Using mobiles safely
26 May 2008
Mobiles have been blamed for many safety hazards in recent years, yet most of these are more about human error than the function of mobiles. As such, many people may simply be unaware of the safety concerns of mobiles. This article gives a rough outline of the hazards that mobiles can present as well as how they can be avoided.
Car safety with mobiles
Anything that takes your focus away from the road can contribute to accidents when driving, so it's little wonder that mobiles have copped some blame. It isn't the mobiles that cause the accidents, of course. Rather, people who should understand that mobiles divert their attention and make them more dangerous while driving feel they can multitask sufficiently.
The human brain is faulty when it comes to multitasking, as everything suffers due to split attention. If you've previously used mobiles while driving and found that you occasionally make mistakes in conversation, do you blame it on the fact you're driving? Imagine what that must mean for your driving, but would you blame your poor driving on talking? Probably not, but just as driving will make it harder to hold a conversation, holding a conversation makes it much harder for your brain to focus on driving.
Service station safety with mobiles
There are signs at many service stations that tell you to turn off mobiles, and this is due to concerns that sparks caused by mobiles could ignite gasoline vapours. There is little to no evidence to prove this, however, and static build up on cars is far more likely to produce a spark as well as faulty car wiring. This safety concern could possibly be a service stations and mobile phone manufacturers trying to cover themselves in case there really is a safety concern. In the end, the service stations have concerns about this, so it is certainly polite to follow their policy.
Aeroplanes and safety with mobiles
The reason given for passengers not being allowed to use mobiles on aeroplanes is usually that it can interfere with aircraft equipment. The concern is that mobiles could interfere with radio wave communication of the plane. Another reason that mobiles cannot be used on planes is due to the nature of communications towers. On the ground, the matter of which tower is closest is usually quite simple. In the air, however, many different towers could be considered closest which can lead to problems in mobile phone service.
Some airlines have begun experimenting with base station and antenna mobile phone technology to allow passengers to use mobiles while in-flight. Recently this year, a flight with Emirates allowed voice calls in flight for the first time, meaning safety concerns with mobiles on aircraft could be minimised in the near future. For now, be considerate and keep your mobiles turned off when on a plane or use the flight mode if your mobile phone has one.
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