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Embodied technology and the dangers of using the phone while driving

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Abstract

Contemporary scientific research and public policy are not in agreement over what should be done to address the dangers that result from the drop in driving performance that occurs as a driver talks on a cellular phone. One response to this threat to traffic safety has been the banning in a number of countries and some states in the USA of handheld cell phone use while driving. However, research shows that the use of hands-free phones (such as headsets and dashboard-mounted speakers) also accompanies a drop, leading some to recommend regulation of both kinds of mobile phones. In what follows, I draw out the accounts of the driving impairment associated with phone use implicit in research and policy and develop an alternative account grounded in philosophical considerations. Building on work in a school of thought called postphenomenology, I review and expand concepts useful for articulating human bodily and perceptual relations to technology. By applying these ideas to the case of driving while talking on the phone, I offer an account of the drop in driving performance which focuses on the embodied relationships users develop with the car and the phone, and I consider implications for research and policy.

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Notes

  1. See www.distraction.gov/state-laws.

  2. For example, despite remaining neutral on the issue of talking on the phone while driving, the official position of The International Association of for the Wireless Telecommunications Industry (CITA) is in favor of the regulation of texting while driving. See www.ctia.org/advocacy/policy_topics/topic.cfm/TID/17.

  3. Information on the regulation of cell phone use while driving, both in terms of countrywide laws and statewide laws in the USA, can be found at www.cellular-news/car_bans.

  4. For introductions to postphenomenology see, e.g., Verbeek (2005); Ihde (2009); Rosenberger 2009; and the 2008, 31(1) special issue of the journal Human Studies.

  5. Merleau-Ponty puts the approach of phenomenology this way: “Not because we reject the certainties of common sense and a natural attitude to things—they are, on the contrary, the constant theme of philosophy—but because, being the presupposed basis of any thought, they are taken for granted, and go unnoticed, and because in order to arouse them and bring them into view, we have to suspend for a moment our recognition of them” (1962, xiii). By suspending judgments, and by focusing on the description of experience, unnoticed assumptions at play in established discussions may be revealed.

  6. Ihde’s account of the embodiment and transparency of technology is explicitly indebted to Martin Heidegger’s account of tool use and his notions of “present-to-hand” and “ready-to-hand,” developed in his work Being and Time (1953). I do not, however, wish to engage Heidegger’s work here since I do not want the concepts developed later to become embroiled in the larger ontological framework within which Heidegger’s notions of ready-to-hand and present-to-hand are inextricable centerpieces.

  7. The general idea that one’s field of awareness is organized by that which is significant is a theme explored throughout phenomenology (with a particularly helpful and sustained examination by Gurwitch (1964)). The term “field composition” is specific to my own work as I attempt to analyze this phenomenon in terms of its particular manifestation in the relationships between users, technologies, and the world. The term “sedimentation,” in contrast, is used throughout phenomenological thought, with a meaning generally similar to its deployment here, though of course with subtle differences between thinkers. In general, the term points to the ever-presence of past experiences actively informing the immediate experience of present encounters. It is with work of Merleau-Ponty (1962) that sedimentation is saddled as well with the connotation of bodily habituation, a connotation I hope to explicitly retain. Here I use the term sedimentation in my own technical way: to refer to the particular level of habit, the particular degree to which the past provides meaning to the present, in a given human–technological relation.

  8. I first developed a short version of this account of phone use in (Rosenberger 2010).

  9. Ihde (1990, 74) adds the example of parallel parking, “when well embodied, one feels rather than sees the distance between car and curb—one’s body is ‘extended’ to the parameters of the driver–car ‘body’”.

  10. Another example of the strength of the habits associated with driving is the experience of a driver who sits in the passenger seat and finds her or himself compelled to press upon the floor as if operating pedals (especially when uncomfortable with the driving style of the person behind the wheel).

  11. Evidence for the claim that this body of scientific research is guided by a general theoretical framework centered on notions of the limitations of the human brain—couched in terms of concepts such as workload, information processing, attention capacity, and cognitive resources—can be found in the following selection of quotes:

    “Extreme levels of workload may also mean that processing resources for new information are limited” (Alm and Nillson 1995, 714).

    “It would seem that participants were finding task performance cognitively more effortful in the during call period, and were having to invest greater attentional resources in task performance” (Haigney et al. 2000, 119).

    “The purpose of this study was, therefore, to explore the ability of drivers to cope with different levels of cognitive or mental workload that were introduced as secondary tasks and their effect on attention resource allocation” (Patten et al. 2004, 342).

    “In essence, drivers appear to be attempting to free-up resources for the secondary task by simplifying the primary task” (Jamson and Merat 2005, 93).

    “This inferior performance demonstrates that, although participants can switch attention between tasks, there appears to be an upper limit to available cognitive processing within the context of maintaining vehicle control” (Liu and Lee 2005, 379).

    “Research has demonstrated that the adverse effects of driving while talking are most likely not related to the motor control issues of manipulating a hand-held phone … or driving experience …. Rather, it is believed that the effects are a result of competition for limited cognitive resources” (Beede and Kass 2006, 416).

    “Whether the explanation lies at the sensory level … or at the attention resources management level … the results are in line with the theory of inherent limited capacity of human attention …, which predicts that the attentional resources allocated to one task (talking) come at the expense of the other (driving)” (Rosenbloom 2006).

    “We interpret this diversion of attention as reflecting a capacity limit on the amount of attention or resources that can be distributed across the two tasks. This capacity limit might be thought of as a biological constraint that limits the amount of systematic neural activity that can be distributed across parts of the cortex. The specific biological substrate that imposes the capacity limitation is not currently known” (Just et al. 2008, 76).

    “If the human brain were not limited in attending to multiple tasks at the same time, driver distraction would not be an issue” (Regan et al. 2009, 3).

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Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Michael Hoffmann, Sabrina Hom, Nancy Nersessian, Bryan Norton, and Victor Wanningen for comments on earlier drafts of this piece.

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  1. Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Public Policy, DM Smith Building, 685 Cherry St., Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA

    Robert Rosenberger

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Rosenberger, R. Embodied technology and the dangers of using the phone while driving. Phenom Cogn Sci 11, 79–94 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-011-9230-2

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