Total Motorcycle Community Forums

Of course there are no absolutes, but in my own informal study of the bay area (study is me commuting to and from work in a car or on my bike) shows that 9 times out of ten the dumba$$ who just about ran me off the road, , cut me off, or just can't seem to comprehend how to operate a vehicle at a traffic light or in a parking lot is chatting away on the cell phone...and oblivious to the fact that they are a hazard. I'm sure they think they drive well while on the phone too.

obviously i disagree with having a ban on cell phones from my previous post. this question i'm getting ready to ask isn't being argumemtative - it's a serious question.

i don't understand how talking on a cell phone is so distracting. it started that it was having the phone. so there were handsfree devices. now we're told that doesn't help. does that include having a blue tooth car that takes over your phone?

so here's my question... why is talking on a cell phone distracting but talking to someone in your car isn't?

what switch in the human brain flips from "able to pay attention to the road" when talking to the person sitting in your passenter seat .... then flips to "absolute idiot, unable to drive any better than a 4 year old" when you you start talking to someone not in your car. that's just never made sense to me. and if there is no difference, do we ban talking in cars?

please don't take this as digging. i would really like to know if someone has a good explination for this.

I think human beings are conditioned by experience, and have many wonderful capabilities some of which can be triggered at inappropriate times. When we encounter "conversation" which is audible either in the ear or in the mind we use the auditory cues to "lose" ourselves in the "story". Just like we have learned to do when reading a book, listening to a story being told to us, or talking on the phone.

Ever wonder why you jump when you are startled by a noise? or why a song can make you sad? or cry? It is evidence or our auditory and nervous system being so closely tied that we are hard wired in our response to situations where we concentrate on auditory input only. In our early history our survival depended on this mechanism. The key bit of info though, is that auditory input and nervous system are tightly coupled.

The phone is particularly insidious, because the majority of the time when we talk on the phone we are not driving, we are free to ignore everything around us as we become engrossed in the conversation. Thus reinforcing a conditioned response to something already so natural to us. This is why it matters not whether the talking happens "hands free" or while holding a phone. It's not the hands that are the problem, it's the brain.

This propensity to lose ourselves in conversation or the environment does not seem to happen as readily when there is additional sensory input, for example in a live conversation, where you can see the other person the mind is less likely to go to that place where it supplies the imagery and other sensory supplements.

Ok, this is not based in scientific fact (well very little of it is), it is my opinion based on observation and experience of people and physiology, it could be a load of bunk. Take it for what it's worth.