11/05/2024
*** FOCUS ON FRIDAY *** Time to hang up on hands-free phones for good
Here's a question for you. Where do we get our broader guidance on what constitutes safe practice whilst out on the roads? Who tells us what's sensible and what's daft?
The answer is, in large measure, the police. As well as their proactive role in promoting safe riding practices, we also know that if we do something daft, we're liable to get nicked for our transgressions.
If you're anything like a regular here, you'll know that for the last decade plus, I've been working to educate riders about the flaws in the campaigns promoting the use of day-riding lights, and hi-vis and retro-reflective clothing.
The proof of that particular pudding is that the 'Sorry Mate' collision at junctions is still the Number One crash involving a motorcycles. The various 'Ride Bright' campaigns telling us to use DRLs and hi-vis started back in the 1970s, telling us that we're 'safer' if we ride with our lights on and wear hi-vis clothing. But if conspicuity aids worked as billed, we'd have seen a reduction in the numbers of riders taken out at junctions and intersections. So the second part of my 'Science Of Being Seen' presentation is to suggest how to make best use of these conspicuity aids.
So here's a second question for you. Do the police always give good advice? Not if the continuing the issue of conspicuity aids is anything to go by. It's not so long ago that one force - Sussex if I remember right - were out deliberately stopping bikers who weren't wearing hi-vis, giving them a talking to and handing over a free vest.
Here's another issue where official advice has been at odds with scientific research. Once it was realised that mobile phone use at the wheel was associated with a higher-than-average crash risk, there was a big push to get drivers to put down their hand-helds and use hands-free headsets instead. With both hands back on the wheel, the thinking went, the crash rate would drop again.
Except it didn't.
Since the use of a hands-free mobile phone to make calls is not illegal, a vast body of research has been available over the last two decades indicating that it's the cognitive workload of holding a conversation, not the physical task of holding a phone in the hand that is the distraction.
The result of distraction is poor situational awareness, reduce awareness of hazards and increased crash risk. I recall writing about the cognitive issues of making phone calls over twenty years ago on my 'blog before they were called blogs'.
The research continues to support the idea that we should ALL be putting our phones on silent whilst we drive or ride.
In 2016, a study by Dr Graham Hole from the University of Sussex concluded that drivers are 0.98 of a second slower to respond to hazards when on a hands-free mobile phone, that they focused on a small area of road and even failed to spot hazards even when they looked at them. Dr Hole said:
"Eye tracking shows that their eyes are falling on the hazard but they're not reacting. The eyes are there but the brain's away."
He said that phone conversations in a car are more distracting than listening to the radio or talking to a passenger because radio broadcasts are not interactive, and adult passengers at least are usually sensitive to driving conditions.
He said that the idea that using a mobile phone while driving is safe as long as the driver uses a hands-free phone was "a popular misconception".
Dr Hole said:
"At the moment the law sends out the wrong message that hands-free phones are safe. If you stop at a motorway service station you can see shops selling hands-free kits with the slogan 'be safe, be hands-free'."
He admitted:
"The problem is enforceability - it's very difficult for the police to tell if someone's using a hands free phone. But on balance, I think the law should be changed to get the right message across and make it absolutely clear that any use of a mobile phone while driving is hazardous."
In an August 2019 report, the Commons Transport Committee put forward their case for banning the use of hands-free kits. They pointed to the research that shows that driving using hands-free technology carries the same risk of collision as a hand-held phone.
More recently, Professor Gemma Briggs from the Open University said:
“Research emphatically demonstrates that hands-free phone use is no safer than hand-held phone use due to the cognitive distraction it causes."
The fact is, if a driver (or motorcyclist) is using a hand-held or a hands-free phones, they are around four times more likely to be involved in a collision, often failing to notice hazards directly ahead of them, and taking longer to react when they do finally recognise the threat.
She made the point that "not many people realise this, and many resist these research findings."
Why? One reason is the law.
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FOCUS ON FRIDAY is a semi-regular series looking
at more in-depth issues around riding, including road
safety generally, how learning happens, and how our
brains work when riding. You can find more from the
FoF series in the archive www.ko-fi.com/survivalskills
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Back in March 2017, the penalties for using a handheld phone while driving were increased. As recently as 2022, THINK! launched a new campaign to reduce handheld phone use amongst young drivers, coinciding with a strengthening of the law around mobile phone use behind the wheel, reminding everyone that using a handheld phone behind the wheel risks a fine of up to £1,000 and 6 points.
A second is that the police have spent considerable resources to focus on drivers using handheld phones, everything from buying HGV cabs so they can see into truckers' cabs to check if they are on their phone to new 'all-seeing' cameras which can identify and record hand-held phone use.
All the while, hands-free devices are still legal, though with a rarely-stated proviso that if they affect the ability to drive safely, you can still be prosecuted.
But honestly, what message does this send to the average driver? That leads me to my third question. Who educates the police? Where are we in 2024?
Well, it turns out that in an 'about time too' moment, the UK’s roads policing lead and the CEO of The Road Safety Trust are supporting the findings of an educational project that aims to educate police to the fact that using a hands-free phone for talking whilst driving is no safer than using one held in the hand.
The Open University project, called 'We need to talk about hands-free', was funded by The Road Safety Trust, and involved academics from the Universities of Staffordshire and Keele.
Staffordshire University’s Dr Leanne Savigar-Shaw, a senior Lecturer in Policing, said:
"We hope that this research helps to open up conversations between police officers about the risks of using hands-free devices" and that it was "important to support efforts to improve the safety of our roads."
What's depressing is that this is not a new finding and it's pretty unbelievable that it's taken so long to reach this point.
Chief constable Jo Shiner, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for roads policing, is urging drivers to carefully consider the findings.
If you ask me, I think she needs to review the police position and just why it seems to have taken so long for the police to become aware of what the science has been telling us for years about hands-free phones.
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