MythBusters and HTF... (2 Viewers)

[Francois Caron]

Maybe Scottie is overwhelmed by the workload at her regular job and couldn't be part of the latest episodes. After all the show is most likely only a small part of their normal duties. Jamie still has to run a special effects company when the show is not filming.

 

[Citizen87645]

Just found this interview with Kari with some decent pics:

http://www.joe-mammy.com/pages/featu...kari-byron.htm

 

[Paul McElligott]

FYI: Adam and Jamie will be on the Letterman Show on Monday, 5/23.

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

Looks like they are back on track. A show with some good myths tackled.

The breaking the crystal glass with your voice was amazing especially in ultra slowmo with it vibrating like jello. Even if you can't actually break it, just making a straw in it dance around is cool enough as well.

I like them proving/disproving old proverbs as well. Roll on you mossless stone!

 

[Paul McElligott]

Just a reminder. Jamie and Adam on Letterman tonight. Along with Paul Newman and IndyCar racer Danica Patrick.

 

[MarkHastings]

After the rolling stone segment, I figured she was back, but since that took over 6 months, it was obviously filmed last year (at least). She didn't, however, show up during the "wrap up" to the experiment, so it does appear she may not be involved anymore...at least not on camera.

 

[Jeff_CusBlues]

On the Brown Noise issue, I'm an engineer at a weapons contractor and due to site consolidations, our site took over a program that had the Brown Noise as one feature. I never knew it was a myth. This system had bowl loosening as a requirement and it was designed to do such. We never tested it at our site though so I can't say for sure that it worked as advertised, but the government was buying the system. It was certainly the "BUTT" of many jokes.

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

Just watched Letterman. They just had them outside putting together balloons to lift someone up like they did on the show. Very very little talking with the guys. They did lift Paul Newman up though. Was looking forward to an interview session with them.

That Danica girl is hot though. Wowzers! :b

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

Last nights episode was interesting. I don't think I want to be in an airplane crash anytime soon. Dang that looks like it smarts, with your legs snapping like twigs and all. Never thought that the 'brace position' was considered a conspiracy to kill you. Makes sense in that morbid evil big business way, but incase you wondering it was proved false. Brace position does help...your neck at least.

Wish they tried handsfree cell phones. That shouldn't be any different than talking to a passenger, one would think.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

You might want to avoid car accidents as well, then. Even in the safest cars the front seat passengers tend to suffer feat and ankle injuries. That's still one of the areas they're working on.

And yeah, I thought the whole cell phone test was bogus. Who takes a math, logic or memory test on a hand-held cell while driving an obstacle course with a guy at your elbow grading your every move? Can we get a little further from real life? What? No fireworks going off in the back seat?

Even when I had only had a hand held cell I never drove the way they were doing it. If they'd had Adam shaving or what's 'er name putting on makeup they would have been just as distracted/ineffective because lots of inappropriate action behind the wheel is always a problem. I dialed (if need be) mostly at stop lights or using speed dial codes by touch. I talked holding the phone loosely in my left hand. (I drive an automatic, so shifting wasn't an issue.) I drove first, spoke second - and was always prepared to say "Hold on" and drop the phone if something came up ahead tha required my full attention (and to skip the "Hold on" if necessary.)

Later I went to an external speaker and now mostly use a headset. I dial by pushing one button (without looking at the phone) and speaking a a voice tag. Again, I drive first and talk second. If I need to tell someone to repeat something, that's OK. I don't take tests or try to memorize things. Mostly I limit the conversations to necessary ones, and keep those as short as possible. (One exception: Friday afternoons in heavy traffic I like to call in to a local radio show that runs a trivia contest where they give away free movie passes to a really nice multiplex by my office. )

Under those circumstances I'm quite sure I'm not nearly as impaired as I would be with a couple of drinks in me. And much less that the people I actually have seen on the road putting on makeup, filling out paperwork, reading (!) and - in a truly amazing display - eating cold cereal and milk out of a normal plastic bowl with a metal spoon. I saw this as I was passing a car (I was doing about 45, she about 40) while driving right past the Sheriff's department headquarters.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Jerry Almeida]

I didn't have a problem with the cell phone test.

The questions were hardly challenging, and just meant to simulate normal conversation.

-If Sally is shorter than Mary, who's taller?
-Name five things in a car?

Not exactly MENSA type questions.

Aside from the parallel parking portion of the test, the "obstacle course" was pretty tame as well. Nothing really out of the ordinary. It's not like they were slaloming through cones.

-Get up to 30mph and break.
-Follow an almost circular course (it did have turns).
-The accident avoidal test.

Sure the test could have been more in depth, like using hand helds and stuff. But I think they did a good job of proving that basic cell phone use is pretty distracting, and in turn is potentially dangerous. I hope I don't sound anti-cell phone.

I've actually heard that people messing with radio's causes more accidents than cell phones. Searching for a better station or digging through cd's can be pretty distracting.

 

[Francois Caron]

First, it's possible hands-free is no different than handheld. The common element between the two is that the person you're speaking with doen't know the situation you're in, and you may tend to concentrate more on them than on your driving. When you have a passenger beside you, they know the situation you're in, and you wouldn't be as inclined to maintain the conversation during more "intense" maneuvers.

Second, I work for a computer firm and one of our associates is used to fielding support calls while driving. That's a math, logic AND memory test all rolled into one! Which is why when we're both heading to a client site in the same car, I drive and he yacks away.

The airplane crash tests were pretty revealing. However, I wonder how the test would have gone if you had a seat belt similar to what's normally found in a passenger car or even the five point harnesses system found in race cars. Would that help you at all in a vertical drop? Or would your spine suffer compression injuries from the G-forces?

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

That's true. The point being we'll never know because they did a basically shoddy test that didn't include the handsfree option. And a normal conversation about something you know intimately (like what you would typically say to a spouse, or even dealing with a tech support issue if that's what you do all day) is very different from the kind of questions and problems that they were posed. If you call me in my car and ask where on our system a given program is stored I have to use my memory to tell you the server name and path, but that isn't a "memory test" in the same sense the your reading me a list of items or a quotation over the phone and then expecting me to read it back word-for-word. (Perhaps I should have said "memorziation test" rather than "memory test".) I already know where most of the stuff on our network is, and I know the standardized naming conventions. so I'm just providing you with information I can retrieve with hardly a concious thought. (Even though our server names are typically 13 characters long, I only have to know the last two for a given server, because the first three indicate the state agency I work for, the next three the type of server, the three after that the sub-agency I'm with and the penultimate pair the county I work in. The final pair identify the particular server.)

So I still say that by their own standards the cell phone test was a poor one, because it left out way too many variables and did a poor job of duplicating real-world conditions. (They would have done far better to record a few minutes of actual shop talk among the other members of the staff for a few days and then played back an edited tape with quesitons and comments that the two could respond to rather than read them completely alien bits of prose or pose silly problems for them to solve.)

Regards,

Joe

 

[Paul McElligott]

With hands-free you are not concentrating on holding the phone while driving with one hand. That's gotta make a difference.

 

[MarkHastings]

While I agree that the cell phone test was pretty bogus, I do think they should have done a hands-free run through as well. It definitely seemed like using one hand was the main culprit for the 'bad' driving.

And as others mentioned, it's unfair to compare only cell phones with drunk driving since there are SO many other activities that are just as distracting. Someone mentioned heated discussions with a spouce, but there's also the guy who's banging his head to a rockin' tune on the radio, the woman applying makeup, the morning commuter with the donut and coffee, etc. etc. etc.

I am glad that Adam brought up the point about the driver being in control of the "distraction" (i.e. cell phone conversation) whereas you can't control your drunkenness. I think most of us put down the phone (or interrupt the conversation) when you have to make a crazy move with your car.

In that respect, I would have liked to see the same test done where the driver was more in control of the conversation. Adam and Kari had no choice but to answer Jamie's questions while performing their maneuvers. If they were in "real world" conditions, they may have stopped concentrating on the conversation and payed more attention to the road.

So this test proves what I've always said about bad drivers on cell phones: Cell phones don't make you a bad driver, those people are already bad drivers to begin with. If you're a good enough driver, you can handle the distraction of a cell phone. But if you're the type that can't drive WITHOUT any distraction, then you shouldn't be driving while on the phone.

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

I wonder if they got a lot of heated emails over this myth.

I usually try not to talk on the cell while driving and don't have a handsfree kit. But when I do talk, I usually zone out of the conversation anyway and concentrait more on the road. I would be interested in taking a simular test to see how good I could do as I'm sure most here would.

The only time I freak myself out in a car is when I get into some deep thought and snap out of it only to realize that I can't remember driving the past 5 miles. What's that all about?

 

[Martino]

There was a whole article on this issue from ABC News:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=463588

With the highlight being:

"If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell phone, his reaction times are the same as a 70-year-old driver," said David Strayer, a University of Utah psychology professor and principal author of the study. "It's like instant aging."

And it doesn't matter whether the phone is hand-held or handsfree, he said. Any activity requiring a driver to "actively be part of a conversation" likely will impair driving abilities, Strayer said.

In fact, motorists who talk on cell phones are more impaired than drunken drivers with blood-alcohol levels exceeding 0.08, Strayer and colleague Frank Drews, an assistant professor of psychology, found during research conducted in 2003. "

 

[Alf S]

I wish they would do a whole episode about the cable wars we have on sites like this...

"1's and 0's is all it is man!"
"Wal Mart cables are terrible!"
"I swear the noise floor lowered when I froze all my components!"

You get the idea...

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Still ignoring too many variables, this time age. A 20 year old is also more likely to speed, change lanes without signalling and fail to wear a seatbelt. In short, 20 year olds tend to be less responsible and less attentive drivers. I'd be interested in seeing the comparable figures for 30 year old, 40 year olds and 50 year olds, who still have motor skills and are apt to focus more on the task at hand. (I'd also be interested in studies where a front seat passenger, rear-seat infant, music source and food were substituted for the cell phone in all age groups. I think the levels of distraction and impaired driving would tend to correlate with other factors much more that with cell phone use, but we'll never know until somebody does a truly adequate study - which from what I've seen, nobody has. Who designs this crap?)

Regards,

Joe

 

[MarkHastings]

I agree with Joe. Too many other variables to consider...Yes - It all has to do with how you pay attention to the road. I would argue that most people (who are considered "bad drivers" when they talk on the cell phone) are also bad drivers when they AREN'T on a cell phone.

The fact that these "tests" show they are worse when talking on the cell phone, is because when they are taking the test (and not on the phone) they are purposely concentrating to pass the test. If you observed them on the road, I'd bet they'd be driving a lot worse than during the test.

In other words, cell phones only make you a bad driver if you allow the conversation to distract you. Most people allow this distraction and that's what makes them a bad driver.

So like I said before, if you're a bad driver when you talk on the cell phone, you are most likely a BAD driver when you're not even on the phone.