The U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a series of papers, one of which, Association Between Cellular-Telephone Calls and Motor Vehicle Collisions notes:

The risk of a collision when using a cellular telephone was four times higher than the risk when a cellular telephone was not being used. The relative risk was similar for drivers who differed in personal characteristics such as age and driving experience; calls close to the time of the collision were particularly hazardous; and units that allowed the hands to be free offered no safety advantage over hand-held units.

Another paper from the DoT, The Impact of Internal Distraction on Driver Visual Behavior highlights the hypothesis (yet to be tested in that forum) that increased complexity in processing non-visual stimuli leads to a direct reduction of visual processing ability:

It is known from past research (e.g., Miura, 1990) that patterns of visual search may be influenced by environmental complexity, such as that available in the road scene. There is also evidence that visual search behavior may be influenced, not only by the external environment, but also by factors internal to the person, such as the cognitive complexity of an ongoing task. Recently, Recarte & Nunes (2000) measured eye fixations while driving. They reported that drivers’ visual functional-field size was reduced (vertically and horizontally) when drivers performed a demanding cognitive task while driving.

According to the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, “the use of cell phones by drivers may result in approximately 2,600 deaths, 330,000 moderate to critical injuries, 240,000 minor injuries, and 1.5 million instances of property damage in America per year.” A particularly telling quote comes from University of Utah psychology professor David Strayer: “If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell phone, their reaction times are the same as a 70-year-old driver who is not using a cell phone. It’s like instantly aging a large number of drivers.”

The problem seems to be quite simple: competing stimuluses rob our brains of the processing power to focus attention on driving, primarily a visual-motor task. The solution, I believe, comes from video games and the air force: HUD displays. If we can collapse all of the tasks we want to perform into a single visual field, motorists will be able to keep their focus on driving. There are lots of ways for technology to assist driving, if voice recognition can be used to direct navigation, with a display directly on the dash, if communications were built into the vehicle, and with additional range-sensing equipment to recognize and highlight obstacles and dangers.

BMW has already begun building heads-up-displays (HUD) into their cars:

Next-generation HUDs will wraparound the entire windshield and contain more, higher-density information. Cars should have the ability to highlight aspects of their surroundings and obstacles to the driver, or take corrective action in their own right. With a HUD to handle coherent output, and good voice-recognition to handle input, drivers will no longer be distracted by outside stimuluses when driving.

A proposed Settlement is pending in a class action entitled Milliron v. T-Mobile USA, Inc., No. 08-04149(JLL) (ES) in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. The lawsuit alleges that T-Mobile violated state and federal laws by charging customers a flat-rate early termination fee (”ETF”) in its wireless telephone service contracts. You are part of the lawsuit if you are a current or former T-Mobile wireless subscriber who paid or were charged a flat-rate ETF from July 23, 1999 to February 19, 2009, or if your contract for service included a flat-rate ETF from July 23, 1999 to February 19, 2009.

If you can prove you paid a flat-rate ETF, or T-Mobile’s records indicate you paid a flat-rate ETF, you may submit a Claim Form and receive up to $125.

You can go visit ETF-Settlement to read the details, and/or apply for a claim. I already did, as I received a postcard in the mail. However, if you meet the class-action criteria (pretty much anyone screwed by a T-mobile early termination fee), you should also fill out the form.

A source close to the company told Register Hardware that in order to maintain Aura’s glow of exclusivity, buyers will be required to “sign into a contract that states they can’t sell it on eBay”. The source added that if an Aura owner wants to sell their phone after they’ve bought it then they’ll only have one option: to sell it back to the manufacturer.

Presumably, each Aura sold will carry a unique id number, possibly above and beyond an IMEI code, that’ll be linked to a specific buyer. So should you shirk your contractual obligations and offer your handset for auction, then Motorola’s legal department will come knocking on your door.

I would think that reselling your own phone would be covered by the first sales doctrine or consumer protection laws. What do you think?

Apple, disgusted with Rogers Wireless for dumping egregious service plans on would-be iPhone 3G buyers, has decided that its Canadian retail stores will have no part in helping the carrier market the new handset to customers, AppleInsider has learned.

As a result, Canadian Apple Retail stores won’t be selling the new 3G touchscreen phones come Friday, representatives for the Cupertino-based company said during a private conference call on Monday evening. Instead, it will be up to Rogers and its partner Fido to lock subscribers into steep 3-year contracts that require a minimum monthly payment of $60 for just 150 minutes, 75 text messages, and 400MB of data.

So because Apple doesn’t like Rogers’ unfair pricing, they’re not going to sell their phones in Canada, with this snarky quote “We have nothing to do with the service plans. Those are Rogers’ plans.” On the other hand, iPhone Atlas suggests that Apple never intended to sell the iPhone 3G at any retail location, which would make this fight nothing but FUD.

The phone itself is little changed from its predecessors. It still has a full keyboard, GPS, and a bulky look. It is the first blackberry to support both GSM networks and the new HSDPA/UMTS (850/1900/2100). It also has a new half-VGA screen, at 480×320 with 64k color. A CNet reviewer said about the screen, “I was absolutely blown away. I can pretty much say I’ve never seen a better-looking display on a smartphone.”

Unfortunately, it’s still playing catchup to the iPhone. For Blackberry lovers, that might be enough. The new media player, the 3.5mm headphone jack bring it into iPhone’s territory. But, the thicker Blackberry Bold has significant battery problems, compared to the iPhone, and holds 8 times less media than the cheapest iPhone on the market. Will you be buying it?