Owners of special cars can be divided into two groups: the nice and the not so nice.

I happily chat up the first category – they happen to be older, enamored with their automobiles, crazy to share every single detail and, if you are lucky, invite you to sit in their car (although don’t even think about driving it.) There is a true community out there of car collectors, and they spend every penny they have to provide the vehicles with original parts and details. Their cars sit still for the most part unless they are moved to shows and exchanges, as below in Annapolis. (And, by the way, most of them are men, thus the gendered title….) the very nice owner of this car let me even hold his recent trophy!)

 

I will not approach the other group, who drives the current version of luxury automobiles, environment be damned. I am too polite to put my thoughts in words about these status symbols other than this: the status quo will be that they will never meet me.

 

Owners of all cars (and for that matter pedestrians,) can be divided in two groups as well – those who drive (walk) and text or dial a phone, and those who don’t. Even those of us who know the dangers of distracted driving are known to do it. And hands-free won’t cut it. The data simply show that it is a matter of divided attention, not a matter of phone in hand.  Why is talking so bad, you ask, when we do it all the times with passengers in the car? Well, passengers assess the danger level of situations and shut up when you try to merge onto I-5, or some such, or understand while you stop talking when concentrating on a tricky spot.  Your phone partner doesn’t. Here are some sobering data (not yet adjusted for the current Pokemon Go craze, which puts pedestrians and their surround in all kinds of dangerous situations.)

• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that in 2012 driver distraction was the cause of 18 percent of all fatal crashes – with 3,328 people killed – and crashes resulting in an injury – with 421,000 people wounded.
• Forty percent of all American teens say they have been in a car when the driver used a cell phone in a way that put people in danger, according to a Pew survey.
• The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that text messaging creates a crash risk 23 times worse than driving while not distracted.
• Eleven percent of drivers aged 18 to 20 who were involved in an automobile accident and survived admitted they were sending or receiving texts when they crashed.

Our colleague Ira Hyman has done some nifty research on this issue – here is an abstract about his work on inattentional blindness http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.1638/abstract