There oughta be a law
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More on the evils of texting, with a predictable response by authorities: there oughta be a law (or at least an administrative ban). From the New York Times:
California Bans Texting by Operators of Trains
By JESSE McKINLEY and MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: September 18, 2008SAN FRANCISCO — A day after federal investigators said an engineer in last week’s deadly train collision outside Los Angeles had been text-messaging on the job, California’s railroad regulators temporarily banned the use of all cellular devices by anyone at the controls of a moving train.
The emergency order was passed unanimously by the five-person California Public Utilities Commission, which noted the lack of federal or state rules regarding the use of such devices by on-duty train personnel.
Michael R. Peevey, the president of the commission, which oversees rail traffic in the state, said in a statement that the prohibition on cellular use was “necessary and reasonable.”
Notice that the ban is on all cellular devices.
Now comes a fresh bulletin on the Texting While Xing front.
Today's NYT has a front-page story on the (possibly mortal) dangers of texting (by Jennifer Steinhauer and Laura M. Holson):
Though there are no official casualty statistics, there is much anecdotal evidence that the number of fatal accidents stemming from texting while driving, crossing the street or engaging in other activities is on the rise.
(I have my own anecdote, having nearly been run down on the streets of Palo Alto when a driver, talking on her cellphone, didn't notice that her traffic light had turned red and just drove right through it.)
Assuming that the number of people who text is on the rise, and that some people's use of texting is also on the rise, then an increase in texting-while-Xing fatalities wouldn't be much of a surprise — though that prediction depends on the assumption that texting requires enough attention to distract texters from other tasks. A plausible assumption, which the Times story then makes explicit:
"The act of texting automatically removes 10 I.Q. points," said Paul Saffo, a technology trend forecaster in Silicon Valley.
(Saffo's website describes him as a "technology forecaster and futurist". And he's a Consulting Associate Professor of Mechnical Engineering at Stanford, in the faculty directory and all.)
You can bet that Saffo isn't reporting any actual research here, and just pulled the 10-point statistic out of the air. Possibly he was recalling the 2005 media frenzy about the claim that texting lowers your I.Q. more than smoking pot; see Mark Liberman's final posting on the matter here (with links to earlier postings). In any case, a technology forecaster/futurist (rather than a psychologist specializing in attention and skilled performance) was an odd choice of source of information on texting and distraction. I suppose the Times reporters just ended up going with what they could get, but the result is shoddy reporting.