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I guess a study came out recently, because I've now seen 'texting while driving make you 21 times more likely to get into a wreck' quoted several times recently. And, yes, I have no doubt texting while driving is quite stupid. But that phrasing bugs me a lot, because it implies an arbitrary threshold. (And nothing annoys computer scientists like arbitrary thresholds!)
You know what else makes you 21 times more likely to get into a wreck? Driving 21 times more. Sending a text takes, what, a minute? So in that minute you're exposing yourself to the same risk as in the next 21 minutes of driving. Of course, no one would ever imply you shouldn't drive for 21 minutes. Driving is dangerous, period. It's one of the most dangerous things most people ever do. You can't ignore that, and pretend that risk doesn't exist. How many people are horrified at the thought of riding a motorcycle occasionally, but buy a house out in the exurbs which forces them to drive 10+ hours a week?
The texting stat as reported annoys me because it implies that the risk taken while driving is perfectly acceptable, but anything more than that is absolutely irrational. It implies that there is 'safe' and 'unsafe', instead of a continuous range of risk which everyone has to evaluate themselves.
You know what else makes you 21 times more likely to get into a wreck? Driving 21 times more. Sending a text takes, what, a minute? So in that minute you're exposing yourself to the same risk as in the next 21 minutes of driving. Of course, no one would ever imply you shouldn't drive for 21 minutes. Driving is dangerous, period. It's one of the most dangerous things most people ever do. You can't ignore that, and pretend that risk doesn't exist. How many people are horrified at the thought of riding a motorcycle occasionally, but buy a house out in the exurbs which forces them to drive 10+ hours a week?
The texting stat as reported annoys me because it implies that the risk taken while driving is perfectly acceptable, but anything more than that is absolutely irrational. It implies that there is 'safe' and 'unsafe', instead of a continuous range of risk which everyone has to evaluate themselves.
no subject
Just as driving 21 times more does not *necessarily* make you 21 times more likely to get into a wreck. The lossy statistic disregards experience, fatigue, the thoughts of "oh, I'm just going a mile down the street rather than 21 miles in from the burbs, I don't have to be as careful"...
Personally, I think it's rather silly to try to ban individual behaviors as too risky. I don't know if it's a city ordinance or a state law, but I know my ex got cited for "inattention" for failure to see a "Stop Ahead" sign... which resulted in her rear-ending another car. *Simple* laws like that, where you throw a human in the loop (and potentially 12) to decide whether you screwed the pooch or were legitimately snookered by the circumstances... much better than "you can't do this, you can't do that" nanny laws, which by Kantian imperative lead to everything that isn't prohibited is compulsory. Nay, f*** that.
But the use of meaningless statistics (a phrase which is often redundant) in FUD? Pitch it.