The data say yes. Use of mobile phones has gone beyond convenient and entertaining. The research suggests that people voluntarily separated from their phones for 24 hours experience physical symptoms of withdrawl. Workers check their email 30 to 40 times an hour - on average. The behavioral traits are consistent with those of addictions for smoking, drinking or gambling.
This is not to suggest that using a mobile phone is comparable - yet. But it does raise questions about recent demands from Federal health and safety officials that phone use in autos be outlawed. The problem is not that people do not want to stop: research, again, suggests that people are well aware of the risks. It may just be that they are incapable of doing so. Drivers are typically alone and isolated. If stuck in traffic, as are so many with congested commutes, they are also bored. The phone is a social outlet.
Regulators are concerned that the increasing use of phones in cars is becoming a serious health risk. Campaigns to stop drinking and driving worked. So have anti-smoking initiatives. As hard as it may be to believe, we may now require the same scale effort for phone use - for our own good. JL
Matt Richtel reports in the New York Times:
For years, policy makers trying to curb distracted driving have compared the problem to drunken driving. The analogy seemed fitting, with drivers weaving down roads and rationalizing behavior that they knew could be deadly.
But, in an emotional call for states to ban all phone use by drivers, the head of a federal agency introduced a new comparison: distracted driving is like smoking.
The shift in language, in comments by Deborah Hersman, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, opened a new front in a continuing national conversation about a deadly habit that safety advocates are trying desperately, and with a growing sense of futility, to stop.
Her new tack also echoes a growing consensus among scientists that using phones and computers can be compulsive, both emotionally and physically, which helps explain why drivers may have trouble turning off their devices even if they want to. In effect, they are saying that the running joke about BlackBerrys as “CrackBerrys” is more serious than people think.
“Addiction to these devices is a very good way to think about it,” Ms. Hersman said in an interview. “It’s not unlike smoking. We have to get to a place where it’s not in vogue anymore, where people recognize it’s harmful and there’s a risk and it’s not worth it.”
She added: “If you can’t control your impulses, you need to lock your phone in the trunk.”
Policy makers are eager to find a new way to attack distracted driving because, for all their efforts in the past few years, multitasking by drivers is on the rise.
In a study conducted last year and released this month by the federal government, about 120,000 drivers were estimated to be sending text messages or physically manipulating phones at any given time during the day, up 50 percent from 2009.
And according to the research, from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 660,000 drivers were holding phones to their ears at any moment last year.
Even as more people multitask behind the wheel, polls show that there is widespread recognition of the risks.
Previous efforts to change societal views about drunken driving and to increase compliance with seat belt laws and motorcycle helmet requirements took root over years, traffic safety experts said, with a three-pronged approach of tough laws, enforcement and education.
Safety advocates added that distracted driving poses a challenge similar to that posed by smoking: being able to communicate with friends or loved ones at all times may carry a certain cool factor, as cigarettes did in the 1950s and ’60s. Like cigarettes, they can be the default solution to restlessness or boredom.
And, scientists said, the phone is very hard to resist. “There is absolutely an issue with compulsion,” said David Greenfield, a psychologist and assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine who runs a clinic called the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction.
“Anyone who doubts that, take away your phone for a day,” Dr. Greenfield added. “You’ll feel weird, ill at ease, uncomfortable.”
Or even try it for a short car ride, he said. Part of the lure of smartphones, he said, is that they randomly dispense valuable information. People do not know when an urgent or interesting e-mail or text will come in, so they feel compelled to check all the time.
“The unpredictability makes it incredibly irresistible,” Dr. Greenfield said. “It’s the most extinction-resistant form of habit.”
He finds the cigarette analogy more apt than drunken driving because, he said, people who drive drunk do not find any satisfaction in doing so. In contrast, checking e-mail or chatting while driving might relieve the tedium of being behind the wheel.
The lure of multitasking may be, in at least one respect, more powerful for drivers than for other people, said Clifford Nass, a sociology professor at Stanford University who studies electronic distraction. Drivers are typically isolated and alone, he said, and humans are fundamentally social animals.
The ring of a phone or the ping of a text becomes a promise of human connection, which is “like catnip for humans,” Dr. Nass said.
“When you tap into a totally fundamental, universal human impulse,” he added, “it’s very hard to stop.”
Paul Atchley, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Kansas, conducted research this year and last to determine whether young adults had enough self-control to postpone responding to a text message if they were offered a reward to do so. The idea was to determine whether the lure of the device was so compelling that it would override a larger reward.
The research found that young adults would postpone the text. Dr. Atchley concluded that the phone, while not classically addictive, nevertheless has a powerful draw, in part because it delivers information that often becomes less valuable with each passing minute.
“What looks like an addiction, in my opinion, based on this data, is a reflection of the fact that information loses value over time very rapidly,” he said. “If people can make choices, it’s not addiction.”
That analysis offers hope to safety advocates, who would obviously rather not battle a behavior that is irresistible. The hope is shared by Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry at the Stanford University Medical Center, who in 2009 and 2010 was a senior drug policy adviser to the White House.
As more information about the dangers of smoking came to light, he said, many smokers stopped, suggesting that even though nicotine is addictive, some people can choose to avoid it. And even addicted smokers, he said, do not light up in theaters or churches.
The same thing can happen with distracted driving. “If we create a different culture,” he said, “some of the people who feel addicted will stop.”
At a news conference on Tuesday, Ms. Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board said something must change because the current measures and messages were not working.
“As a society, we’ve accepted this level of connection and distraction,” she said. “We’re not advocating that people have to go cold turkey, but people do need to take a timeout.”
She knows how hard it can be. Two years ago, the board implemented a policy that employees were not allowed to use phones while driving. Sometimes, she said, she would be driving and feel the lure of the device.
“It’s very tempting for people,” Ms. Hersman said. “For me now, it’s about turning off the phone or physically putting it far away from me, sometimes putting the purse in the back seat or the trunk.”
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