I don’t think being able to “swim and breathe at the same time without drowning” is what I would call a “higher level task,” like driving. Apples and oranges.
Yes, there are a great many tasks humans can do while they talk, but the more complex the task, the more quality degrades as soon as you introduce conversation.
And all my band members and I can play our instruments and sing and dance, read music and converse with an audience person who’s come to the stage to request.
All at the same time
— BUT —
it’s PRACTICED …for it to be proficient.
Who the heck practices with their phone and driving ?
( possibly one in a thousand who thinks he has the need and has realized the value of practicing the action. )
Yes, there are a great many tasks humans can do while they talk, but the more complex the task, the more quality degrades as soon as you introduce conversation.
Absolutely correct, which is why driver attitudes need to be adjusted. Driving needs to be the top priority, no matter what the distraction is. Whether it’s the cell phone, the radio, the GPS, your kids fighting, or the burger that just spilled ketchup on your tie, if the driver allows any one of those things to take precedence over driving while the car is in motion, it’s indicative of a bad driver.
What we really need, rather than making individual devices illegal, is to have better driver training, testing, and policing.
The average pilot is much more meticulous about not doing stupid stuff that will lead to a crash than the average driver, and I’d submit that that is at least in part because pilots are trained much, much better than drivers, and the requirements to keep your pilot’s license are much more stringent than those to keep your driver’s license.
A few years ago my state passed a no cellphone while driving law.($150) Suddenly I was seeing turn signals as the cellphone addicts could not pry the phone away from their ear for 2 seconds to flick the turn signal thingy. A few weeks later the as usual idiotic media reported that the police were not enforcing the law. No more phone freak turn signals!
However, it has been demonstrated that humans can talk and do other tasks at the same time. It has even been demonstrated that humans can talk and drive at the same time (case in point being the previously mentioned CB radios, which may not be used much now, but in the past were, while driving, to no detrimental effects save the cop who keeps getting exposed by truckers). In fact, it has further been demonstrated that humans can talk and operate vehicles which are much more complex than a car - case in point, pilots, who can use the radio without crashing. And that’s not even mentioning military pilots who can use the radio, on multiple frequencies, while not crashing, and while being shot at/shooting at other planes.
Yes of course flying an airplane is so much more complicated than driving a car, why else is it that cars have had autopilot for years and years but the technology is only now being introduced to aviation? (sarcasm)
Anyone can fly an airplane, it’s landing and navigation that’s hard.
Also, aircraft radio and trucker CB conversations are a part of the task of flying and driving and are centered around that task. They are relaying their positions and getting landing clearance and instructions from the tower, they are not using these devices to walk a client through a trouble shooting flow chart for some computer program or arguing with their wives.
When you are having a conversation about something that’s totally separate from the task of driving a car, your primary attention is on that conversation and not your driving. That’s when you find people honking horns at you because the light turned green ten seconds ago.
Really, driving a car is multitasking, not only am I steering the car, but I’m also controlling the throttle, shifting the gears, and using the brakes, all while checking my rear view mirrors and checking for red lights up ahead, but those tasks are all related to driving, just like getting clearance to land with a two way radio is related to flying.
If your cell phone conversations typically go “I’m at mile 230 on I-35 right now and I’ll be home a little late”, you probably aren’t endangering anyone, but if you’re trying to plan your kid’s birthday party on the cell phone while you drive or are negotiating a contract, that’s when you are very likely to drift into another lane or go 30 mph under the speed limit and have other drivers honk at you.
I shoot a lot of muzzleloading rifles in shooting matches and every time I have ever forgotten to put in the gunpowder during the reload, or ended up double loading the rifle, it was because someone started talking to me while I was loading the rifle.
why else is it that cars have had autopilot for years and years but the technology is only now being introduced to aviation? (sarcasm)
Because the aviation autopilot does not have to worry about collision avoidance. You seem to be under the impression that pilots set the autopilot and then go into the back of the plane for a nap. The autopilot takes some of the tasks away from the pilots so that they can concentrate on other tasks. I find it difficult to believe that you are seriously suggesting that driving a car is harder than flying a plane.
Also, aircraft radio and trucker CB conversations are a part of the task of flying and driving and are centered around that task.
You were doing great until you brought CB conversations into it. Tune in to Ch 19 some time and listen to what the truckers are yakking about. It’s all warnings of police presence (so they can drive badly without getting caught), or discussing the legs of the hot girl in the convertible so they can all get a look, or angry rants against liberals. None of that involves “the task of driving” from a necessary communication standpoint.
I shoot a lot of muzzleloading rifles in shooting matches and every time I have ever forgotten to put in the gunpowder during the reload, or ended up double loading the rifle, it was because someone started talking to me while I was loading the rifle.
So then you are not capable of performing a task while talking. That’s OK. I have no doubt that this means you self-regulate and avoid using a cell phone while driving. Others are capable of driving while talking (we tend to drop the conversation when driving requires more attention, rather than dropping the driving in order to focus on the conversation).
Some people are not capable of eating peanuts without having a dangerous allergic reaction. This does not mean we should ban peanuts. It means people who can’t engage in that activity shouldn’t.
Further, those who get distracted by cell phones while driving can easily find other things to distract them if the cell phone is banned. Eating, talking to the guy in the passenger seat, yelling at the misbehaving kid in the back seat, making googoo noises at the baby in the baby seat, etc etc.
It is an idiotic proposition to make all of these things illegal just because some people cannot handle them while driving.
It is a much more reasonable proposition to punish bad behavior than to ban anything that could possibly be a part of bad behavior. Rather than ban passengers because you might talk to them and get distracted, it’s better to watch for the driver who is driving like a moron, and then pull him over and give him a ticket for distracted driving, no matter what was distracting him from driving.
I find it difficult to believe that you are seriously suggesting that driving a car is harder than flying a plane.
I find it easy to believe, especially after actually taking the yoke of a small plane and flying it around. It’s not like you constantly have to correct the attitude or it will go upside down. Even without autopilot, a well trimmed airplane will fly straight and level hands off, there may be some altitdude or heading drift. There’s a lot of built in stability in airplanes. A decrease in airspeed causes an automatic pitch down which brings back the airspeed which causes the plane to pitch back up. There’s enough yaw-roll coupling to make airplanes automatically return to level if disturbed from level flight.
There have even been accounts of pilots bailing out of a planes that were in a flat spin, only to have the unpiloted plane recover all by itself and then fly lazy circles until the fuel was gone.
So are you suggesting some massive government conspiracy involving the FAA that makes people who want to be pilots have to take a lot more training and pay a lot more money to get a pilot’s license than we have to do in order to get a driver’s license?
So, in other words, cell phone use–like CB and aviation communications–is safe provided the driver is sufficiently disciplined to refrain from non-essential calls during high workload?
So are you suggesting some massive government conspiracy involving the FAA that makes people who want to be pilots have to take a lot more training and pay a lot more money to get a pilot's license than we have to do in order to get a driver's license?
Most of learning to fly is learning to land the plane. That and navigation and regulations. I had no problems flying the plane around but if it had not been for the guy in the left seat, I would never have found the airport let alone land the plane.
Also, there’s a lot of training on what to do when things go wrong, wing icing, carb icing, engine out, stall recovery. It’s not that flying is terribly hard, it’s that it is terribly unforgiving when something goes wrong.
I would say the workload on a pilot flying at cruise altitude through an empty sky is actually lower than the workload of someone driving down a freeway with traffic.
If you do not want kids fine,
Woman gets tumor whhere cell phone was stored in bra
Worse than artificial sweetener ps phenylalanine used to be used in therapy for depressed patients, cool put in soda pop everyone will be happy http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6425455
Aspartimine is phenylalinine http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/nutrition/healthy-eating/top-number-most-dangerous-artificial-sweeteners.html
Putting on tin foil hat and waiting for flags.
Of course if you had read the manual that came with our phone you would keep the phone 1.5" or so away from your body.
Let’s be clear: Are you a licensed pilot?
http://www.ewg.org/cell-phone-radiation-damages-sperm-studies-find If you do not want kids fine,
Such studies are generally touted by websites that are run by people with little understanding of radio waves. You are surrounded by them (the waves, not the people). Whether the phone is in your pocket, on your dashboard, or in the next county, you are still being bombarded every second by cell phone tower radiation carrying thousands of calls. And you’re being hit by TV, FM/AM, XM, CB, HAM, and all of the other frequencies on the radio spectrum. Not to mention gamma radiation from space.
There has never been a conclusive, peer-reviewed study that shows cell phone radiation causes any harm whatsoever.
ps regarding your sweetener tangent: Homeopathy is not real, “natural” does not mean “healthy” (cyanide is natural), “artificial” does not mean it will kill you, and just because a chemical shows up on an ingredients list of both a food and another substance does not mean it does the same thing.
This natural movement irritates me because it’s pseudoscientific. Yesterday I was at a craft sale with the SO and saw someone hocking “natural taco seasoning.” They had a big writeup on how silicon dioxide is in both Old El Paso taco seasoning and those silica packets that come in electronics that say “do not eat,” and therefore Old El Paso will hurt you and you should buy the natural product instead. Yes, well, silicon dioxide is also in wine, toothpaste, glass, sand, and electronics, among other things. Silica gel is a different form of SiO2 than is in food products, and SiO2 is non-toxic when ingested in foods. I wanted to start an argument with the fool, but the SO wouldn’t let me. Ah well.
Let's be clear: Are you a licensed pilot?
Does one need to be a licensed pilot to be knowledgeable about aviation?
Do the people who freely give their opinions about the ability of humans to multitask on this forum have a degree in psychology?
Does one need to be a licensed pilot to be knowledgeable about aviation?
Of course not. But I wanted to be sure that I didn’t need to defer to any higher qualifications you might have. Since I don’t, I’ll assert that flying is indeed tougher than driving a car. You flew a plane in VFR conditions, most likely on a nice, sunny, clear day. Add a crosswind, a thunderstorm, and nighttime (all of which are conditions we routinely experience in our cars) and come back and tell me how easy flying is.
By comparison, exactly how hard is driving a car at 65, on a straight, smooth, uncrowded highway in good weather? I bet any 13-y.o. with 3 hours’ go-cart time could accomplish this.
As an actual licensed commercial pilot, I can state that manipulating the yoke of a Cessna, enroute, in nice weather is about an inaccurate assesment of “how challenging” flying is, as my proposed example is to respect to how challenging driving is.
One “study showed that 2.5% of people are actually super-multi-taskers and can somehow switch from task to task with ease. Interestingly, most people think they are in that 2.5%.”
When I was 25 I was in that alleged 2.5 percentage. Now I am not.
There have even been accounts of pilots bailing out of a planes that were in a flat spin, only to have the unpiloted plane recover all by itself and then fly lazy circles until the fuel was gone.
When I was in Crash Rescue at Fort Lewis in the 60’s, the fort newspaper had an article. In WWII a mechanic was working on a small airplane, one of those tiny things private pilots often fly. He bumped the throttle, the plane jerked, he fell out and the plane took off. They wrote it off as lost. Several days later, they got a complaint from a farmer far away. The plane had flown over small mountains, and when it ran out of gas, it settled down in his cow pasture. He wanted it removed.
When I once told this tale at work, I was called all sorts of liar. But, we had an old-timer who remembered reading that exact tale in the Stars and Stripes when he was in Germany.
A lot of this debate imitates the Queen in Alice in Wonderland. Off with their heads. Off with their heads. The US has 5% of the world’s population, and 25% of the world’s incarcerated people. I bet we need more and more laws with great penalties for every imaginable offense.
I suspect the reason many people are irresponsible with phone usage while driving is simply they have never been taught to be responsible about anything, ever. Here in Mexico, you will see large holes dug in a sidewalk, no yellow tape around it, no snow cribbing. If you can’t see a ten foot hole in front of you, it is your problem. So, here in Mexico, people look around them when walking. In the US, people walk around in a daze because they know if they fall and get hurt, they can collect big time. No need to be responsible; someone is obliged to keep you safe while you walk around in a daze.
Kids raised in a house with no stairs are much more likely to fall down stairs and get hurt, than kids raised in a house with stairs.
Oh, my god. How did this dusty old argument get dredged up again?
A “new” member (well, he’s been a member since 2010, but not active between his first post then and last month) found it and commented. And then others took up the discussion again.
meanjoe75fan November 4 By comparison, exactly how hard is driving a car at 65, on a straight, smooth, uncrowded highway in good weather? I bet any 13-y.o. with 3 hours' go-cart time could accomplish this.As an actual licensed commercial pilot, I can state that manipulating the yoke of a Cessna, enroute, in nice weather is about an inaccurate assesment of “how challenging” flying is, as my proposed example is to respect to how challenging driving is.
OK, I get it, flying an airplane is hard.
But, would you really want to be a passenger in a commercial jet on a landing approach at night in IFR conditions with a strong crosswind caused by a thunderstorm piloted by a pilot who’s yakking with his bookie or stockbroker on a cell phone while landing that plane?
No, I absolutely would not. Which is why they have anti-distracted flying rules (look up “sterile cockpit” to see the one that addresses this specific concern).
Note the distinction: They have anti-distracted flying rules. They did not ban 2-way radios.
That’s what I’ve been advocating all along: Anti-distracted driving rules, rather than banning anything that might distract us.