Question Technology

French Truckers Caught Watching TV While Driving

Speaking of multitasking...

French long-distance truck drivers have sparked alarm with a new pastime for beating boredom at the wheel: watching television.

From today, police have been ordered to keep a close watch on the cabs of heavy goods vehicles after reports that drivers are putting their feet up on the dashboard and watching videos or playing computer games while steaming along at 90 kilometres per hour.

To take their eyes off the road, they have devised a technique for "driving by ear," according to Le Figaro.

When traffic is not too dense, the driver sets the truck on cruise control and puts its right wheels on the band that marks the edge of the hard shoulder. These are often ribbed and are meant to create a noise to alert sleepy drivers that they are heading off the road.

The driver then steers by sound, leaving him free to watch a DVD, play a game or read, witnesses say.

Links: Truckers drive 'by ear' so they can keep eye on TV (Ottawa Citizen/Times of London), or in French: Ces routiers qui regardent la télévision en conduisant (Le Figaro).  Via Watching TV Online.

Drama is in the Past?

In the Guardian, Joe Queenan asks:

Why are so many dramas and thrillers now set in the past? Is it because, in a world of mobile phones, satnav and Google, suspense is impossible?

Link: Confessions of a technophobe, via textually.

It's an interesting question, and maybe this is true for some types of drama, but the many tech-heavy shows like 24 and CSI on American TV don't seem to be having a problem.

Movies on cell phones? David Lynch is not a fan.

Watch here (warning: language).

Drivers on Cellphones Clogging Traffic

From AP:

Drivers talking on cell phones are probably making your commute even longer, concludes a new study.

Motorists yakking away, even with handsfree devices, crawl about 2 mph slower on commuter-clogged roads than people not on the phone, and they just don't keep up with the flow of traffic, said study author David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah. [...]

Strayer's study, based on three dozen students driving in simulators, found that drivers on cell phones are far more likely to stick behind a slow car in front of them and change lanes about 20 percent less often than drivers not on the phone.

Overall, cell phone drivers took about 3 percent longer to drive the same highly traffic-clogged route (and about 2 percent longer to drive a medium congested route) than people who were not on the phone. About one in 10 drivers is on the phone so it really adds up, said Strayer, whose earlier studies have found slower reaction times from drivers on the phones and compared those reaction times to people legally drunk.

Combine those factors and Strayer figures distracted drivers are adding an extra 5 to 10 percent of time to your commute.

Link: Study: Drivers on Cells Clogging Traffic (NYT/AP)

So why isn't this illegal yet?  Or why aren't there at least some public awareness campaigns?  Addressing this doesn't necessitate "banning every driver distraction known to man," as some silly libertarians would have us believe.

p.s. The Reuters article about the study is a little more detailed (and colorful):

If you're late for work, a driver using a cell phone may be to blame. U.S. researchers said on Wednesday that people who use cell phones while behind the wheel impede the flow of traffic, clog highways and extend commute times.

"It's a bit like breaking wind in the elevator. Everyone suffers," Peter Martin of the University of Utah's Traffic Lab said in a telephone interview.

Prior studies have equated the risk of driving while talking on a cell phone with driving while drunk. Some 50 countries have banned use of hand-held phones while driving.

Link: Cell phone users tie up traffic (Yahoo/Reuters)

Amy Borkowsky's "Cellibacy" Project

Comedian Amy Borkowsky is giving up her cell phone for 60 days, starting January first, and writing about it at her web site.  From the intro:

On January 1st, Borkowsky will attempt to ring in 2008 with a lot less ringing, as she officially turns off her cell phone service for sixty days, becoming America’s first advocate for moderation in cell phone use. [...]

“I’m doing this because I really question how being so dependent on my cell phone is affecting my quality of life.”

Like a lot of people, she wonders how it evolved from a smart thing to have in an emergency to something convenient for outgoing calls but not essential, to such a constant attachment to her ear that “my face practically has a tan line in the shape of the VX8300.”

Link: Cellibacy, via textually.org.

Top 10 privacy threats of 2007 (Slate)

William Saletan at Slate lists his Top science-and-technology privacy threats of 2007.  A few (numbers 2, 3, and 4: the wars on smoking, trans-fats, and salt) seem like a bit of a stretch.

Texting while driving kills

From the Boston Globe:

The man accused of killing a 13-year-old boy in a hit-and-run in Taunton told police he was behind the wheel typing a text message on his cellphone when he lost control of the sport utility vehicle and hit what he thought was a mailbox, a prosecutor said today in court.

Craig P. Bigos, 31, told investigators that he did not realize the SUV had struck the boy on the bicycle until he drove back down Poole Street hours later on his way to work at a restaurant, said Bristol County prosecutor Aaron T. Strojny.

Link: Man texting while driving when he hit Taunton teen with SUV, prosecutor says

via Engadget.

Sickened Residents Force Closing of Mobile Operator's Antenna

From HDR Japan:

NTT DoCoMo Kansai, Inc. has decided to remove an antenna base station for mobile phones after local residents complained of health problems that they claim are attributable to the electromagnetic waves emitted from the station.

[...] residents near the area started to suffer from health problems such as headaches, ear ringing and a rise in blood pressure and blood sugar levels after the antenna base station came into operation.

Link: Pressure from sickened residents forces mobile operator to tear down base antenna,

Via textually.org.

Scarlett Thomas on Print Is Dead

Novelist Scarlett Thomas reviews Jeff Gomez's Print Is Dead in the Guardian.  Some excerpts:

I've used computers since I was nine years old. I have word-processed every significant document I've ever written. I own an iPod (actually, two) and waste time on Facebook when I should be working. I even have a BlackBerry.  But in the frame of reference set out by this book, I am a living anachronism because I still cling to the "silly" and "old-fashioned" idea that when you want to read something important it's best to have it in front of you on a piece of paper, or in a book. Perhaps I hang out with too many old people, but I don't know anyone who wouldn't agree with me. [...]

The argument set out in this book is quite simple. Times have changed, and while old folk like me persist in buying CDs before putting them on our iPods, and using the Internet to buy, rather than experience, "content", there is something out there called "Generation Download" that does, like, everything on a computer, and will "ditch the hardback and head over to Facebook" because books are, like, not interactive enough, and too long, and have, like, "boring bits". Wouldn't it be great if books could be freed from their restrictive old dustjackets and people could download only the bits of them they want (the maypole scene from Fanny Hill perhaps?) and carry whole libraries of these bits on their iPhones and "experience" – or even shuffle – this "content" whenever and wherever they want? [...]

Do these brats really exist? I've never met one. Perhaps they all live in America. But if they do exist, surely we don't want to reinvent books to please them?

Link: Print Is Dead (review) (via Bookslut)

I don't think this weakens Thomas's point, but it seems like those brats exist in Japan, actually: In Japan, cellular storytelling is all the rage (Sydney Morning Herald, via TechCrunch).

Scarlett Thomas's novels are excellent, by the way.  I particularly recommend PopCo.

Amazon's Kindle: Two Steps Back

Book designer extraordinaire Chip Kidd comments on the design of Amazon's Kindle:

[...] books were always physical objects, and the printed book as a piece of technology has yet to be improved upon. And won’t. Certainly not by something that looks like a prop from Charlie’s Angels and has, are you ready, a whopping ONE typeface. For everything! Yay! For further explanation as to why this is doomed, go to Amazon’s own website and read Kindle’s Customer Reviews. Ouch. Caveat emptor!

Link: A Brief Message, illustration above by Mike Essl.

Valleywag points to a big flaw in Amazon's Kindle magazine subscriptions: the device can't display pictures worth crap.  They quote a reviewer:

This is a rather embarrassing electronic version of Time Magazine. There are NO pictures, no charts, no illustrations. Instead whenever you run into an article that has these in any decent amount, they've inserted an entry telling you to go get a PDF or print version. The salvation here is that their MOBILE web site at least has some images (even if impossibly small) and seems better formatted and organized. It looks and feels like some cheap RSS reader collected this rather than being an electronic version of the magazine.

Valleywag continues:

Kindle supporters may be willing to overlook this flaw, but Amazon cannot afford to. Amazon is depending on subscription revenues derived mostly from newspapers, magazines, and blogs to subsidize its free Internet connectivity. If image-rich content, including most magazines, fail to catch on, it could be a serious blow to Amazon's plans to make Kindle profitable.

Link: Kindle e-book reader not a good e-magazine reader.

See also this design dissection by Thibault Sally: Bookishness.

E-ink/e-paper has been hyped for years now and I don't quite get it.  To my layperson's eye it's just a high-resolution LCD without a backlight.  Plus it's slow to update, and it goes black every time you flip a page.  LCD's have always been crisp; so now we have a smooth, rounded typeface instead of segmented character displays -- big deal.  And I used to have a late 80's mac portable that had the 'innovation' of not having a backlight, and that was just an irritation.  (Kindle's white plastic design is also reminiscent of the mac portable.)

I think e-books will have their place, especially for commuters and others on the go, but Apple is a lot closer to a usable solution with the iPhone and iPod Touch.  They've got beautiful screens and good interfaces.  E-books at the iTunes store can't be long in coming now.

The Future: Mobile Phones Required for Parking?

The "Mobile (phone) Wallet" trend is big in Japan and elsewhere, and is now making it to the US.  San Francisco, where I live, recently started a pilot program for using your phone to pay for parking meters (San Francisco Sentinel).  The photo here is from Christian Lindholm's blog and shows parking meters in an area of London.  I can certainly see the convenience of this for parking meters, though what about people who don't have a cell phone?  That's a dwindling population, to be sure, especially in Europe, but plenty of people in the US don't want or need them or can't afford them.

Aside from parking, using a phone for payment sounds like more trouble than it's worth.  I'd still have to carry my wallet, so what's the point?

Accident & Crash: The smell of driving while talking on the phone

This is a new print ad campaign from the Czech republic.  Apparently it says "Don't talk over the phone while you drive.  Crash and Accident, the new fragrances for silly people."

Via textually.

Student Laptops and Neck Pain

The Ergonomics Society in the UK has recently published a study saying that poor ergonomics and poor posture are leading to increasing neck, back, and wrist pain in students.  Excerpt from their site:

The Ergonomics Society is appealing to parents to slip a safe usage pamphlet, by ergonomist Rachel Benedyk, into their son or daughter’s laptop case before they leave for university. The Society is also mailing out posters to universities to highlight the issue once the students are back on campus.

Research carried out by Rachel and her team at UCL (University College London) discovered that 57% of respondents to their survey had experienced aches & pains as a result of their laptop use, with 7% having pain a lot of the time. However, “an overwhelming majority were unaware of ergonomic guidance on using laptops”.

Link: Laptops -- a pain in the neck?

They've also published a leaflet of laptop advice for students (pdf)
and a poster (pdf), pictured above.

(Via Usability News.)

Shoppers Step Over Stabbing Victim, Take Cellphone Photo

From the AP:

As stabbing victim LaShanda Calloway lay dying on the floor of a convenience store, five shoppers, including one who stopped to take a picture of her with a cell phone, stepped over the woman, police said.

The June 23 situation, captured on the store's surveillance video, got scant news coverage until a columnist for The Wichita Eagle disclosed the existence of the video and its contents Tuesday.

Police have refused to release the video, saying it is part of their investigation.

"It was tragic to watch," police spokesman Gordon Bassham said Tuesday. "The fact that people were more interested in taking a picture with a cell phone and shopping for snacks rather than helping this innocent young woman is, frankly, revolting."

The woman was stabbed during an altercation that was not part of a robbery, Bassham said. It took about two minutes for someone to call 911, he said.

Calloway, 27, died later at a hospital.

Link: Police: Shoppers Stepped Over Victim.

Tuning Out Technology

From today's San Francisco Chronicle:

For Leda Dederich, there came a point about a year ago when she realized her life was overly shaped by technology. The manager of an Oakland-based online consulting firm for nonprofit groups, Dederich was a leader in her field, but she started feeling that high-tech culture was dramatically out of balance  --  "like a combination of a hamster wheel and an echo chamber."

Dederich, 36, is one of a growing number of information technology users and professionals who feel teched out. Gobsmacked by the information tsunami, overwhelmed by the ever-growing tide of technology must-haves and convinced that a matrix of communication instruments was insulating her from friends and family, Dederich took a sabbatical six weeks ago.

"I felt like the only way for me to recalibrate was to stop completely," said Dederich, an e-mail user since 1991 and a high-tech professional since 1994. "It's difficult to think outside the box when you're always in it, and the box is getting stronger and stronger."

Link: Tuning Out Technology.