Salocin

That Guy with the Cellphone

I'd like to introduce you to someone. He's called "That Guy". Actually, you already know him. When you're at school, in class, and the same person in the front row keeps asking questions, each less insightful and more embarassing than the last, that's "That Guy". When you're at a dinner party, and an unbelievably embarassing comment is spoken far too loud at precisely that moment when the conversation around the table paused, that's "That Guy".

I ran into That Guy this evening, in a context in which I've seen him before. In fact, wearing different faces, this is the 4th time I've had a near miss in a car because of his behaviour. He was talking on his cellphone, and almost caused an accident, before sneering at everyone else on the road and driving away as though it was everyone else's fault.

When I was doing my MBA in Philadelphia, I used to cycle into school almost every day. I was knocked off my bike 3 times in 2 years.

The first time had nothing to do with a mobile telephone. I was going downhill fast, and a taxi overtook me on the left. He then stopped ahead of me, but left me enough room to pass between his cab and the parked cars. I was going very fast because there's a big uphill after this downhill, and so most cyclists build up some speed to help them on the way. When I was about 5 metres away, the passenger kicked the door open. I did the only thing I could think of, and jumped straight up off my bike. I went flying over the car door, my bike slammed into it, and I landed on the road. A student got out of the car, accused me of riding dangerously, swore in lots of colourful language, and ran away. The taxi got out of there as fast as possible...

The second accident happened almost in the same place. At the bottom of the dip, just where the downhill becomes an uphill, there's a right turn. I wasn't going that fast this time, and I was beginning to cross the junction when someone drove past me on my left, then turned right, right into me. He was distracted because he was talking on his cellphone, and was driving with one hand and half his attention. I flew across the bonnet, my bike somehow survived and once again, I was fine. What really marked this event was the reaction of the driver. He stormed out of his car and practically yelled at me, "Why aren't you wearing a helmet?". This time I had my wits about me and asked, "Because you wouldn't have hit me if I'd been wearing a helmet?" Besides which, it was my legs he almost squashed, not my head. Regardless, he was still on the phone, and carried on his conversation afterwards.

The third time this happened was on a parallel street going in the opposite direction, and a big car drove past me on the left with a woman at the wheel. As she passed, she drifted into the bicycle lane, and her wing mirror clipped my hand, or my handlebars, I don't remember. Either way, I went flying over the handlebars and did a nice forward somersault while seated on the bike. The last thing I saw before I hit the ground was the driver's head, with her right hand holding a cellphone to her ear. She hadn't even noticed that she had hit me, even though the mirror was now folded against the side of the car.

Today, while driving back from central Brussels, a driver pulled into a roundabout as I came around it. I slammed on the brakes, squealed to a stop a couple of inches from his car. He gave me an utterly gormless look. It took me a moment to figure it out, but he hadn't even noticed he was doing something wrong. When he saw the look on my face (pissed off, eyes rolled skywards), he gave me a truly loathesome look, then scowled at the other drivers who had noticed the near-accident, and cut everyone off by driving in a straight line across the roundabout.

I've had this conversation with a couple of people, and they always claim that they can talk on the phone and drive at the same time with no risk. Every scientific study that has looked at the question concluded that it's a significant danger because reaction times drop, awareness of surroundings drops and co-ordination drops when talking on the phone. They also conclude that it's worse if you hold the phone in your hand as you talk, but it's almost as bad with a hands free kit - it's what's happening in the driver's head that causes the risk, not the act of holding a box in one hand. But how do you get people to recognise that it's risky when everyone has this cognitive malfunction where they believe that it (a) couldn't possibly happen to them and (b) they could cope with it if it did, because they have faster reaction times / are better drivers / aren't like those other people.

It's a simple change to make. I've stopped talking on the telephone in the car. Have you? It took getting hit by cars for me to realise it's not reasonable to think I'm immune. Let's hope other people are quicker to change their behaviour than I am.

Posted by nlvp at November 20, 2004 11:55 PM