Bluetooth Fairy

I consider the Bay Area to be the forefront of the Western Tradition–in that it is here that a lot of the technological and scientific advancements are first tested and implemented into daily life.  There are some 6,000 tech companies in the San Jose, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara region.  For years Tech start ups have sprouted and taken root like the California poppy along the highways.  So it’s no real wonder that, in a spread in Forbes Magazine, I learned the National Science Foundation dubbed San Jose as the geekiest place to live.  And I love it…

Life is great but traffic is impossible on 101 and 280 as early as 8 am, so I hit the ancient Monterey Highway heading due north from the warehouse and merge onto Market Street which dissects the heart of downtown San Jose.  The business men and women bustle about, coffee in hand; cars and vans line up at a red light on the corner of 1^st and Divine Street to wait for the Light Rail to take workers South.  It seems to me that a lonely moment in Silicon Valley is rare.  The desire for communication is constant:  thumbs ready to text, email, or twitter; social networking is a click away on an “app.”; Bluetooth is engaged and inserted in ear, waiting for the first call of the morning.  When the State passed a law in 2008 to ban the use of cell-phones while driving, industry took off to solve the problem.  The solution came quickly and out came a hands-free device that allows a driver to talk without having to simultaneously juggle a phone and steering wheel.  It seemed to me that we exchanged one danger for another.  Have we freed our hands but tangled our brains with radiation?  I pick up a call from my boss with a simple touch of my forefinger to my ear.  He tells me I’ve been re-routed; so I head to Milpitas first before my usual stops on North First Street.  I wonder to myself, if you have this device imbedded in your ear all day everyday like I do, there must be some consequences to your inner-ear or brain, right?  Well, so far there is no definitive research that shows using a Bluetooth wireless device causes any adverse health effects.  Phew…   Turns out, we are constantly bombarded by radiation from electromagnetic fields (or EMF’s), from the sun, radio, your laptop, Wi-Fi, your cell phone—all directly hitting our bodies unaware and without damage.  So, no immediate danger there, however, the more I pressed the more research I found about the dangers of talking and driving.  Are we as good at multi-tasking as we thought? 
                The danger of the Bluetooth is not physical but psychological.  Unfortunately using a Bluetooth doesn’t exempt you from the dangers of talking and driving; I guess it hasn’t really solved the problem of distracted drivers.  Actually the risk is about the same.  Anyone could do a Google search and figure that one out, but I still needed to know why can’t we talk and drive like we can chew gum and walk?  And how exactly are our driving skills impaired?   Research by Levy et al. from UC San Diego confirmed the hypothesis formed a half century ago that our brains can only take so much central cognitive processing at once, the central-bottle neck hypothesis: certain mental operations cannot be preformed in parallel.  Levy et al. found that the implications for driving are profound. Albeit they used a driving-simulator and real life experience on the road could produce different results, even the simplest reaction task (telling whether they heard or saw a stimulus once or twice) delayed the driver’s breaking ability.   They observed that the simple driving task of braking was delayed because their attention was shifted to concentrate on responding to the simple stimuli, even if it was for a few milliseconds.  But these milliseconds can add up fast:  if I am traveling on Route 87 back to the warehouse at 65 mph, a delayed reaction could cost me 16 feet, a distance that could separate life and death.  So if something simple like determining whether you heard a sound once or twice, or whether or not the window of the car in front of you turned from black to white once or twice, delays your breaking ability then I can’t imagine what yucking-it-up with a friend or arguing with a loved-one could do to your reaction time on the road.   In a series of tests, Harvard Medical School psychologist Todd Horowitz found that it seems it is not just listening or using your vocal cords but the very act of conversing that distracts you the most, the back and forth.  Thinking of what to say next lessens your ability to react and avoid the stalled car ahead of you, not just the simple acts of speaking or listening. 

So does this mean we shouldn’t talk and drive?  Not necessarily.  It just means that you shouldn’t get into deep conversations and avoid arguments while you are driving.   Unfortunately for me, this excludes calling into Science Friday on KWED to ask a question.  Keep the car talk to simple, basic communication:  “Hey, I’m running late”, or “I’m running to the store, need anything?”; the less involved the conversation, the safer.  Try not to discuss black holes or the tower of Babel or anything too deep with a friend when you are driving.

I am almost to Route 237 when my boss rings me back: “Hey, scratch the stop in Milpitas, continue on your regular route”.  Instead of asking about the cancellation or who picked up the stop, I respond “Ok, 10-4”, and continue up North First Street.