Does cell phone use while driving make your driving more ass-like? You’d think so, but a hundreds of thousands of Boston drivers can’t be wrong…and our research can’t prove them so. DLA research shows that Boston drivers using cell phones are no worse than a 12 year-old and 87 year-old Uncle Heshi up from Boca. In Boston, nothing prevents us from driving like ass.

We driving research academics are part of a small community so it doesn’t take much to get things buzzing. Last month two things dominated the latte and muffin circuit. The first of these was the release of findings from a study by University of Utah driving cognoscenti David Strayer entitled Drivers’ Lane-Changing Behavior While Conversing on Cell Phone in Variable-Density Simulated Highway Environment. Strayer’s study—presented at the Transportation Research Board's annual meeting in Washington—found that, when driving, cell phone users were more likely to remain behind slow moving vehicles and less likely to change lanes and pass slow-moving vehicles. As a result, cell phone users drove more slowly and took longer to complete the test course leading Professor Strayer to conclude, in commendable academic argot, “That SOB on the cell phone is slowing you down and making you late.”

The second event of note was the passage in the Massachusetts House of Representatives of HR-4477, An Act Further Regulating the Use of Certain Communication Devices While Operating a Motor Vehicle. The bill, which would ban use of cell phones while driving, looked like a goner earlier in the month when a vote was delayed to allow for “further study.” But now, it’s on to the Senate and, assuming its passage, it could become law after 90 days.

Professor Strayer proved to be more media savvy than the State legislature by timing his release for the early January, post-New Year’s news vacuum. The Mass pols, on the other hand, were—not surprisingly—a pound short and several years too late and their end-of-the-month announcement got a balled up in Boston’s Super Bowl paroxysm: Strayer’s announcement made the Boston Globe, passage of H-4477, a bill that could make Massachusetts one of only five states in the nation to fully ban cell phone use while driving, did not.

But what really got the research staff steamed was that, once again, they were upstaged. Professor Strayer’s academic showboating edged out the release of DLA’s own study of cell phone use among drivers, Propensity for Ass-Like Driving Behavior While Conversing on Cell Phone in Variable-Distraction Simulated Roadway Environment . Furthermore, DLA researcher were pained to see Strayer’s limited research design receive such widespread coverage under the rubric of “groundbreaking” simply because “at last there exists a study that quantifies what many have always suspected.” Timing is everything, I reminded them.

First, the problems. For one, the Utah study was conducted in a laboratory with (puh-leeeze!) a simulator, rather than in situ, which makes for defensible, yet circumscribed, results. And, for another, it was conducted using university psychology students who probably don’t even own a car and, in any case, are “test-jaded” from taking part in every graduate experiment posted in the Student Union in order to get extra credit.

And, lastly, it goes without saying that any study conducted in Utah has zero-to-no practical relevance when applied to the anomalism of Boston driving.

On another note, which we will not go into here, several DLA staffers voiced uncharitable thoughts about the title of the Strayer’s study (Drivers’ Lane-Changing Behavior While Conversing on Cell Phone in Variable-Density Simulated Highway Environment) and its uncomfortable similarity to ours (Propensity for Ass-Like Driving Behavior While Conversing on Cell Phone in Variable-Distraction Simulated Roadway Environment.)

Objective:
The objective of the DLA study was to determine what impact cell phone use had on Boston drivers. The general literature is quite clear: driver distraction is the most common cause of automobile accidents. “Distracting Events” (eating, text messaging, map reading, eyebrow tweezing, mahjong, etc.) if performed while driving, can impair a driver’s attention and reaction time. That drivers perform more poorly while driving and using a cell phone is supported by numerous “before-and-after” driving performance studies.

But no study has been conducted to measure the affect of cell phone “distraction” upon Boston drivers, a singularly unique test- and measurement-resistant group to which few commonly accepted theories and findings (driving, behavioral, interpersonal, or otherwise) apply.

Method
The DLA study was conducted using six subjects—two native “Boston drivers” and four randomly selected drivers, including one control driver (from someplace out in the mid-West)—who were instructed to follow five, pre-selected routes, chosen for their “typical” Boston roadway characteristics.

In an effort to preserve the archetypal idiosyncrasies of Boston driving, no special requirements were imposed upon test subjects, other than the ability to use a cell phone. Each subject drove each route twice: once without using a cell phone and once while using engaged in discussion. Cameras recorded incidences of “ass-like” driving behaviors (failure to signal, failure to stop, physical contact with other vehicles, refusal to yield, incessant obscenities, congenital inattention, etc.)

Preliminary assessment of the study participants revealed that one had been drinking for more than three hours and was completely baked (BAC=0.12), and that another had horns. Otherwise, no significant variability was noted.

Setting: The Variable-Distraction Simulated Roadway (VDSR) Routes

Subjects were instructed to complete each of five test routes and, as necessary, complete specified tasks along the route. The routes and tasks were as follow:

Scoring

Scoring for driving performance used a 1 to 5 scale, based upon the number of recorded ass-like offenses during the test, where 1 represents complete gentility and 5 complete inanity. Instances where the subject was unable to complete to course were recorded as “Did Not Complete” and were scored as a 5. Scored incidents were compliant with the combined Ass-Like Statistical Summary/Wiseacre Inventory of Personal Expression (ASS/WIPE) research definitions.

Institutional Review Board

Approval for this project by an Institutional Review Board was not required as it so obviously falls under the “public benefit or service programs” exemption.

Results
The results of the study are shown in Table 2. Test subjects were scored for each navigation of each test course and the scores normalized using the Rushour Tension Metric (see Rushour, Madhouse, et. al., 2001) and the Ass-Like Driving Proclivity Inventory Gauge (P_DLA) (see Auto Surfeit Function, DLA Research, 2007) Comparing the baseline results (NCP, or no cell phone) with the dependent results (CP, or cell phone), an Ass-Like Driving Correlate (ALDC) was calculated using the Shmegege Reduction and is shown in Table 3.

Discussion
Well, what’s to say? Once again, DLA Research seems to indicate that Boston driving behavior is unlike that of any other region or country and, as a result, the usual rules don’t’ apply. Strayer’s finding—that drivers, while using cell phones, engaged in driving behavior considered to be disruptive to traffic (e.g., fewer lane changes to pass slower vehicles)—was supported by the performance of non-Boston drivers in DLA’s study: they performed less well as indicated by their Ass-Like Driving Correlates (ALDC).

But that same distraction failed to produce a measurable increase in ass-like behavior among the native Boston test subjects. DLA researchers, seldom stumped by such apparent aberrations, have suggested the following hypotheses to address these findings:

1) Because Boston drivers seem to be unresponsive to those stimuli which elicit substantial behavioral changes in others, there is evidence to suggest that Boston driving behavior is controlled by a remote part of the cerebral cortex, an area not used for spatial calculations, social interactions, or what behavioral anthropologists refer to as “the good sense God gave 'em!”

This theory has some support from research comparing CT scans of Boston drivers with those of annelids and certain invertebrates, also known to be terrible drivers.

2) The Ass-Like Statistical Summary/Wiseacre Inventory of Personal Expression (ASS/WIPE) test scale of 1-5 is too limiting and results artificially compressed scores. It has been suggested that subsequent studies use the Widener Inventory of Driving Eccentricities and Ass-Like Statistical Summary (WIDE/ASS) which scales with a 0-50 range.

3) How bad is bad? Can a simple piece of technology make a truly bad driver any worse? As Dan Rather once said, “Put lipstick on a pig and it’s still a pig…unless it wasn’t really a pig and then it’s something else all together.”

At DLA, we prefer to believe that it is something else all together. Hence, we are leaning towards theories 1 and 2.