On Aug 11, 2:16�am, "JB" wrote:
Patty

Holding a cell phone to your ear keeps you
from being able to turn your head
to check your blind spots. �This is
the #1 thing I watch out for when I see
another driver is on the phone and it has
saved me again and again. �A mic,
you can just drop in your lap when you need to.
�Most people I have seen
driving with hands-free systems and
voice recognition dialing on their cell
phones drive no worse than they normally do.

That's part of it all right.

Another factor is that holding a cell phone has the person driving
one-handed all the time.

But the biggest difference is psychological. Telephone conversations
tend to be two-way (duplex), radio is almost always one-way, and the
distraction level is very different.

Aside from that, people who have problems
with keeping their attention span
primarily to the driving, shouldn't drive.

That's true, but who decides such things? Almost all of the bad drivers
I know think they are good drivers!

�You don't have to look at the
mic, so it is actually potentially
safer than having a passenger in the car.

You don't have to look at the passengers while driving, either. I sure
don't.

It is that simple. �Would you outlaw
passengers? �

Some of them! (Actually, if a certain passenger is a distraction, I
pull over).

This always seems to be
goal of any discussions like this.

Some people seem to be intent on
outlawing every thing that somebody else
does because they know they can't do it
right themselves. �The insurance
companies would have nothing to do
if people got their license pulled for
getting in wrecks rather than outlawing everyone else.

I disagree.

The problem is that too many people are poor judges of how well they
can do something. Particularly in real-life situations. After an
accident is too late to do prevention. Pulling the license doesn't
bring back the dead or instantly heal the injured. (And some folks will
simply drive without the license!)

Where I work, we have a saying: "The safety book is written in blood".

I have seen boatloads of data that gets
overturned by boatloads of different
data all the time.

Sure. But we have to go with the data we've got, and that data proves
over and over that cell phone use while driving seriously reduces
driving skills.

If someone did a lot of testing, they could probably find certain
individuals whose driving skills with an illegal blood alcohol level
were better than those of certain other individuals who were stone cold
sober. IOW, exceptions that prove the rule.

But the law has to be written and applied the same for everyone.

�I can tell you that "texting" and typing on a computer
keyboard certainly needs to be the job of the co-pilot.

Of course! And you would think that everyone would have the common
sense to know that. But they don't.

That's the real issue - people's lack of self-awareness, good judgement
and common sense. Maybe we can't legislate those things, but we can try
to prevent some of the obvious bad results.

73 de Jim, N2EY

In article ,
Steve Bonine wrote:

But for the ARRL to defend the right of hams to distract themselves
based on emergency communication is not logical. If they want to make
the case that operating a ham radio is sufficiently different than using
a cell phone that such laws should not apply, I still wouldn't agree but
at least the premise would be logical.

But they did: that article discussed the difference between simplex
(ham radio) and duplex (cell phone) operation. I agree with them that
that's a defensible difference.

It also ties into the comparison with having a passenger in the car.
If the passenger is an adult, they will likely notice when the driver
is in a tricky situation and stop talking. That's certainly what I do.
I'll stop talking in the middle of a sentence if I see that the driver
has to deal with some traffic that has suddenly bunched up, or some
other issue. A person on the other end of a cell phone can't see what's
happening and know to stop talking.

I actually have a non-driving example of this. A few years ago, I was
on the phone (with someone in Newington, coincidentally!) on a day when
we had had a small earthquake. Another one struck while the other person
was talking. I asked her to hang on, because I needed to gauge whether
it was big enough that I needed to move away from my desk. But she, of
course, had no idea that anything was happening and didn't hear my first
couple of requests to hold the conversation. So I was distracted from
dealing with the actual situation by trying to get the attention of the
person on the other end of the phone. Now, had I been in a car and some
dangerous situation had suddenly arisen, I would have simply dropped the
phone. But I still think this points to the greater distraction of phone
conversations during local "emergencies." And I think it's not as much
of an issue with simplex conversations.


Patty N6BIS

"Patty Winter" wrote in message
...

In article ,
Steve Bonine wrote:

But for the ARRL to defend the right of hams to distract themselves
based on emergency communication is not logical. If they want to make
the case that operating a ham radio is sufficiently different than using
a cell phone that such laws should not apply, I still wouldn't agree but
at least the premise would be logical.

But they did: that article discussed the difference between simplex
(ham radio) and duplex (cell phone) operation. I agree with them that
that's a defensible difference.

It also ties into the comparison with having a passenger in the car.
If the passenger is an adult, they will likely notice when the driver
is in a tricky situation and stop talking. That's certainly what I do.
I'll stop talking in the middle of a sentence if I see that the driver
has to deal with some traffic that has suddenly bunched up, or some
other issue. A person on the other end of a cell phone can't see what's
happening and know to stop talking.

I actually have a non-driving example of this. A few years ago, I was
on the phone (with someone in Newington, coincidentally!) on a day when
we had had a small earthquake. Another one struck while the other person
was talking. I asked her to hang on, because I needed to gauge whether
it was big enough that I needed to move away from my desk. But she, of
course, had no idea that anything was happening and didn't hear my first
couple of requests to hold the conversation. So I was distracted from
dealing with the actual situation by trying to get the attention of the
person on the other end of the phone. Now, had I been in a car and some
dangerous situation had suddenly arisen, I would have simply dropped the
phone. But I still think this points to the greater distraction of phone
conversations during local "emergencies." And I think it's not as much
of an issue with simplex conversations.


Patty N6BIS

This is the essence of dealing with anything else in the cockpit. It all
has to be secondary to what is going on "out there". If that mindset isn't
drilled, trained, cultivated or however you get that unfailingly into the
brain, you have no business on the road because no amount of excuses or
inanimate objects we can come up with to blame or outlaw can make up for a
tragedy.

In my own experience, anything that takes more than 2 seconds of my eyes off
the road is not worth doing on the road, and if there aren't 2 seconds to
spare, it can wait. I can count to 2 without letting my mind wander to
Strawberry Fields Forever, and I haven't lost any friends by asking them to
repeat themselves.

wrote:
Sure. But we have to go with the data we've got, and that data proves
over and over that cell phone use while driving seriously reduces
driving skills.

If someone did a lot of testing, they could probably find certain
individuals whose driving skills with an illegal blood alcohol level
were better than those of certain other individuals who were stone cold
sober. IOW, exceptions that prove the rule.

But the law has to be written and applied the same for everyone.

I guess I think the problem is we're concentrating too much on
preventing behaviors that *might* lead to dangerous activity and not
enough on preventing the dangerous activity itself.



For example (bear with me here!) DUI is not in itself dangerous.* Heck,
on any given night the vast majority of drunks on the road get home
without harming anyone or anything.

The dangerous activity is running red lights, driving way too fast,
moving out of your lane without regard for the presence of other
vehicles, etc...

Of course, being drunk makes you FAR, FAR more likely to commit one of
these dangerous activities. Being drunk is not an *excuse* for these
activities. I do not mean to suggest DUI is a good idea, nor that we
should make it legal.

But if your mom gets run over by someone blowing through a red light at
30 over the limit, should that person get off more lightly because they
were sober and just thought they were too important to obey traffic
signals?



IMHO we should be spending more resources patrolling our roads and
stopping those who are actually doing dangerous things, *regardless* of
why they're doing it -- and stop diverting those resources to people who
are doing things that *might* be dangerous.


--

Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View, TN EM66

* For the record, I don't drink and have never been pulled over for DUI.

Patty Winter wrote:
In article ,
Steve Bonine wrote:
But for the ARRL to defend the right of hams to distract themselves
based on emergency communication is not logical. If they want to make
the case that operating a ham radio is sufficiently different than using
a cell phone that such laws should not apply, I still wouldn't agree but
at least the premise would be logical.

But they did: that article discussed the difference between simplex
(ham radio) and duplex (cell phone) operation. I agree with them that
that's a defensible difference.

The quote from Sumner is, "Simplex, two-way radio operation is simply
different than duplex, cell phone use. Two-way radio operation in moving
vehicles has been going on for decades without highway safety being an
issue. The fact that cell phones have come along does not change that."

It's "simply different"? What's inside that cell phone? A two-way
radio. In both cases you've got two people talking to each other. If
you compared the conversational style between two hams chatting on two
meters and the same two people chatting on a cell phone, you wouldn't
see much difference. Maybe years ago when one party would expound for
9.9 minutes and then hand it over to the other for his 9.9 minutes there
was more difference, but even then you still had distraction.

As for this argument that there was never an issue before, how do we
know this? How much has the population of vehicles capable of two-way
radio communication grown since the cell phone came along? From perhaps
..1% to 80%? I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but I know it's
a huge difference. So now we're seeing the problem. Is this because
two-way radio operation is safe, but bundle the radio into a cell phone
and it becomes deadly? I don't think so; I think it's the population
increase.

The bottom line is that using a ham radio transceiver while driving is
distracting. Depending on what the operator is doing, it can be less
distracting than using a cell phone, or a whole lot more distracting. I
have seen hams operate HF while driving, including changing bands,
picking a new frequency, and adjusting the tuning on both the
transmitter and antenna, and that is absolutely more distracting than
talking on a cell phone. I've also observed a fair number of people
whose idea of operating mobile is to use their HT in the car.

A license from the FCC does not imbue special distraction-avoiding
skill. If limiting cell phone use while driving is A Good Thing, then
the same should apply to use of ham radio.

73, Steve KB9X

In Steve Bonine
wrote:

It's "simply different"?

Simplex.

Duplex.

Simply different.

--
Bert Hyman W0RSB St. Paul, MN

On Aug 11, 1:27�pm, wrote:

I guess I think the problem is we're concentrating too much on
preventing behaviors that *might* lead to dangerous activity and
not
enough on preventing the dangerous activity itself.

For example (bear with me here!) DUI is not in itself dangerous.

Yes, it is.

Here's why:

First, one of the prime properties of drinking ethanol is behavorial
disinhibition - meaning that a person's restraint and judgement tend to
be impaired. That makes it more likely they will do something dangerous
than if they were sober. (Some might say that behavioral disinhibition
is a prime reason to drink ethanol, but that's a different
discussion...)

Second, another of the prime properties of drinking ethanol is that it
slows down reaction time and impairs driving skills and coordination.
This is readily demonstrated by having a person drive a test route
sober and then with varying blood alcohol levels. The result is that a
driving situation in which a sober person would stop in time, swerve to
avoid an obstacle, etc., can turn into an accident simply because the
person's reactions and skills are impaired. This is true even if the
person doesn't speed, doesn't run red lights, etc.

Heck,
on any given night the vast majority of drunks on the road get
home
without harming anyone or anything.

Yes, they do. But that doesn't prove DUI isn't dangerous. The vast
majority of people who do all sorts of dangerous driving things, like
running a stop sign, get away with it simply because all the conditions
for a disaster aren't there at the same time.

The dangerous activity is running red lights, driving way too fast,
moving out of your lane without regard for the presence of other
vehicles, etc...

That depends on how we define "dangerous". Most of those activities are
only dangerous if other conditions are present. For example, if there
are no other cars present, what's the danger of running a red light?

Of course, being drunk makes you FAR, FAR more likely to
commit one of
these dangerous activities.

Exactly! And that alone makes DWI dangerous, at least by some
definitions.

But if your mom gets run over by someone blowing
through a red light at
30 over the limit, should that person get off more
lightly because they
were sober and just thought they were too important to obey traffic
signals?

It depends on the case. Intent is a major factor in determining whether
an action is a crime, and how severe a crime it is. Because we know
that DWI unnecessarily increases the risk of a tragedy, DWI itself
becomes a crime.

For example, suppose A shoots B and B dies. A's intent could be the
difference between self-defense and first-degree murder.

IMHO we should be spending more resources patrolling
our roads and
stopping those who are actually doing dangerous things,
*regardless* of
why they're doing it -- and stop diverting those
resources to people who
are doing things that *might* be dangerous.

Well, I don't know about where you are, but around here, I see far more
resources allocated to stopping dangerous behaviors (speeding, running
red lights, failing to signal, following too closely, etc.) than to
trying to find DWIs. The DWIs I do know about in this area are usually
the result of a traffic stop for another reason (police see somebody
blow through a red light, they pull the car over, turns out the driver
has had too many too recently. Driver gets charged with both the red
light violation and the DWI.)

Maybe it's different where you are.

--

Here's an analogy:

Here in PA we have annual auto safety inspections. One of the things
checked is tire wear; if your tires are down to a certain point, they
have to be replaced. If you're stopped with below-wear-limit tires, you
can get a ticket.

But in most situations worn-down tires aren't any more dangerous than
new ones. The difference only matters in wet, snow, ice and high-speed
conditions. Yet even if it's a dry summer day and you're driving slow,
you can get a ticket for worn-out tires because of the *potential*
hazard if it should rain or you take the car on the freeway.

73 de Jim, N2EY

On 11/08/09 14:47, KØHB wrote:


"Jeff Davis" wrote in message
...


No matter your position on the mobile issue, does it seem to you that
by taking such a stand the ARRL is exposing itself to a boatload of
liability the first time a mobile operating radio amateur plows into
someone on the Interstate and the amateur operation is cited as a
primary cause for the accident?


I don't think ARRL would be liable for the action of any individual ham.

But I do believe two things:

1) Operating an amateur radio rig while driving is every much a
distraction as talking on a cell phone.

2) Amateur radio operators should not be eligible for "exemptions" not
available to the general public.


I don't know how it is generally in the US, but here in the UK there is
a specific law prohibiting the use of *hand held* phones whilst driving.

This law does *not* apply where hands-free equipment is in use, as long
as the phone itself is fixed in a cradle and not lying around loose
somewhere.

It also applies *solely* to phones and *not* to any other form of radio
communications, including two-way radio (of any type, business radio or
amateur, CB etc.) So I can quite legally use a hand-held microphone on
2m but not a hand-held phone.

Of course the police could quite easily charge me with the offence of
driving without due care and attention or even dangerous driving, but
for some reason they saw fit to introduce a law banning hand-held phones.

73 Ivor G6URP

On 11/08/09 14:13, Steve Bonine wrote:
Jeff Davis wrote:

He was operating CW with a key strapped to his thigh -- while driving
to work.

I like ham radio, and I like that guy ... but I don't want him
operating a moving vehicle anywhere within a hundred miles of me or my
family... even when all else fails...

You have captured the essence of my feelings in two sentences.

There is a body of reliable data that indicates that distraction during
driving causes accidents, no matter what is causing the distraction. It
is obvious that operating a ham radio causes distraction. You can argue
that the amount of distraction depends on what you're doing, or that
similar distraction is caused in other services like public safety or
land mobile, but the fact remains that operating a ham radio while
driving increases the probability that you'll have an accident.

Does it increase the probability enough to lump it in with cell phone
use and discourage the behavior by passing laws? I think that it does; I
recognize that there are dissenting opinions.

But for the ARRL to defend the right of hams to distract themselves
based on emergency communication is not logical. If they want to make
the case that operating a ham radio is sufficiently different than using
a cell phone that such laws should not apply, I still wouldn't agree but
at least the premise would be logical.

I have seen several close calls related to people chattering away on
cell phones while driving. I am convinced that the issue of distracted
drivers having accidents is real, and I support laws that prohibit that
behavior because I believe it to be dangerous both to the person who is
doing it and to me. I don't buy that operating a ham radio is
sufficiently less distracting that it should be exempted.

73, Steve KB9X


If you want distraction, try driving a double deck bus at school
chucking out time. I guarantee that 70+ screaming kids is *far* more
distracting than *any* phone call or radio conversation..!!

73 Ivor G6URP

Bert Hyman wrote:
In Steve Bonine
wrote:

It's "simply different"?

Simplex.

Duplex.

Simply different.

Yes, certainly simplex and duplex are different.

But what the ARRL is saying is that there is a fundamental difference
between communicating using mobile radio and communicating using a cell
phone. Sumner is using the terms "simplex" and "duplex" to describe
this. Since "simplex" and "duplex" are not common words generally used
by the public, I conclude that he has picked them primarily to control
the discussion. Rather than admit that they don't understand what the
words mean, many people will just say, "Sure".

The issue is distraction to a driver. It makes no difference whether
you can hear the other person while you're talking. Whether you're
using a cell phone or a mobile radio, you're having a conversation with
another person and fiddling with the actual equipment -- flipping open a
cell phone to answer a call, or changing the frequency on the ham
transceiver. In fact, there are a whole lot more buttons to push and
potential distractions with the transceiver than with the cell phone.

If cell phone use while driving is an activity that needs to be
discouraged, then mobile radio operation while driving should also be
discouraged because they both result in distraction. To say, "The
driver isn't distracted because he can't hear the other person while
he's talking" is not logical. Saying it using fancy words like
"simplex" and "duplex" does not make it more valid.

73, Steve KB9X