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<DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 165px"></DIV><B><FONT size=6>Study: Cell Phone Use Ups
Accident Risk</FONT></B> <BR>
<P><FONT size=-1>By Leon D'Souza<BR>The Associated Press<BR>Wednesday, February
2, 2005; 7:19 AM </FONT>
<P><NITF>
<P>SALT LAKE CITY -- Talking on a cell phone makes you drive like a retiree -
even if you're only a teen, a new study shows. A report from the University of
Utah says when motorists between 18 and 25 talk on cell phones, they drive like
elderly people - moving and reacting more slowly and increasing their risk of
accidents.</P>
<P>"If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell phone, his
reaction times are the same as a 70-year-old driver," said David Strayer, a
University of Utah psychology professor and principal author of the study. "It's
like instant aging."</P>
<P>And it doesn't matter whether the phone is hand-held or handsfree, he said.
Any activity requiring a driver to "actively be part of a conversation" likely
will impair driving abilities, Strayer said.</P>
<P><STRONG><FONT size=5>In fact, motorists who talk on cell phones are more
impaired than drunken drivers with blood-alcohol levels exceeding 0.08, Strayer
and colleague Frank Drews, an assistant professor of psychology, found during
research conducted in 2003.</FONT></STRONG></P>
<P>Their new study appears in this winter's issue of Human Factors, the
quarterly journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.</P>
<P>Strayer said they found that when 18- to-25-year-olds were placed in a
driving simulator and talked on a cellular phone, they reacted to brake lights
from a car in front of them as slowly as 65- to 74-year-olds who were not using
a cell phone.</P>
<P>In the simulator, each participant drove four 10-mile freeway trips lasting
about 10 minutes each, talking on a cell phone with a research assistant during
half the trip and driving without talking the other half. Only handsfree phones
- considered safer - were used.</P>
<P>The study found that drivers who talked on cell phones were 18 percent slower
in braking and took 17 percent longer to regain the speed they lost when they
braked.</P>
<P>The numbers, which come down to milliseconds, might not seem like much, but
it could be the difference to stopping in time to avoid hitting a child in the
street, Strayer said.</P>
<P>The new research questions the effectiveness of cell phone usage laws in
states such as New York and New Jersey, which only ban the use of hand-held cell
phones while driving. It's not so much the handling of a phone, Strayer said,
but the fact that having a conversation is a mental process that can drain
concentration.</P>
<P>The only silver lining to the new research is that elderly drivers using a
cell phone aren't any more of a hazard to themselves and others than young
drivers. Previous research suggested older drivers may face what Strayer
described as a "triple whammy."</P>
<P>"We thought they would be really messed up because not only are they slower
overall due to age, there's also a difficulty dividing attention," Strayer
said.</P>
<P>But the study found that more experience and a tendency to take fewer risks
helped negate any additional danger.</P></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>