless that arrived without the benefit of medical attention and records. Not wanting to spend the money on an autopsy and a medical examiner, they quietly guessed at the cause of death with fairly good accuracy. However, after a few embarrassing mistakes, that was deemed unacceptable. Causes unknown were also not a viable option. So, they inscribed "heart failure" on all such cases, which was certainly true, but not necessarily the cause of death. That actually worked well for a few years, until someone ran statistics on what appeared to be a heart disease epidemic centered in this large city. The city now requires either an attending physician report or a mandatory autopsy. While I'm not in a position to prove or demonstrate this, I think you'll find that such "accident" reports are highly opinionated, are skewed in the direction of smallest settlements, and are rarely corrected. >The numbers are high enough, and consistent enough, to make the error >only a very small percentage. Right. Big numbers are more accurate. The theory is that given a sufficiently large number of independent studies, the errors will be equally distributed on both sides of a desired result, and therefore cancel. That has worked well for global warming predictions. Unfortunately, the studies have to be independent to qualify and does not work at reducing the distribution in a single study. >You won't get *better* data that the census bureau data on accidents in >the USA by state - and none are showing what we'd expect. OMG! Do you really trust the government to do anything correctly? I wish I had your confidence and less personal experience. I'll spare you another anecdote illustrating the problem at the city level. >Hence the paradox. >Where are the accidents? Ok, think about it. You've just crashed your car into an immovable object while texting. You're still conscious and on an adrenalin high. The police are on their way and the last thing you need is for them to find your smartphone on the floor of the vehicle. So, you make a phone call to your wife telling her you'll be late for dinner and by the way, you've decided to buy her a new car. The police walk up, ask you a few questions, and notice you talking on the cell phone. If you're cooperative, nothing happens. If you're a total jerk, the mention the cell phone in their report, and you get nailed for possibly talking/texting while driving. You're screwed if they confiscate the phone for forensic analysis or request a call record from you provider. In short, the statisics are where they want them. If there's a political or financial benefit to showing huge numbers of talk/text driving accidents, they will magically appear. If they thing that nobody really cares about the numbers, you will have a difficult time finding them. If the numbers accumulate some academic interest, you will see the same wrong information repeated endlessly in statistical surveys and college dissertations. Everyone lies, but that's ok because nobody listens. Incidentally, 87.3% of all statistics are fabricated for the occasion. -- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558 |
| kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey): Aug 16 07:54PM -0400 >> I highly doubt it's any more distracting than playing music might be. >If that is the case, that cellphone usage is *not* distracting, then, >instantly, that would *solve* the paradox. It's true, playing music can be pretty distracting. It isn't normally, but sometimes it can be. >But, then, how do we reconcile that observation with the fact that >(unnamed) "studies show" that cellphone use is "as distracting as >driving drunkly"? Well, around here, driving drunkly was common and normal behaviour for a large segment of the population thirty years ago, and now it isn't. Perhaps as a hazard it has disappeared and been replaced with texting while driving instead. >then why do "studies show" that it *is* distracting (as drunk driving)? >Nothing makes sense in all these arguments. >There is very little intelligent discussion. This is true, because there is very little actual data. So an intelligent discussion is pretty much impossible. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
| Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net>: Aug 16 08:12PM -0400 >>>*extremely reliable*. >> Why is that a paradox? > I thought the paradox was clear by my Fermi Paradox example. Very funny. The Fermi Paradox is about "absence of evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence". -- Dan Espen |
| Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com>: Aug 16 05:15PM -0700 On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 15:36:10 -0700, Ashton Crusher <demi@moore.net> wrote: >on their radios and typing on their mobile data terminals? Funny how >when outlawing teh "distraction" would interfere with the police state >suddenly it's not important to outlaw it. Police and fire do not "type" on their mobile terminals. Most are set to not allow input while moving. They also do not talk all day on the radio. Just listen on a scanner and see how often someone actually talks while moving. It's rare and maybe once per WEEK per officer at most. Only in hot pursuit will they talk while moving. If there are two officers in the car, the passenger will do the talking. There are also other users of mobile data terminals that are exempted by the Calif Vehicle Code. While the law was written to prevent people from watching TV while driving, it has been expanded to data terminals, GPS, computahs, etc. Section 27602: <https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/?1dmy&urile=wcm:path:/dmv_content_en/dmv/pubs/vctop/vc/d12/c5/a5/27602> Note that ham radio operators have been exempt. Part of the reason is that there was no evidence of any significant accidents or fatalities to hams resulting from talking while moving when the ordinance was inscribed. There are about 2,000 ham operators in the county. I think I've met about 1/3 of them. In the last 40 years, I don't know of any that have died or been injured while driving, much less while talking on the radio. So, what's the difference between texting, talking, and ham radio operation? Ham radio is a simplex operation. You can only talk and listen, one at a time, and not simultaneously, such as on the telephone. We seem to be able to handle either the input or output channel quite easily, but not simultaneously. I've done some crude testing to see if that's true. When I use a PTT (push to talk microphone) to make a phone call while moving, there's no problem because my caller and I are operating simplex. The same operation done with a handset, in full duplex mode, it highly distracting and sometimes confusing. If you want innovation in this area, consider adding a typical mobile radio microphone to a cell phone, add a loudspeaker, set it up for simplex, and maybe the mythical accident rate will fall. If not, I can probably arrange the statistics to demonstrate that it will. For texting, I had a recent bad experience. I was the passenger in a car where the driver was getting "notifications" continuously roughly twice per minute. The phone would make an obnoxious noise when they arrived. He just couldn't resist the temptation to look at his phone and see what had just arrived. I mentioned it to him, and was ignored. There was no interactive texting or chat session, but plenty of approximately 3 second distractions. That's enough for an accident. Fortunately, there were none, although I was tempted to kiss the ground as I exited the vehicle. >would expect properly done research would show it's in a whole >different class of hazards from talking on a phone. But that's just >an expectation. Yep. You got it. The smartphone has an accelerometer and can easily tell when it's moving. Buffer incoming texts and block the keyboard while the phone is moving. End of problem (until it's hacked). Apps are already available but it really should be built into the phone firmware: <https://play.google.com/store/search?q=no%20text%20while%20driving%20app&c=apps> -- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558 |
| Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net>: Aug 16 08:17PM -0400 > The paradox is that cellphone ownership skyrocketed in the past few years > in the USA, while accidents continued on the *same steady decline* that > they had been on for decades. Here's a hint: cell phone ownership IS NOT EQUAL TO cell phone usage while driving -- Dan Espen |
| "Dean Hoffman" <dh0496@windstream.net>: Aug 16 07:21PM -0500 > PARADOX 2: If 98.5% of the drivers are already such responsible users of > cellphones, then why the need for the laws that penalize cellphone use > while driving? Because there's no end of people who think they should tell others how to live their lives. Mandatory wiper laws are an example. I guess there are still people who think living isn't terminal. This http://tinyurl.com/qclh5gg leads to the Carpe Diem site. It talks about a woman who successfully challenged Mississippi's Board of Cosmetology. They required 18 months of schooling for people who wanted to braid hair professionally. -- Using Opera's mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/ |
| Ashton Crusher <demi@moore.net>: Aug 16 05:36PM -0700 On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 18:58:37 +0000 (UTC), ceg >rates in the USA. >Do we have reliable accident rate figures for the UK to see if the >cellphone paradox applies to the UK as much as it does to the USA? Speaking of the UK, they did a study of the influence of speed cameras (they have a LOT of them) on accidents and it showed that where there were cameras that statistically the accidents INCREASED. They attempted to bury the report. It was eventually released but uniformly ignored by those in power. Further proof, as if more was needed, that speed cameras are for revenue, not safety. |
| kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey): Aug 16 08:42PM -0400 >talks while moving. It's rare and maybe once per WEEK per officer at >most. Only in hot pursuit will they talk while moving. If there are >two officers in the car, the passenger will do the talking. Around here, it is routine to see two officers in the car. When they are not on their way to a call, one officer is driving while the second officer is typing every license plate he sees into the terminal and running plates as fast as he can in hopes of finding a car with outstanding warrants. There is a very distinct division of tasks. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
| Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com>: Aug 16 05:52PM -0700 On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 18:24:42 +0000 (UTC), ceg >On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 11:32:55 -0400, micky wrote: >> Why is that a paradox? >I thought the paradox was clear by my Fermi Paradox example. Think again. The Fermi Paradox is better stated as: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Much of this has its basis in theology where wrestling over the existence of God is an international sport. A more simplistic version is that you can't prove anything with nothing as evidence. The corollary also doesn't work where: "Quantity of evidence is not evidence of quantity". In other words, just because you have a large pile of numbers, doesn't mean you can prove a large number of things. The problem is that the "Fermi Paradox" is the logic sucks. "The great Enrico Fermi proposed the following paradox. Given the size of the universe and evidence of intelligent life on Earth making it non-zero probability for intelligent life elsewhere, how come have we not been visited by aliens? Where is everybody?, he asked." No matter how minute the probability of such life, the size should bring the probability to 1. (In fact we should have been visited a high number of times: see the Kolmogorov and Borel zero-one laws.) So, what's missing? Well, it's time or rather how many solar revolutions a civilization can exist without destroying itself or having some cosmic catastrophe do it for them. The details are worked out in the Drake Equation: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation> which computes the probability of two civilizations coming into contact. If you happen to be a pessimist, and use pessimistic probabilities, the probability might as well be zero. Inflating the statistical population to astronomical proportions does nothing to change the probabilities and certainly will not result in a 100% chance of an alien encounter. -- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558 |
| "(PeteCresswell)" <x@y.Invalid>: Aug 16 08:54PM -0400 Per ceg: >Where are all the accidents? How about under reporting? How could cell phone-generated accidents get into the system as such? Guy I used to windsurf with bought the farm a couple of years ago when a guy in an F-150 drove into him from the back at highway speed (i.e. 50-60 mph). He was riding on a wide shoulder, bright clear day, no intersections. I have a hard time imagining that the guy who killed him told the investigating officer "Yeah, I was just so into this (cell phone conversation/text message/email) that I drifted on to the shoulder and drove right into the victim." Same with the buy who almost got me on the Atlantic City Expressway a couple years ago: I'm running the right lane, guy in the left lane just starts drifting into me and I can see him holding something in one hand and poking his finger at it with the other hand (steering with his knees?).... I took the shoulder and avoided contact - but if there had been an accident I would not have expected the other driver to 'fess up. Same with the guy in a pickup truck that almost nailed me on my bike several years ago. I was riding on a very large cross-hatched (no cars) area. I saw him coming - intent on *something* between his knees... I zigged, he didn't zag and then he drove right through the space I was occupying... never looked up. If I had woken up dead that day, I am pretty sure he would have some other explanation than "I was absorbed in my cell phone". And then there is the Canadian study that equated driving while talking on a cell phone with some level of alcohol intoxication.... -- Pete Cresswell |
| Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com>: Aug 16 06:03PM -0700 >running plates as fast as he can in hopes of finding a car with >outstanding warrants. There is a very distinct division of tasks. >--scott Sounds like New Yuck City. You must live in a technically impoverished area. Even the local fast food restaurants now have license plate readers. The technology is quite common on the left coast: <https://www.google.com/search?q=automatic+license+plate+recognition+system&tbm=isch> <http://www.licenseplatesrecognition.com/how-lpr-works.html> <http://www.licenseplaterecognition.com> <http://elsag.com/licenseplatereader.htm> <http://www.theiacp.org/ALPR> etc... Even cheap security cameras have a headlight blocking feature: <http://www.cctvcamerapros.com/License-Plate-Capture-Cameras-s/283.htm> Are you sure the second officer is typing in license plates and not updating his Facebook page? "Don't worry about the radios. We can always use Twitter for dispatch" (Don't ask me who said that). -- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558 |
| "(PeteCresswell)" <x@y.Invalid>: Aug 16 09:05PM -0400 Per ceg: >Overall accident statistics for the USA are very reliable, since they are >reported by police, insurance companies, and by individuals. Am I the only one that sees a non-sequitur in that statement? I'm thinking it's somewhere in here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies But I'm haven't drunk enough coffee lately to find it. -- Pete Cresswell |
| Ed Pawlowski <esp@snet.net>: Aug 16 10:21PM -0400 On 8/16/2015 7:10 PM, Muggles wrote: > I highly doubt it's any more distracting than playing music might be. I agree with you, however, have you ever seen anyone playing a musical instrument while driving?I never have. Listening to music though, is far different that talking on the phone. The brain can easily tune out the radio since it is a passive activity. The phone requires your active participation and concentration. It has been proven many times. |
| micky <NONONOmisc07@bigfoot.com>: Aug 16 10:31PM -0400 In sci.electronics.repair, on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 18:24:42 +0000 (UTC), ceg >> Why is that a paradox? >I thought the paradox was clear by my Fermi Paradox example. >Do you remember the Fermi Paradox? No, I don't. >before lunch that aliens must exist, when, all of a sudden, Fermi, over >lunch, realized belatedly that if they do exist, then there must be some >"signal" (or evidence) from them. Enrico Fermi said that? Because it's not true. Until humans on earth invented radio, less than 200 years ago, there were no signals from us. And none of our radio waves have reached places 200 light years away or more even now. Plus there are animals living in the woods and rivers and oceans and on mountains and underground that people who never go to those places never see and only know about because others have told them. If others didn't tell them, they wouldn't know. If the animals there are sending out signals, they are short distance signals and they don't reach me. |
| Ashton Crusher <demi@moore.net>: Aug 16 07:31PM -0700 On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 16:47:34 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> wrote: >surveys and college dissertations. Everyone lies, but that's ok >because nobody listens. Incidentally, 87.3% of all statistics are >fabricated for the occasion. You've missed the point. All those things you raise may well be true but they were just as true before there were cell phones. The mix of truth and lies in accident reports goes on but one key thing continues and that is that virtually ALL significant accidents, certainly those society might want to concern itself with, are REPORTED and go into the statistics of HOW MANY accidents. Yeah, the listed causes might be lies or honest mistakes but the NUMBERS are reported consistently year after year after year. And its the NUMBERS of accidents ceg is talking about as the data set, not the CAUSE that's listed. So we know that the NUMBER of accidents, rate actually, the normalized number, has steadily been going down down down. Yet there are people claiming that a NEW and HORRIBLY DANGEROUS CAUSE of accidents has been unleashed into the driving world, the Cell Phone. We can't argue with the fact that over the past two decades MILIIONS AND MILLLIONS of cell phones wound up in the hands of and used by drivers, that's just a fact. But if all those cell phones are REALLY this horribly DANGERIOUS ACCIDENT CAUSING instrument, WHERE ARE THE ACCIDENTS???? |
| micky <NONONOmisc07@bigfoot.com>: Aug 16 10:37PM -0400 In sci.electronics.repair, on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 17:52:04 -0700, Jeff > is everybody?, he asked." > No matter how minute the probability of such life, the size > should bring the probability to 1. (In fact we should have The thing is that probabilty on a yes or no question is only valuable for betting parlors and insurance brokers, which are really the same thing. One may thing the probability is very high, because there are so many places life could be, but if there is no life beyond the earth, it doesn't matter what the probability WAS. It is partly tied up with theology, iiuc, in that some believers in God want to believe that this earth is his only creation. I don't know why they would think that either. Another problem, IMO, is that scientists, as reported by the news, seem to think life could only be water based, and seem to discount places without water. . I know water has advantages, but it's not the only possibility. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if there were no life anywhere else. There are cerrtainly lots of places beyond earth with no life, so why not more. OTOH, if there is life, I see no special reason they would have a radio transmitter. Until I got a cell phone, I didn't have one. |
| Ashton Crusher <demi@moore.net>: Aug 16 07:38PM -0700 On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 21:05:33 -0400, "(PeteCresswell)" <x@y.Invalid> wrote: >I'm thinking it's somewhere in here: >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies >But I'm haven't drunk enough coffee lately to find it. No non-sequitur. The statistics ARE reliable as a year to year measure. That an individual report may have errors is unquestionably true. But the only number of significance is simply the NUMBER of REPROTED accidents, not the accuracy of the little details of the reports. If Officer Odie is dyslexic and instead of Hwy 52 MP 429 he puts Hwy 25 MP 249 the report will be off by perhaps hundreds of miles but that ACCIDENT occurred and it is included as part of the Total number of accidents that go into the rate. Unless you want to make an argument that there is some systemic problem where the same accidents are getting reported multiple times for almost every jurisdiction in a state or that the dog is eating the reports before they are filed I don't see any reason to challenge the basic accident rates as accurate enough for this discussion. |
| Ashton Crusher <demi@moore.net>: Aug 16 07:46PM -0700 On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 23:25:35 +0000 (UTC), ceg >driving drunkly"? >The *new* paradox looms - which is - if cellphone use isn't distracting, >then why do "studies show" that it *is* distracting (as drunk driving)? I've elaborated on that very question earlier in this thread. The short version is that most of the 'studies' are crap designed to prove cell phones are dangerous thru a variety of nonsensical study protocols. You want to prove pianos are dangerous? Do a study where one person puts their head under the upraised and held in place by the stick "hood" of the piano then simulate a magnitude 6 earthquake. You'll find pianos to be quite dangerous. |
| Ashton Crusher <demi@moore.net>: Aug 16 07:50PM -0700 >This is true, because there is very little actual data. So an intelligent >discussion is pretty much impossible. >--scott No, there is a LOT of data. And contrary to the theorizing of the alarmists, there is no REAL WORLD evidence that the literal explosion of cell phone use has caused even a blip in accident rates. A few anecdotes of 'I saw Santa on his cell phone and he drove his sleigh right into the side of the chimney" don't prove that cell phones are some special case of distraction that should be outlawed while we still allow the carrying of chatty passengers, the eating of food, the application of lipstick, and the fiddling with CDs and MP3 players. |
| "Dean Hoffman" <dh0496@windstream.net>: Aug 16 09:52PM -0500 > but, if cellphone distracted driving is hazardous (which I would think it > is), then they must be there, somewhere, hidden in the data. > Such is the cellphone paradox. Mythbusters on the Science Channel just aired a test of hands free vs. hands on cell phone use while driving. All but one test subject failed their simulator test either by crashing or getting lost. Thirty people took the test. The show aired 9:30 CDT on August 16. -- Using Opera's mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/ |
| Ashton Crusher <demi@moore.net>: Aug 16 07:51PM -0700 >The brain can easily tune out the radio since it is a passive activity. > The phone requires your active participation and concentration. It >has been proven many times. So using a cell phone should be much more dangerous AND result in a SIGNIFICANT increase in accidents over the past 20 years as the use of cell phones has exploded. Yet there isn't the slightest evidence of that in the accident data. |
| Ashton Crusher <demi@moore.net>: Aug 16 07:55PM -0700 On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 23:01:29 +0000 (UTC), ceg >But it's not. >Hence the paradox. >Where are the accidents? From my standpoint, there are essentially no new accidents. One distraction has replaced another. It's even possible that people who in the past would have fallen asleep did not today because they were on their cell phone and that engagement kept them awake. But no one knows.... How do you quantify and categorize accidents that didn't happen? |
| Ashton Crusher <demi@moore.net>: Aug 16 07:58PM -0700 >What percentage of those accidents are phone related? >Accidents may be down, but take out cellphone related instances and they >may have gone down another 10% or 20% And if everyone had DRL's accidents would be reduced another 30%. And if everyone had ABS another 25%. And if everyone had drivers Ed, another 10%. And if tire laws were more stringent we could reduce accidents another 15% and if every state had mandatory inspections another 10%. By the time we get done with all our "improvements" we won't need to manufacture new cars, the accident rate will be negative and new cars will be spontaneously popping out of the road. |
| Cursitor Doom <curd@notformail.com>: Aug 16 08:25PM On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:15:29 +0100, MJC wrote: >> gun crime went THROUGH THE ROOF. > I'm a UK resident and unaware of either of the facts. Any references? > Mike. Nope. It's off-topic! |
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