Clown study no laughing matter

As I reported on October 6, President Obama issued an executive order prohibiting federal employees from texting while driving. But that won’t cause much of a ripple in the vast sea of cell phone users focused on inane communication at the expense of public safety.

It seems some people believe that staying in your lane, stopping at red lights, and not running over pedestrians is secondary to making sure your teenager takes a package of chicken thighs out of the freezer.

Now here’s further evidence that cell phone use isolates people from society in other ways as well – it wraps them up in their own little cocoon of one-on-one communication, practically oblivious to what’s going on around them.

Ira Hyman, a professor of psychology at Western Washington University in Bellingham, put a clown on a unicycle and asked him to ride around campus. He then analyzed the reactions of students to find out who noticed the clown and who didn’t.

He found out that only 25 percent of students talking on their cell had noticed the clown, while more than half of students listening to iPods saw him. About 70 percent of those walking in pairs and chatting with friends took note of the unusual scene.

“If people experience so much difficulty performing the task of walking when on a cell phone, just think of what this means when put into the context of driving safety,” Hyman says. “People should not drive while talking on a cell phone.

“Cell phone use causes people to be oblivious to their surroundings while engaged in even a simple task such as walking. Cell phone users walk more slowly, change directions and weave more often and fail to notice interesting and novel objects.

“The effect appears to be caused by the distraction of a cell phone conversation, because people walking in pairs did not display the same range of problems.”

Details of the study will appear in the December issue of Applied Cognitive Psychology.

For more information and statistics on texting and driving, see my May 21 post, Sir, have you been texting tonight?

Photo: Western Washington University