Talking on a Cell Phone as Bad as Drunk Driving?

Stunning research at the University of Utah driving under the influence of a cell phone is just as bad as doing so under the influence of alcohol. Participants drove simulator cars while sober, drunk and distracted and their performance in each test case was considered, and it was found that they were actually more likely to crash the car when distracted by a cell phone call than when drunk with a blood alcohol level of 0.08 (the legal limit for a DUI).

Interestingly also, they found no difference in driving behavior when using a handheld cell phone or a handsfree device! Cell phone users were over 5 times more likely to get in accidents than undistracted drivers. And they found cell phone users may also cause traffic backups due to their slow speed and poor lane changing patterns.

Wow, time to think of hanging up that phone! I don't talk a lot on the road, except when I take long trips on the interstate, but that's partly because I've been living in a university town. As I look to move and work, that might change, and suddenly the productivity drain seems a shame.

I'll Pass on Smart Phones, Thank You!

Jack Trout has a great piece in Forbes magazine about why convergence is a pipe dream. Convergence refers to the idea that we will eventually have a single device that handles all our needs. The iPhone has been labeled a giant leap for convergence. Trout argues that the idea of getting something without a tradeoff is impossible. An excerpt:

Palm was wildly successful with organizers; then they introduced the unreliable and unremarkable Treo, essentially an organizer that makes phone calls as well ... BlackBerrys are great at e-mail, but the phone is barely adequate. The Motorola Q crashes almost as often as the Treo. The Apple iPhone is terrific for music and media, but lousy for e-mail and phoning. For marketing reasons, everybody is trying to cram all these complicated features into ever-sleeker, ever-thinner boxes, while also adding longer battery life, and so on. Invariably, smart-phone designers have to make compromises that mean some functions don't work especially well.

Video Calls in Korea

Anyone else think the American cell phone industry sucks? It's one of the least innovative industries in this country, and when we do get a decent product, it comes with a fair bit of sticker shock! What precipitated this not-quite revelation on a Sunday morning was a news story that Korea's largest provider, SK Telecom would allow video calls between mobile phones and Internet phones. But what amazed me wasn't the technology (I for one would never really want to use a video phone), but the price tag - at W30 per 10 seconds (about 18 cents a min) it's cheaper than US cell subscribers pay for going over their minutes!