Human Nature: Science, Technology, and Life.

How To Quit Phoning While Driving

Cell-phone use while driving is a brain problem, not a hands problem. Even with hands-free use, phones suck your brain out of the physical world, fatally distracting you from the road. Second, the effect is as bad as driving drunk. Hands-free phone use can impair driving skills more than intoxication does.

We prohibit driving under the influence of alcohol. We should prohibit driving under the influence of cell phones, too. But giving up our phones is hard. How can we do it? How can we maintain what cell phones offer—mobile access—without endangering others?

More here.

Taking the Fun Out of Marijuana

GW Pharmaceuticals, a British company, has just requested European approval of Sativex, a "cannabinoid pharmaceutical product." ... Drugs can be, and are being, reengineered every day. Nicotine and caffeine appear in new forms. Cannabis is an herb, then a powder, then a capsule, and now a spray, with significant chemical adjustments along the way. How do you fight an enemy that keeps changing? How do you recognize when it's no longer your enemy?

More here.

Zero Tolerance for Cell Phones

Should possession of a switched-on cell phone while driving be illegal?

A trolley crash in Boston on Friday night is raising that question. First there was last year's train crash near Los Angeles, with 25 dead and 130 injured. In three hours of work before the crash, the engineer received 28 text messages and sent 29 more. He sent his last message 22 seconds before impact, just after passing a signal that would have alerted him to the disaster ahead.

Now comes the Boston crash, in which one trolley went through a red light and rear-ended another. Forty-nine people were injured—none of them gravely, but "more than a few were bloodied," according to the Globe. Officials say the operator of the second trolley "was text-messaging his girlfriend" and "was looking down at his phone and could not apply the brakes quickly enough when he looked up and saw the trolley in front of him."

If texting can cause crashes on train tracks, which prevent lateral drift, think how much more dangerous it is to text while driving a car. Only 10 states outlaw this practice, but I suspect that's largely a matter of legislators being slow to catch up with evolving technology. You can't drive while looking down and typing a message.

How about holding a phone and talking instead of typing? That way, your eyes can stay on the road. But your hand is still occupied with the phone, and you might be distracted by punching in somebody's number. Hence the push in many states to restrict cell-phone use to hands-free operation.

Still, that leaves your brain occupied by the phone conversation. And this arrangement isn't safe, either. That's why the National Safety Council wants a nationwide ban on using, not just holding, your phone while driving.

Boston's transit authority already forbids cell phone use by train and trolley operators. (Such phones aren't needed for job-related communication, since the trains have radios and emergency call buttons.) But it has let them carry their phones, and over the last three years, some four dozen train operators and bus drivers have been cited for using their phones on the job. The carry-but-don't-use policy hasn't worked.

On the heels of Friday's crash, the transit authority has announced the next logical step. It will "ban on-the-job possession of cell phones" by train operators and "fire anyone caught carrying a phone, pager, or similar device," the Globe reports. The authority's general manager puts it this way:

Leave it at home. Leave it in your car. Leave it with a friend. Leave it in a locker. But you are not to get on board that bus or [train or trolley] and have a cell phone on your person or in the cab. Period. This is going to be a zero-tolerance policy.

Massachusetts' transportation secretary thinks other states will adopt the same policy for transit operators. I bet he's right. States can justify and enforce such a policy because transit operators are on the clock working for the government.

Could they enforce a similar policy against you while you're driving your car? A law against having a cell phone in the seat next to you? I doubt it. But the logical progression is worth thinking about. First, ban texting at the wheel, because driving requires your eyes. Second, ban holding a phone, because driving requires your hands. Third, ban talking on a phone, because driving requires your brain. And fourth, if everybody's violating the ban on phone use and accidents are killing people as a result, then do what we do with alcohol: Adopt the equivalent of an open-container law for cell phones.

Open-container laws, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, "prohibit the possession of any open alcoholic beverage container ... in the passenger area of any motor vehicle that is located on a public highway or right-of-way." The equivalent in this case would be a powered-up cell phone. If phone use while driving really is as dangerous as being drunk at the wheel—which is what preliminary evidence suggests—would you oppose such a law?

The Tax War on Soda

The food police are closing in on their next target: a soda tax.

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, they propose a penny-per-ounce excise tax on "sugared beverages." That's nearly $3 per case. Why so much? Because this tax, unlike the petty junk-food taxes of yesteryear, is designed to hurt. Its purpose is to discourage you from buying soda, on the grounds that soda, like smoking, is bad for you.

More here.

Bong vs. Bottle

Is pot worse than booze?

This AP story about the Michael Phelps brouhaha caught my eye yesterday. The Marijuana Policy Project is organizing a boycott of Kellogg's for dumping Phelps over his pot use. I'm tempted to join it.

Last summer, just after Phelps won eight gold medals in Beijing, Kellogg's announced, "HE'S GR-R-R-EIGHT! U.S. OLYMPIAN MICHAEL PHELPS TO BE FEATURED ON PACKAGES OF KELLOGG'S FROSTED FLAKES AND KELLOGG'S CORN FLAKES CEREAL." The company's vice president for global promotions gushed, "Michael embodies the values behind our Frosted Flakes Earn Your Stripes program. He knows that winning is not just about the glory that comes with gold medals, but about good sportsmanship, working hard and being your best."

Then, two weeks ago, Phelps got caught smoking marijuana at a party. Kellogg's promptly dumped him. "Michael's most recent behavior is not consistent with the image of Kellogg," the company declared.

Not consistent? The real inconsistency, MPP's Bruce Mirken argued in an AlterNet commentary, was in the company's treatment of marijuana and alcohol. "In 2004, Phelps pleaded guilty to drunken driving," Mirken pointed out. "But apparently that offense—just as illegal, and which actually could have resulted in someone being hurt or killed—was not an issue for Kellogg's." Mirken continued:

[M]arijuana is far safer than alcohol. Alcohol is more addictive. According to the Institute of Medicine, 15 percent of those who ever drink become dependent on alcohol. The figure for marijuana is just 9 percent. ... Alcohol is massively more toxic. Every year, people die from alcohol overdoses. ... And the chronic effects of heavy alcohol use—e.g. liver damage—kill thousands upon thousands more. There has never been a medically documented marijuana overdose. ... And unlike marijuana, alcohol tends to make users reckless, aggressive and violent. A review in the journal Addictive Behaviors explained, "Alcohol is clearly the drug with the most evidence to support a direct intoxication-violence relationship."

The man has a point, doesn't he? Isn't tobacco worse than pot? And isn't alcohol in some ways as bad as tobacco?

Here's the sign-up page for the Kellogg's boycott. Personally, I plan to salute the company's morals by sitting down with a bowl of Special K, floating in Jim Beam.

Look, Ma, No Head

Hey, cell-phone zombie! Wake up! The National Safety Council is trying to pull you over.

The council, a congressionally chartered nonprofit that helped lead the fight for seat-belt use, wants a nationwide ban on cell-phone use while driving. Not just a ban on holding your phone. A ban on using it.

It's about time. Three months ago, Human Nature looked up the research on cell-phone use at the wheel. It's brutal. Even with a hands-free device, talking on a phone can impair driving skills more than intoxication does. Brain scans show the phone conversation sucking the driver's mind from one world into another.

Just last week, a lawsuit in the "texting-engineer" train crash near Los Angeles alleged that the engineer's bosses knew about his texting habit but ignored it. This weekend, I was complaining that the company should have taken driving while texting as seriously as we take driving while drunk.

My complaint has been answered. On Monday, the NSC agreed. Council president Janet Froetscher cited the same flaw in hands-free cell-phone laws: "Even if both hands are on the wheel, your head is in the call, and not on your driving." And she drew the same comparison to alcohol: "When our friends have been drinking, we take the car keys away. It's time to take the cell phone away."

Can a total ban get through the legislative process, politically? It'll be hard, precisely because, as Froetscher notes, 270 million Americans use cell phones, and 80 percent of them use their phones while driving. But the council has succeeded before, and it will do so again, if it can persuade lawmakers and the public to see cell phones in cars the way we now see liquor. "We have been through this before with seatbelts, with drunk driving," says Froetscher. "We do research. When the research demonstrates that something is very dangerous and we can save lives, we educate the public about it."

The insurance industry agrees that a total cell-phone driving ban "makes sense based on the research." The council has also identified a proven mechanism for nationalizing such a ban: Congress can use its highway-construction legislation to financially reward states that pass no-cell laws. And 16 states have set a potentially useful precedent by banning cell-phone use among drivers with learner's permits, intermediate licenses, or both.

To me, the persuasive analogy is alcohol. Intuitively, cell phones in the car seem more justified and less objectionable than booze does, because booze is stupefying, whereas phones are engaging. But the more the phone engages you in its own world, the more it stupefies you in the one you're navigating. Nobody's saying you can't use your phone or your car. Just not at the same time.

Dying While Texting

Remember that train crash near L.A. in September, where the engineer was texting while driving? Twenty-five dead, 130 injured. In three hours of work before the crash, the engineer received 28 text messages and sent 29 more. He sent his last message 22 seconds before impact, just after passing a signal that would have alerted him to the disaster ahead.

Now some of the victims have filed suit. They're alleging that the engineer's bosses were warned about his texting habit. Here's the New York Times summary:

The plaintiffs' lawyers said at a news conference that a co-worker of Mr. Sanchez [the engineer] had told managers ... that Mr. Sanchez frequently used his cellphone while on duty, in defiance of company policy. ... The employee placed at least two calls to managers from July to September, [the plaintiffs' attorney] said. In addition, he said, the employee told him that on a routine inspection two months before the crash, a supervisor caught Mr. Sanchez violating the policy barring engineers' use of cellphones while on duty. Still, he said, the engineer was never punished.

Remember, these are just allegations. They'll have to be tested at trial, if it comes to that. But if they're borne out, let's not make the same mistake Sanchez's superiors allegedly made. Let's take driving while texting—or while phoning—as seriously as we take driving while drunk. After all, as this column mentioned three months ago, research shows that even with a hands-free device, talking on a phone can impair driving skills more than intoxication does.

Alcohol has been around for millennia. Cell phones have not. We evolved to function in the natural world, one setting at a time. Nature has never tested a species's ability to function in two worlds at once. We're now taking that test, and we're flunking it. So here's a message to the 45 states that let people drive while holding a phone, and to the 50 states that let allow driving while talking on a hands-free phone: Sober up.

The Smoking-Drinking Problem

There's one more contrarian study I want to pick up on this morning: a paper in the Journal of Public Economics that links smoking bans to drunk-driving accidents.

The authors, Scott Adams and Chad Cotti, report: "Using geographic variation in local and state smoke-free bar laws in the US, we observe an increase in fatal accidents involving alcohol following bans on smoking in bars that is not observed in places without bans." They present evidence suggesting two explanations: 1) "smokers driving longer distances to a bordering jurisdiction that allows smoking in bars," and 2) "smokers driving longer distances within their jurisdiction to bars that still allow smoking, perhaps through non-compliance or outdoor seating."

Not too many folks read the Journal of Public Economics or have the time to wade through the whole paper. But if you follow Fox News or live in a country like Australia, Colombia, India, or Turkey, you've probably seen the AFP wire story about this study. It quotes the authors as summarizing their findings this way: "Banning smoking in bars increases the fatal accident risk posed by drunk drivers."

The AFP story leaves non-Americans with the impression that we have some kind of national smoking ban. "A ban on smoking in American bars has caused the number of accidents from drunken driving to surge," it begins. Later, it adds, "The ban is spreading across the United States, but in a piecemeal fashion."

Ideally, at this point, the reader starts to smell something wrong with the story. "The ban" can't be piecemeal. If some jurisdictions ban smoking in bars and others don't, it must be a patchwork of independent bans—as, in reality, it is. Furthermore, if you think about the causal mechanism the evidence apparently supports—"smokers driving longer distances" to get to places where they can light up—you begin to realize that the problem isn't "banning smoking in bars." It's the fact that these bans are piecemeal and inconsistently enforced. If "the ban" actually existed as such—if bar smoking were effectively prohibited nationwide—there'd be no incentive to get in your car and drive somewhere else. The drunk-driving problem is just as good an argument for nationalizing the bar-smoking bans as for scrapping them.

I'm not proposing total tobacco prohibition. That'd be just as foolish as the failed experiment in alcohol prohibition. But we don't have to go that far. The true implication of the drunk-driving study, if you think it through, is that the safest place to let people smoke is the place that doesn't require them to get in a car at all. It's called home.

Contrarianism in Context

Impressive cluster of contrarian research in today's batch: Coffee can help prevent Alzheimer's; trans fats can be good for you; fat kids have fewer cavities; and the alleged benefits of drinking lots of water are unfounded. I love reports like these. I've flagged and commented on lots of them in the previous Human Nature news roundups. Part of it is that I just enjoy contrarianism. Part of it is that discoveries like these expose our overconfidence about what we know. Biology is enormously complex. Sometimes extra weight is bad for you; sometimes, at death's door, it can save your life. We vilify and prohibit alcohol as a sin, then discover it can help your circulation.

But I don't want to let the mischievous fun of medical contrarianism obscure reality. The reason why studies like these are surprising and intriguing is that they generally run against the grain of biology. By and large, trans fats are horrible for you. Relying on coffee instead of sleep for daily energy is dangerous. And even if being fat somehow improves your kid's dental health, the damage done to the rest of his body isn't worth it.

When you see a report about the benefits of booze or chocolate, always remember that the reason it's worth a headline is that these things, in their usual form and consumed quantity, are generally unhealthy. Not a very entertaining takeaway, I admit. But true.