CAR TALK

—by Tom Woolf, Media & Communication Resources

Jacob Rose (right) and James Hunton want to put a bug in somebody's ear about distracted drivers, their cell phones, and hands-free devices. Rose is an associate professor of accounting at SIUC, and Hunton is an accounting professor at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass. They are the authors of a study that contends it's the actual conversation—regardless of whether you're holding the phone or talking on a hands-free device—that causes driver distraction, and therefore, serious accidents.

The bottom line of their study is this: If you're using a hands-free device with a cell phone, you're four and a half times more likely to be in a serious accident than if you're not talking on the phone at all.

In fact, that "virtual" conversation is considerably more distracting than talking with a passenger, their study shows.

"Cell-phone conversations consume significantly more attention than passenger conversations, resulting in more incidents and crashes during simulated driving,  Rose and Hunton concluded. "More working memory is consumed by cell-phone conversations relative to passenger conversations, and fewer resources are available for the driving task."

The two professors specialize in studying the effects of technology on learning and awareness. Their article summarizing their research findings, "Cellular Telephones and Driving Performance: The Effects of Attentional Demands on Motor Vehicle Crash Risk," appeared in the October 2005 issue of the journal Risk Analysis. No outside funding was received for the study, they note.

"What we're trying to figure out is if there is a way we can reduce accident rates and deaths through some kind of driver training," Rose says. "The reason we're looking at this is because of the number of countries and cities that have started to ban handheld phones, such as all of Australia, a lot of Europe, and some cities in the U.S. Our evidence and the evidence of other studies that have come out recently have said those bans won't do any good because it's just as distracting to be on a hands-free device."

The problem, Rose says, is the actual conversation. "If you go back to basic psychology research, you find a few things that suggest conversing is far more demanding than listening, because you have to understand what's being said to you and then prepare for your reply. Having a conversation is very demanding."

In the researchers' experiment, drivers with and without communication training completed a simulated city driving course while engaged in one of three conversation modes: no conversation, conversation with a passenger, and conversation on a hands-free cell phone. Fifty-six airline pilots and 55 non-pilots participated in the study. Trained questioners carried on the same conversations with all the study participants.

Hunton is also a pilot and pilot instructor. He and Rose chose airline pilots as the perfect "trained" study participants, since they safely fly airplanes while talking to crew members and conversing over the radio with air traffic controllers—behavior the researchers believe is similar to talking with a passenger and on a cell phone while driving.

Key findings included these:

• When no conversation was going on, the driving performance of pilots and non-pilots was equivalent.

• When the driver was talking with a passenger, the performance of the pilots was superior to that of the non-pilots.

• When the driver was talking on a cell phone, the performance of the pilots deteriorated slightly, but the performance of the non-pilots dropped sharply.

The study presents the first evidence to dispel what Rose calls the "myth" that talking on a cell phone or hands-free device is no different from speaking to a passenger.

"It is, and it's more dangerous," he says.

"Whatever the topic of conversation is, you're processing it very actively. The cell-phone industry has basically said, 'Look, you talk to passengers all the time, and we can't ban that, so why should we ban phones?' [But] we found the accident rates were more than twice as high when you're on a hands-free phone versus talking to a passenger for the exact same conversation."

Why would that be? "When you lack all of the non-verbal cues of a close-contact conversation, the conversation is that much more demanding," Rose explains. "Some research suggests that 90 percent or more of a conversation is actually non-verbal. It uses a huge amount of your attention to try to deal with the fact that you're missing all those cues."

The researchers looked at what pilots do differently in this regard compared to non-pilots. They found that non-pilots try hard to visualize the person they are speaking to on a cell phone, while pilots do not. Non-pilots also said they try to imagine the gestures and non-verbal cues of the people they are speaking with on a cell phone, while pilots don't.

Some researchers are upset with the study, Rose says, because its findings could be used to advocate a ban on cell-phone use while driving. However, he emphasizes that the study is more comprehensive than other research on the topic.

"This is the only study that has looked at the training issue, the only study that has looked at how we can reduce accidents, the only study that has looked at whether it is different speaking to a passenger versus talking hands-free," he says. "This is one of the few studies actually using lab experiments versus studying accident reports."

Rose and Hunton propose that instead of an outright ban on cell phones and hands-free devices, governments require drivers to complete an endorsed training program. "States or cities would have to say 'you have until this date to come and do the training and get the certification because we know it's going to reduce the chances that you will have an accident,'" Rose explains.

"Most people would say they don't need [training], and our drivers thought that as well. [But] we had people in our simulators hitting two or three cars and pedestrians in one sitting, because we programmed a difficult driving course. We also measured smaller [errors], like running red lights and missing traffic signs, and those rates are even higher than the serious accident rates."

The two professors intend to forge ahead by designing and testing a short-term driver training program as their next research step.

"People tend to believe, especially after hearing about laws banning [handheld] cell-phone use in cars, that they can put their headset on and it has no effect on them," Rose says.

"That's scary."