Healthsifter by mary desmond pinkowish, since 2003

Shut Up and Drive: Even Hands-Free Cell Phones Cause Accidents

Wake Up! Shut Up! And read this terrific article by Katharine Mieszkowski at Salon.com about the dangers of yapping and driving. Healthsifter has discussed this before: Don't think you're driving safely just because you're using a hands-free device to talk on your cell. Human conversation uses a lot of brain resources. So does driving. It's tough to run both programs on your hard drive simultaneously, and driving usually suffers. Mieszkowski explains:

"Forty percent of your attention is drawn away when you're on the phone," says Marcel Just, a psychologist who directs Carnegie Mellon's Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging.That goes for you too, Mr. Multitasker.

In one experiment at the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging, a test subject lies down inside a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine, and uses a simulator to drive a car along a winding road, like playing a video game. While steering, the driver hears a voice in his earphones making statements, and has to decide whether they're true or false, while continuing to pilot the car. Listening and driving make demands on different parts of the brain. Yet, apparently, there are finite resources to go around. "You have two moderately automatic tasks, executing concurrently and drawing on the same resource pool," explains Just.

She goes on to explain how cell chatter may actually cause traffic jams and worsen rush-hour slow-downs. People deep in conversation with a valued client are less likely to pass a slow driver, for example.

Using a cell while driving is not your constitutional right! Get over yourself and pull over!

Cullen Jones, the Olympics, and Drowning Rates in African American Kids

Be sure to read this story about Cullen Jones in today's Wall Street Journal (you may need to register). The Olympic hopeful, a graduate of St. Benedict's Prep in Newark, NJ, and scholarship recipient at NC State, was a silver medalist in the 50-meter freestyle and a gold medalist in the 100-meter freestyle relay at the world championships. He heads to the Olympic trials in Omaha, Neb., next week. But he's also dedicated himself to the cause of reducing the rate of drowning deaths among African American children, who are three times as likely as white kids to drown, as reported by the Centers for Disease Control. Cullen Jones himself almost drowned as kid. Quoting here from the WSJ:

"If he gets to Beijing and excels there, Mr. Jones will provide the African-American community with a champion swimmer it can hold up as a symbol of the absurdity of old biases about blacks and swimming. Anthony Ervin's gold medal in the 50-meter freestyle race in Sydney didn't resonate in that way; he is one-quarter African-American.

The outdated stereotype remains powerful. Mr. Jones said members of his own family still ask him why he chose the sport.

"They'll say, 'Don't you know blacks don't swim?'" Mr. Jones says.

That thinking, combined with limited access to pools in poorer areas, has long jeopardized the safety of millions of African-American children. A study conducted this winter by researchers from the University of Memphis found that African-American and Hispanic children were six times more likely than Caucasian children to grow up in families where both the parents and the children don't know how to swim. And role models matter: In African-American families where parents can't swim, 91% of the children won't learn. In Hispanic and white families the number is closer to 70%."

Go Cullen!

Avoiding a Lightning Strike

It's only June 20th, but it seems like we've had an unusual amount of lightning already on the East coast, with a death in Connecticut two weeks ago. Get a quick review of lightning safety from the National Weather Service. 

Binge Drinking and Auto Accidents

Here's an interesting summary of the most recent analysis of binge drinking/auto crash statistics in the United States. It turns out that most drunk driving accidents are caused not by alcoholics per se, but by people who have been engaging in binge drinking, defined as 5+ drinks for men and 4+ drinks for women in a single session. The researchers estimate that 56 million boozy car rides annually are attributable to binge drinking. About 17,000 Americans will die in alcohol-injected car crashes this year. The researchers raise an issue about the court-compelled alcohol treatment programs that you may find yourself in after a drunk driving arrest. Most of these are geared to people who are alcoholics, not people who go binge drinking sometimes. Are the programs suitable for people who want to tie one on occasionally? (Granted, some binge drinkers eventually become alcoholics.) The journal Alcoholism Clinical and Experimental Research has the original research.  Check out this video on drunk driving simulators--quite ingenious. More on the many shades of alcohol use and abuse here.

Dangerous Texting

Time takes on the dangers of texting and walking this week. Some of this is kind of funny, but several states are thinking about making it illegal to text while riding a bike (who would do this????!!). Actually, it's undoubtedly an occupational hazard for bike messengers. Lots of states have outlawed texting while operating a motor vehicle. Remember the ghastly accident last summer in upstate NY? Texting was the possible cause of a car wreck that killed five young women just out of high school.