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Mobile phones are slowing rush hour traffic
IF driving to work is taking longer, the reason may not necessarily be that there is more traffic on the roads. Researchers at the University of Utah have discovered another culprit - motorists using mobile phones. According to Utah's Professor of Psychology, Dr David Strayer, using a mobile is not just turning motorists into a safety risk with their erratic driving, but is also causing them to cut their speed by more than three kilometres an hour.
He says just a few drivers using mobiles in rush hour traffic could increase commuting times for everyone else on the roads by between five and 10%. "People kind of get stuck behind that person, and it makes everyone pay the price of that distracted driver," Prof Strayer says. The researchers have also found that motorists talking on mobiles are also more likely to trail slow moving vehicles. Dr Strayer has now calculated that because of mobile phones, each year US motorists spending 20 hours more than they should have to in slow-moving commuter traffic.
"When people have tried to do cost-benefit analyses to decide whether we should regulate cell phones, they often don't factor in the cost to society associated with increased commute times, excess fuel used by stop-and-go traffic and increased air pollution, as well as hazards associated with drivers distracted by cell phone conversations," Dr Strayer said. "If we compile the millions of drivers distracted by cell phones and their small delays, and convert them to dollars, the costs are likely to be dramatic. Cell phones cost us dearly."
Computing safety
Scotland is piloting a road safety campaign designed to reach 15 to 24-year-olds through well-establish computer games like "Need for Speed", "Carbon" and "Project Gotham Race 4".
"With statistics showing that road deaths, particularly among young people, are continuing to rise, it is clear we must look at new ways of getting road safety messages across," said Scotland's transport minister, Stewart Stevenson. Initially anti-drink-drive messages will be appearing in the games. "They'll be non-intrusive and subtle but the message can be seen in the background, loud and clear," he said. The results will be monitored and if successful, more government messages will be fed into computer games. In Britain as a whole 73% of the target age group are said to have access to gaming console in their homes.
Warming's other effect
Additional carbon dioxide in the air is not just contributing to global warming. New US research at Stanford University has found that the extra CO2 is also increase the mortality rate.
Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Mark Jacobson, Stanford's Professor of civil and environmental engineering says if CO2 causes a rise in global temperature of one degree Celsius, the resulting air pollution can also be expected to kill 20,000 more people world-wide.
"The study is the first specifically to isolate carbon dioxide's effect from that of other global-warming agents and to find quantitatively that chemical and meteorological changes due to carbon dioxide itself increase mortality due to increased ozone, particles and carcinogens in the air," says Prof Jacobson.
He said the findings had particular implications for cities where pollution was already high. Any increase in temperature would only worsen their problems and lead to them bearing "an increasing disproportionate burden of death" unless local restrictions were imposed to curb CO2 emissions.
