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Do cellphones at 20 hours a year to your commute?
Published: January 3, 2008
If you spend an hour a day in the car, cellphones probably cost you at least that much time, says one professor at the University of Utah.
“The distracted driver tends to drive slower and have delayed reactions,” said David Strayer. “People kind of get stuck behind that person and it makes everyone pay the price of that distracted driver.”
Strayer’s study, based on three dozen students driving in simulators, found that drivers on cellphones are far more likely to stick behind a slow car in front of them and change lanes about 20% less often than drivers not on the phone.
Overall, cellphone drivers took about 3% longer to drive the same highly traffic-clogged route (and about 2% longer to drive a medium congested route) than people who were not on the phone…
Combine those factors and Strayer figures distracted drivers are adding an extra 5 to 10% of time to your commute.
I’m not sure that a study of 36 college kids justifies such blanket statements. Not only is the sample small, it skews far younger than rush-hour commuters.
The real question is whether cellphones slow average drivers more or less.
On the one hand, college kids have far less experience behind the wheel than older drivers, so they may need to slow down more to deal with the distraction.
On the other hand, younger people generally have quicker reflexes than older folks. Plus college kids presumably are presumably smarter than average so they should fare better at high-speed multi-tasking.
