Anda kira yang membuat ngobrol via ponsel sambil mengemudikan kendaraan itu begitu berbahaya adalah karena sebelah tangan anda sibuk menempelkan ponsel di telinga?

Beberapa penelitian menunjukkan bahwa perangkat handsfree tidak membuat percakapan mobile anda lebih aman: mata dan pikiran anda tetap sama tidak awasnya terhadap kondisi lalu lintas serta obyek-obyek di jalan, dan waktu reaksi anda (terutama untuk menginjak rem) tetap lebih lambat. Dua hal ini, kalaupun tidak menyebabkan kecelakaan, turut menyumbang kontribusi pada kemacetan.

Yang paling aman tetaplah meminggirkan dan memberhentikan mobil ke tepi jalan kalau anda harus menjawab telepon penting.

Dan jangan berkilah bahwa anda sudah “terbiasa” atau “terlatih”, karena penyesalan itu biasanya datang terlambat setelah timbul korban.

Oh ya, ngobrol langsung dengan penumpang kendaraan sebenarnya juga mengurangi atensi pikiran si pengemudi, tapi itu tidak seberbahaya bicara lewat telepon karena si penumpang masih bisa ikut memperingatkan pengemudi jika ada sesuatu yang berpotensi membahayakan di depan jalan.

Sumber lain:
More Proof: Driving While Talking is Unsafe
Cell Phone Use Is a Major Cause of Traffic
Driving study deals blow to hands-free phones

clipped from tech.yahoo.com The latest research by Carnegie Mellon University questions hands-free laws, and whether their existence only gives drivers a false sense of safety. To test this theory, neuroscientist Marcel Just studied 29 volunteers who used a driving simulator inside an MRI brain scanner. The volunteers were tasked with driving a car along a virtual winding road, with and without distractions. Researchers found that drivers would hit the guardrail and veer out of the center of the lane more often when they tried to answer true or false questions. Brain scans of the distracted drivers showed brain activity decreased in areas that process visual and spatial information, functions that are crucial for navigation. Once again, this proved that participating in a conversation is all it took to reduce a driver’s focus on the road. As reported in This is London, Just concluded: Drivers need to keep not only their hands on the wheel, they  also have to keep their brains on the road.

Mungkin ini bisa menjawab pertanyaan mengenai mengapa orang yang berada dalam pengaruh alkohol lebih mudah diajak berhubungan seks.

Sejumlah ilmuwan di Inggris menemukan bahwa sukarelawan eksperimen mereka yang diberi minuman keras menilai foto-foto orang rata-rata 10 persen lebih atraktif dibanding sukarelawan yang diberi minuman biasa. Efek ini bahkan tetap terjadi ketika para sukarelawan yang heteroseksual semua itu diminta menilai foto-foto orang dari jenis kelamin yang sama dengan mereka.

clipped from www.livescience.com Scientists in England gave 84 heterosexual college students chilled lime-flavored drinks that were either non-alcoholic or given a dose of vodka equivalent in alcohol to a large glass of wine or a pint-and-a-half of beer. After 15 minutes, the volunteers were shown photos of 40 other college students from both sexes. Both men and women who drank booze found these faces more attractive, “a roughly 10 percent increase in ratings of attractiveness,” said researcher Marcus Munafo, an experimental psychologist at the University of Bristol in England. The researchers also asked volunteers to rate their mood, “and there were no differences on those measures in the alcohol group compared to the no-alcohol group,” Munafo added. “This suggests that the effect we observed wasn’t due to a general change in mood.” The discovery that the effect is not specific to the opposite sex was surprising. “It’s also surprising to see this effect is happening at lower doses than you might think,” Munafo said.