CAP Policy -- Driving CAP Vehicles while Using Cellphones?

Started by RADIOMAN015, March 27, 2009, 10:55:47 PM

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RADIOMAN015

Studies show that driving and using a cellphone, even with a hands free device is dangerous.  A senior member driving a CAP owned 12 pax van, packed with cadets and/or seniors, probably shouldn't be talking on a cellphone while driving the vehicle.  Has anyone looked at this as a potential safety hazard, that CAP could address, regardless of the states laws.

RM

notaNCO forever

 I think it would be a good idea to have it be against the regs. Even if you use a hands free device it is still a big distraction and safety hazard. Dateline has done a few studies on it along with some other agencies.  It's not the holding the phone that is the actual problem but  the concentration of talking to someone on a phone.

Eclipse

This would simply be a way to further discourage the use of COV's for missions and transport.

While most, if not all, military bases prohibit the use of a cel phone while driving (by the driver), in this case I'm for giving most of our members the benefit of the doubt and preach on the dangers of distracted driving vs. passing a virtually unenforceable regulation.

Many of our members have to deal with work obligations on CAP time, a lot of our missions, and by missions I include all activities where coordination is needed, rely on cel phones, and if you're walking down the restrict cel phone road, you've got to take with it VHF radios, DF gear, laptops, GPS navigation systems, and anything else that distracts a driver from eyes on the road.

I personally contend it is the operation of the phone, not the conversation.   Are you going to restrict conversation between people in the same vehicle?  I am perfectly capable of pressing the talk button on my earpiece and never losing focus on the road.

Let's treat adults like adults.

"That Others May Zoom"

RiverAux

So long as they also prohibit the driver from using the VHF radio while driving as well. 

PHall

It won't be against the rules until there's an accident and the use of a cellphone while driving is listed as a contributing factor.

Always Ready

They are both BIG problems in CAP IMHO. It's something that needs to change.

In any case, I think that the driver should NOT be allowed to use those items while driving. If it is necessary for the driver to use those items (meaning he/she is the only person in the vehicle), then they should pull over to a safe area. And yes as a 20 year old male, I do pull my car over if I need to talk to someone on the phone or text someone. It's just not a risk I am willing to take. Kinda like drinking and driving...it does not compute.

I witnessed it several times this past weekend with one CAP driver (a well seasoned SQ/CC no less). One minute it was the cell phone, the next it was the radio, the next it was change for a toll....very bad situation. Even though he was using his bluetooth headset for his phone, he had to use at least one of his hands to dial the numbers into his crackberry. At one point, the cadet sponsor member in the passenger seat had to lean over and grab the wheel.

In this case, the radio was mounted flush against the driver's seat with the display facing the ceiling. The display, as well as most of the controls, were only accessible to the driver. I don't know who mounted the radio, but I don't think they were thinking about safety when they mounted it. It was the first CAP van I've seen with a radio mounted like this (all the other vans I've rode in had it centered in between the driver and passenger seats facing the rear). In any case, I wouldn't have the driver using the radio while driving...that's what the cadets in the seat behind the driver are for >:D

...rant over :)

openmind

Quote from: Always Ready on March 28, 2009, 04:30:06 AM
In this case, the radio was mounted flush against the driver's seat with the display facing the ceiling. The display, as well as most of the controls, were only accessible to the driver. I don't know who mounted the radio, but I don't think they were thinking about safety when they mounted it. It was the first CAP van I've seen with a radio mounted like this (all the other vans I've rode in had it centered in between the driver and passenger seats facing the rear). In any case, I wouldn't have the driver using the radio while driving...that's what the cadets in the seat behind the driver are for >:D

You know, you can report this to your friendly Safety Officer; they can take the appropriate actions to evaluate whether it really is a safety issue and get it corrected (in this case, remounted.)

openmind

notaNCO forever

 If the regulation restricted the use of laptops, GPSs, and radios I'd be even happier. If you are on a mission than you have other people to do that stuff for you, and being the driver makes you responsible for every life in that van. I think it's worth missing a call to save the risk of driving of the road and possible injuring/ killing people in the van. Of course than you won't have to worry about it because you probably won't be in CAP after that, and you might possible end up in jail.

Eclipse

Perhaps you could cite the study which shows the number of CAP corporate vehicle accidents over the last five years that were attributable to a driver distracted by in-car technology?

"Because I don't like it."

or

"I just feel that this is wrong."

or even

"This one time at band camp."  (i.e. bad actors or anecdotal evidence)

...is not a justification for a regulation change that would significantly hamper our operations as well as treat our members like children.


"That Others May Zoom"

Eclipse

Quote from: NCO forever on March 28, 2009, 11:38:09 AM
If the regulation restricted the use of laptops, GPSs, and radios I'd be even happier.

So you would seriously suggest that the use of a GPS in navigating a COV full of cadets to NCC should be prohibited?
Well, good luck with that...

How about reading a map?  Drinking a beverage?  Looking at your watch?  Looking at the speedometer?  Rear view mirror?

Drive and be a passenger within your own personal risk tolerance, but leave us out of it.

"That Others May Zoom"

notaNCO forever

Quote from: Eclipse on March 28, 2009, 03:49:12 PM
Quote from: NCO forever on March 28, 2009, 11:38:09 AM
If the regulation restricted the use of laptops, GPSs, and radios I'd be even happier.

So you would seriously suggest that the use of a GPS in navigating a COV full of cadets to NCC should be prohibited?
Well, good luck with that...

How about reading a map?  Drinking a beverage?  Looking at your watch?  Looking at the speedometer?  Rear view mirror?

Drive and be a passenger within your own personal risk tolerance, but leave us out of it.

Here is how I look at it if other people are in the van they could be doing all these things. If there is not anyone else in the van than they are only risking there own life, and anyone they hit. When I took my drivers ed a couple years ago I had statistics about how doing other tasks while driving were bad crammed down my throat. Either it's all a lie and big conspiracy; or talking on the phone while driving does cause accidents. From personal experience it seems allot hard for me to drive while talking on the phone; I don't drive on the phone well talking anymore I pull over and take the call.

gistek

When I drove the CAP van with passengers the front right seat occupant was the navigator. His or her job was to keep track of the route, remind me of turns coming up and help spot signs and landmarks.

The seat 2 center passenger was "Communications officer" and handled all communications either radio or cell phone for the driver and navigator. and yes, I did check to make sure whoever was in that seat had at least a B-CUT

When it was just two of us in the van the navigator doubled as comm officer. I had enough to do driving a vehicle I was somewhat less familiar with than the back of my hand.

Eclipse

There's a difference between training proper Crew Resource Management and prohibiting a particular activity.  If you have a full crew, you should be utilizing them appropriately, of course.  That makes for a better operational environment and more efficient use of resources.

Are pilots distracted when they use the radio, read their charts, or set their instruments?  Yes.  Is this a manageable situation, of course.  This is called ORM, and we all use it every minute of our lives.  The "number" is likely going to be significantly lower on a clear day in full VFR at high altitude, then in the pattern at O'Hare on a rainy holiday weekend, so you adjust your behavior accordingly.

Likewise, the distraction ORM is much higher in dense rush hour traffic with a fully loaded van in an unfamiliar area, then on a country road at 11am on a Tuesday with bright sun to your back and no one else around.  If you aren't capable of adjusting your ORM vectors based on the above, you should not be on the road.

NCOFOREVER - in (what I assume is) your age demographic, this is a problem - because its not just talking on the phone, its texting, goofing off, and any number of other things that young, inexperienced drivers do (including not having the experience to avoid an accident in the first place).

Schools tend to be reactionary in general, so I'm not surprised that they are "cramming this down your throat".  That doesn't make it "right" or "wrong" - you can be much safer if you wrap yourself in bubble wrap and stay in the house your whole life - I can show you studies that prove that, to.

Most accidents collisions are caused by a confluence of factors that come together in a pattern which leads to the situation.  Change a single factor and the collision may not occur, or be as serious.  I am a motorcycle rider instructor who has to deal with safety instruction and discussions of distraction all the time.  One of my best friends and co-instructors is a certified, professional accident reconstructionist, and he will attest that while some factors may weigh more heavily than others, its generally operator judgment which is the biggest factor.

We're not going to fix that by banning cel phones in CAP.

"That Others May Zoom"

jimmydeanno

http://www.livescience.com/technology/050201_cell_danger.html

QuoteCell phone distraction causes 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries in the United States every year, according to the journal's publisher, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

QuoteThe scientists also found previously that chatty motorists are less adept than drunken drivers with blood alcohol levels exceeding 0.08.

Personal experience, I don't use my cell phone when I drive CAP vehicles.  I personally feel that there is too much to lose.  I rarely, if ever talk on my cell phone while driving my own vehicle.  YMMV.
If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law. - Winston Churchill

Gunner C

If true, which I doubt, we would need to prohibit radio use, looking at maps/gps, listening to commercial radio, talking to anyone else in the vehicle, eating hamburgers, drinking sodas, as well as using cell phones.  As stated above CRM needs to be used as well as prudent actions by the operator. 

WIWA chief of staff, the lion's share of accidents were during backing up.  There's darned few people who talk on the cell while backing up. 

Eclipse

Quote from: jimmydeanno on March 28, 2009, 04:58:01 PM
Cell phone distraction causes 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries in the United States every year, according to the journal's publisher, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

Good use of Google, however that particular study is over 4 years old.  Had you clicked through, you'd have seen that the range of the study was between 800 and 8000, hardly conclusive for them to pick 2600 based on a their mathematical models.

Quoting generic studies isn't going to get you far with this, especially since I know for a fact that more fatalities in CAP have been caused because of falling asleep while driving from an activity than from the distraction of a cel phone.

Further, more injuries have been caused by trip and falls during activities than driving while distracted.

Quote from: Ottawa Citizen, 27 MAR 09
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/lovers+beware+Cats+dogs+tripping+hazards/1434879/story.html
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Roughly 240 Americans wind up in emergency rooms every day for sprains, fractures or other injuries from a fall caused by a dog or cat, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

Researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said dogs and cats account for 88 percent of all fall-related injuries in emergency departments....Overall, dogs or cats cause an estimated 86,600 falls per year, the CDC said in its weekly report on death and disease.

Women are 2.1 times more likely to have a pet-related fall than men, they said.

"That Others May Zoom"

Gunner C

IMO it is all over-blown by the Chicken Little crowd.  There are dangers in life - get used to it. 

jimmydeanno

Quote from: Eclipse on March 28, 2009, 06:02:25 PM
Good use of Google, however that particular study is over 4 years old.  Had you clicked through, you'd have seen that the range of the study was between 800 and 8000, hardly conclusive for them to pick 2600 based on a their mathematical models.

I think it is even better that it is older.  4 years ago, the use of cell phones wasn't nearly as much as it is today.  The phone/driver ratio has only increased.

Just during my travels today I was cut off, tailgated, almost side swiped, 2 red lights run and a screeching stop at a stop light - all people using their cell phones while driving.  Did I mention that I live in a pretty rural area?

I'm not advocating banning them because I think that the risk is pretty low considering how much our vehicles are actually used combined with a member driving having to be on the phone, combined with the people who think they shouldn't use it while driving, etc. 

by the way, what is the purpose of providing completly unrealted statistics?  You're talking about someone tripping over their cat spraining their ankle.  Not a van full of children blowing through a stop sign slamming into another car.  Do you want to talk about smoking deaths now too?

In all honesty, I'm more concerned about the 80 year old member dying behind the wheel with a pack full of cadets than because of cell phone use.

Someone asked for some stats, I provided some. 

As responsible adults, don't you think it is our responsibility to not engage, unnecessarily, in something that makes you the equivalent of a drunk driver?  This is a common sense issue, but obviously sense isn't all that common lately.  But of course, this is will be a never ending discussion, because someone always 'has to be right.'
If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law. - Winston Churchill

Eclipse

I quoted the above because life has risk and it can't be completely elimnated.

Quote from: jimmydeanno on March 28, 2009, 06:25:03 PM
As responsible adults, don't you think it is our responsibility to not engage, unnecessarily, in something that makes you the equivalent of a drunk driver? 

Yes.  Cel phone use doesn't do that.

"That Others May Zoom"

jimmydeanno

Sorry, I couldn't find a study dated 28MAR09

http://www.hfes.org/Web/Pubpages/celldrunk.pdf

QuoteFor example, drivers are more likely to miss critical traffic signals (traffic lights, a vehicle braking in front of the driver, etc.), slower to respond to the signals that they do detect, and more likely to be involved in rear-end collisions when they are conversing on a cell phone (Strayer et al., 2003). In addition, even when participants direct their gaze at objects in the driving environment, they often fail to "see" them when they are talking on a cell phone because attention has been directed away from the external environment and toward an internal, cognitive context associated with the phone conversation.

QuoteIn their seminal article, Redelmeier and Tibshirani (1997) reported epidemiological evidence suggesting that "the relative risk [of being in a traffic accident while using a cell phone] is similar to the hazard associated with driving with a
blood alcohol level at the legal limit" (p. 456). These estimates were made by evaluating the cellular records of 699 individuals involved in motor vehicle accidents. It was found that 24% of these individuals were using their cell phone within the 10-min period preceding the accident, and this was associated with a fourfold increase in the likelihood of getting into an accident.

I suppose because it says, "the legal limit" you could say "not the equivalent of drunkenness."  But of course, then we could point to other studies that say that people can be 'drunk' and still below the limit.

QuoteFurthermore, the lack of differences in dual task interference as a function of real-world usage suggests that drivers may not be aware of their own impaired driving.  Indeed, when we debriefed participants at the end of the experiment, many of the drivers with higher levels of real-world cell phone usage while driving indicated that they
found it no more difficult to drive while using a cell phone than to drive without using a cell phone. Thus, there appears to be a disconnect between participants' self-perception of driving performance and objective measures of their driving
performance.

QuoteWe compared the cell phone driver with the drunk driver for two reasons. First, there are now clear societal norms associated with intoxicated driving, and laws in the United States expressly prohibit driving with a blood alcohol level at or above 0.08%. Logical consistency would seem to dictate that any activity that leads to impairments in driving equal to or greater than the drunk driving standard should be avoided

There's about 40 other studies referenced in this one starting in the 70's (establishing Alcohol as the baseline) and going until 2006.  I would hope that 30+ years of research into human behavioral interactions while driving would be sufficient.
If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law. - Winston Churchill