Sweet but Illegal

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Originally Posted by Texas Proud

As for driving.. there is evidence that driving and talking on the phone, even with hands free device, is like being drunk and there IS a decline in their driving.

Cell-Phone Ban Not a Good Call

Read the actual study, because what that says is that there is a very minute delta between the response times of people at .08 BAC and people on a phone against someone who knows their driving skill is being measured. Thats not an effective measure of real world implications. Most people dont drive like they're on a simulator with a guy holding a clipboard standing next to them checking out how they're doing.

Some other really crappily done studies borrowed that punchline to 'study build' by combining other badly done studies with this one to create determinations that had very little basis.

Both the NHTSA and CHP have done extensive accident analysis and came to the conclusion that cell phones have no significant effect on accident rates.

I do believe a cell phone is a huge distraction for a lot of drivers who suck at it in the first place and arent paying attention most of the time. But I also remember plenty of drivers 20 years ago who sucked at it then, and there werent any phones. They were playing with the radio, sticking a cd in, eating, smoking, putting on makeup, reading, swatting at their kids in the back seat.

The point of my comments was that people are bored behind the wheel and are seeking a compensating amusement or distraction. Before there were phones, there were other things. The accident rate I mentioned pretty much confirms this. If cell phones were creating a huge distractive factor that was not present before, accident rates would be skyrocketing.

[Khan]

And then are are the folks who cradle the cell between the left shoulder and ear while smoking with the left hand.

I tend to give them a wide berth

[Moemg]

and then there are the folks who have their cell phone on speaker phone to quote Jerry Senfeld "What's up with that ?"

[travelover]

Originally Posted by youbet

............The FCC needs to find one of the jammer owners and make an example of them with a prosecution resulting in jail time.........

This would be ironic wouldn't it? We don't have enough law enforcement to stop people from freely issuing bogus cashier's check or stealing credit card numbers and buying unlimited free merchandise, 12 million illegal aliens, but we are gonna have agents chasing down jammer vigilantes?

You'll never take me alive!

[packrat44]

My DW says I am extremely hard to shop for at
Christmas time. I think I have found my present.

[ERD50]

Originally Posted by youbet

Ref using cell phones on planes........

If a cell phone has a component fail or change value or is mismanufactured in some way, it can generate spurious emissions called harmonics or parisitics.

You are right. I was thinking in terms of a properly working phone - that should not be a problem. But, we can't guarantee that.

Better safe than sorry at 30,000 feet ( or 100', or taxi-ing for that matter!).

-ERD50

[samclem]

Originally Posted by youbet

Ref using cell phones on planes........

If a cell phone has a component fail or change value or is mismanufactured in some way, it can generate spurious emissions called harmonics or parisitics. This results is the radiation of RF energy on unintended frequencies. You can't shield against it, it's on the actual frequency you want to receive.

The truth is that thousands of people travel every day with their cell phones on. If only 5% fail to comply with the requirement to turn them off (and I'll bet the number is at least that high), then there are gobs of them. The "control channel" of a cell phone which is turned on broadcasts even when a call is not in progress, so there's a lot of emitting going on already, right?

Shielding: It could be done, though RF shielding is notoriously tricky. First, any harmonics (worst case: on a navaid freq intended for aircraft use) generated by the cell phone will be much less powerful than the primary signal the phone is using. Second, all the signals the acft needs to get are coming from outside the aircraft. So, with a good ground plane, effective back lobe/side lobe suppression of the aircraft antennas, it could be accomplished. Cost--I don't know. But if harmonics of these phones could be a threat to air safety, then the problem should be addressed anyway, because those live transmitters are aboard planes by the thousands every day.

[youbet]

Originally Posted by samclem

so there's a lot of emitting going on already, right?

Not nearly as much as if there was a plane full of folks blabbing away along with the illegal jammers folks would bring along to try to stop them from blabbing away.

Shielding: It could be done, though RF shielding is notoriously tricky....... Cost--I don't know.

And you're going to pay for retrofitting thousands of existing airplanes? You're doing much better financially than you've let on here......

Anyway, until you get your wallet out and get all this done to the existing fleet and knowing that cell phones can be defective and radiate spurious emissions far in excess of spec, I'd rather not have dozens (100's ?) of them in use as a plane I'm in approaches the airport and folks are all calling to let folks know they're arriving...........

[Nords]

Originally Posted by youbet

I'd rather not have dozens (100's ?) of them in use as a plane I'm in approaches the airport and folks are all calling to let folks know they're arriving...........

"Oooh, we're on approach... we're crossing the runway apron... we're down!... we're taxiing... oh look at the view... what's the weather forecast?... uh-hunh... we're at the terminal... we're parking... here comes the ramp! Oh, I have to hang up now, someone wants me to get out of their way so they can get their luggage (ignorant people can be so rude!). Bye now, I'll call back when I'm inside the terminal!!"

[youbet]

Originally Posted by Nords

"Oooh, we're on approach... we're crossing the runway apron... we're down!... we're taxiing... oh look at the view... what's the weather forecast?... uh-hunh... we're at the terminal... we're parking... here comes the ramp! Oh, I have to hang up now, someone wants me to get out of their way so they can get their luggage (ignorant people can be so rude!). Bye now, I'll call back when I'm inside the terminal!!"

I was thinking of the small probability (on any one flight) of a technical/safety issue. But you're right Nords, the auditory/sanity threat would be there every flight......big time!

[RetireeRobert]

Originally Posted by dex

There are restaurants that are installing these devises.

I think a better devise would be one that interrupts the conversation with a message such as "Your conversation has been monitored and found to be offensive to those around you and stupid. You will be disconnected now."

I'll second that idea.

[RetireeRobert]

Originally Posted by Moemg

What scares me are the people chatting away and driving . I almost got hit two days ago by someone on a cellphone who ran a stop sign.

Those irresponsible b*str*ds. They ought to have their licenses revoked. Selfish, thoughtless people. They give no regard to the safety of others just because they feel some stupid need to carry on likely pointless conversations while driving. If a conversation is of enough import, they can take the time to pull off the road and stop before talking on the cell.

[ladelfina]

"Oooh, we're on approach... we're crossing the runway apron... we're down!... we're taxiing... oh look at the view... what's the weather forecast?... uh-hunh... we're at the terminal... we're parking... here comes the ramp! Oh, I have to hang up now, someone wants me to get out of their way so they can get their luggage (ignorant people can be so rude!). Bye now, I'll call back when I'm inside the terminal!!"

Nords, that is so true. About 90% of the cell calls I overhear are "where are you? I'm on the train / in the restaurant / in the square / in the supermarket / on the bus.." and once they spend 3 minutes describing and confirming their mutual whereabouts and describing everyone who's with them (people waiting for them to finish their call) they hang up, apparently satisfied.

CFB, I know there are other things people try to accomplish in their cars but perhaps they are not as commonly practiced and ubiquitous as cell phones, nor do they require the same quality of attention.

Drivers Ignore The Risk Of Mobile Phone Use

[Australia] In addition to talking on the phone 12% of drivers admit to writing text messages, while among young drivers, over 30% write text messages while on the road.

Cell Phones, Driving Don't Mix

A lot of people think talking on the cell phone while driving is natural, but each time someone asks a question or changes the subject, it's like taking on a new task," Lien said. "It requires a certain amount of thought and preparation. It's actually quite different than listening to the radio, where you don't need to respond.
"And it's also different from talking to a passenger in the vehicle," she added. "In most cases, a passenger can observe when there is a dangerous traffic situation and keep quiet. But someone calling you on a cell phone won't have a clue."
There are individual differences in the costs of multi-tasking, Lien said. In her lab studies, a typical response to a single stimulus might take 300 milliseconds. Adding a second task increases the response to about 800 milliseconds. A millisecond is 1/1000th of a second, so the delay may not seem like much – until you extend the difference to a car driving 60 miles an hour and realize the response rate more than doubles, Lien said.

Passengers, Not Just Mobile Phones, Contribute To Road Accidents

Earlier studies at The George Institute found that a driver's use of a mobile phone was associated with a four-fold increase in the likelihood of crashing.
The study's lead investigator, Dr Suzanne McEvoy, says that "carrying passengers in the car has a number of potentially distracting effects that also occur with mobile phone use while driving. Moreover, carrying passengers may have additional effects on the driver, including peer influence."
"Drivers with passengers were almost 60% more likely to have a motor vehicle crash resulting in hospital attendance, irrespective of their age group. The likelihood of a crash was more than doubled in the presence of two or more passengers.."

Now I won't feel guilty about snoozing in the car when DH is driving.

Maybe it'd be a good idea to use the jammer in the car if it has a decent range.. creating a cell-free driving zone.

[samclem]

Since cell phones automatically increase their transmitted power in order to reach the nearest cell tower, the amount of power put out by each phone would be at a minimum (compared to the situation now, where the phone that have inadvertently been left "on" try to search for nearby cells, all of which are at least 6 miles away.

Anyway, thankfully, the FAA has halted the investigation of technical issues surrounding the use of cell phones on aircraft. Thankfully, public response to the idea was so overwhelmingly negative (both the letters the FAA received and the responses to their surveys) that they've decided no further technical work was warranted. Woo-hoo!

[tightasadrum]

Maybe I'm locked in the past in some ways, but I long for the days when leaving the house or work meant no one could contact you. It just was not possible. I suppose I could just turn off the d**n thing like my wife does, ("Didn't I get you that thing so I could get hold of you?" "No. I have it for emergencies.") but will DD off at school, and wife needing to find me often , I leave it on unless I'm at some event. Still I find myself irritated every time it rings.

[Jay_Gatsby]

Originally Posted by tightasadrum

Maybe I'm locked in the past in some ways, but I long for the days when leaving the house or work meant no one could contact you. It just was not possible. I suppose I could just turn off the d**n thing like my wife does, ("Didn't I get you that thing so I could get hold of you?" "No. I have it for emergencies.") but will DD off at school, and wife needing to find me often , I leave it on unless I'm at some event. Still I find myself irritated every time it rings.

Here here! I get very irritated when DW calls and it's to tell me something completely inane that could have easily waited until I returned home (or waited forever, but that's just my opinion). I just seems like she absolutely must tell me something before she forgets to tell me, without regard to whether it's particularly important to me. In a nutshell, I simply don't like talking on the phone -- period.

Joe Walsh once sang: "Just leave a message, maybe I'll call".

[laurence]

I predict 20 years from now few people will even remember this debate. I find it annoying, but my younger siblings have absolutely no problem with calls, texting, whatever, anywhere at all, and pretty soon they'll be the only ones around!

I travel for business, and it's bizarre to me to see the plane taxi up to the gate, stop, here the <bong> of the fasten seat belt light turn off, and immediately see every person flip open a phone at the same time to let someone know the plane has landed. A little creepy, like a Pink Floyd video.

It's a brave new world. I bet there were hoards of people who couldn't stand the noise motorcars made driving through their town. Having said that, I'd love to see these devices installed in key locations like libraries and movie theatres.

[MasterBlaster]

If you are so inclined you can buy a personal jammer from a British company that will ship to the US.

they cost around $250-300 shipping to the us is around $36 and have a range of maybe 30 feet or so - The perfect range.

check out this site:

Cell phone jammers,cell phone detectors and other interesting gadgets

I don't have any personal experience with these devices but sometimes I just wish that I had some electronic justice.

The other (low texh) approach is to carry around a pocket full of rubber bands. When someone is talking really loud, then just shoot em in the face with one of your rubber bands. When they object just say... Oh was I annoying you ? When they start talking again on the phone just shoot em again. That should do the trick.