Texting while driving is riskier than driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, a study has suggested.

The Transport Research Laboratory found that motorists who use their mobile phone to send text messages while on the road dramatically increase the likelihood of collision.

Their reaction times deteriorated by 35 per cent, much worse than those who drank alcohol at the legal limit, who were 12 per cent slower, or those who had taken cannabis, who were 21 per cent slower.

In addition, drivers who sent or read text messages were more prone to drift out of their lane, the research found, with steering control by texters 91 per cent poorer than that of drivers devoting their full concentration to the road.

This compared with a decline of 35 per cent by drivers under the influence of cannabis. The ability to maintain a safe distance from the vehicle in front also fell.

Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, which commissioned the research, said: “No responsible motorist would drink and drive. We need to ensure that text devotees understand that texting is one of the most hazardous things that can be done while in charge of a motor car.”

Despite it being illegal for a motorist to use a handheld phone behind the wheel, the RAC Foundation said that nearly half of British drivers aged between 18 and 24 admitted to texting on the roads. Yet only 144,000 people were prosecuted for using their mobile while driving last year.

During the study, the Transport Research Laboratory concluded that text messages took on average 63 seconds to compose while the phone owner was driving, compared with 22 seconds when sent from a desk.

In one minute, a car travels half a mile at town centre speeds and more than a mile on the motorway.

Nick Reed, lead researcher for the study, said: “This demonstrates how dangerous it is to drive and text. When texting, drivers are distracted by taking their hand off the wheel to use their phone, by trying to read small text on the phone display and by thinking about how to write their message.

“This combination of factors resulted in impairments to reaction time and vehicle control that place the driver at greater risk than having consumed alcohol to the legal limit for driving.”

The Department for Transport said: “Driving and mobile phones don’t mix. That is why we increased the penalty for illegally using a mobile when driving to three penalty points and a £60 fine and have run hard-hitting campaigns to remind drivers of the dangers of using a phone in any way by encouraging them to ‘Switch off before you drive off’.”

Last month the law changed so that motorists who cause a fatal accident while using a mobile phone can be jailed for up to five years. Previously the maximum punishment for similar crimes was a £5,000 fine and points on the driver’s licence.

It's very easy to lose the plot

Vodka is not a good idea if you are about to get behind the wheel. But yesterday The Times knocked one back and climbed into a Honda Civic.

Stationary in the Transport Research Laboratory at Wokingham, Berkshire, the vehicle simulated driving conditions: I wanted to know whether texting while driving is more distracting than drink-driving. Motion sensors and computer graphics created a realistic motorway route.

Just within the drink-driving limit, I stuck to the middle lane, worried about veering off. I noticed once or twice that I had exceeded the speed limit. I had previously done the course sober but texting on a mobile. I drifted out of my lane, and was surprised to see cars coming up from behind. Sometimes my foot came off the accelerator when I typed a message.

Nick Reed, of the laboratory, said: “When people are texting, they tend to be aware of the impairment to their driving but not aware how great that is. With alcohol, the driver is not aware of the impairment. You had misplaced confidence when you had had a drink and were often up to 80mph. When you were texting, you were wandering across the lane. And your reaction times were slower.

“You understood that drink-driving is a serious risk but had less understanding about the dangers of texting.”

 

 

 

LAHORE: Two brothers chopped a 32-year-old drug addict to death because of his addiction and misdemeanour towards their mother in Shahdara Town police precincts on Thursday.

The victim, identified as Amjad, a resident of Danday Waddan, was a drug addict and he used to quarrel with his brothers and mother in order to get money from them for his addiction. On Wednesday night, the deceased had another quarrel with his brothers over the same issue, resulting in them chopping Amjad to death with several strokes of an axe.

The victim received serious wounds and succumbed to his injuries at the hospital while the accused brothers managed to escape. Police registered the case and filed a case against the accused brother on the victim’s mother’s complaint.

According to Shahdara Town Police Station Station House Officer Abdul Sattar, during preliminary investigations, the deceased’s addiction was proven. He said that they had searched the deceased’s room at the house and had found drugs in it, adding that the deceased was the eldest among his nine brothers and sisters. He said that the father of the deceased is blind. He added that the suspected murderers used to earn the family’s livelihood.

 

WASHINGTON—Federal legislation mandating parity for mental health care benefits may have new life again and could be taken up by the Senate this week.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, Tuesday announced a bipartisan agreement on a broad energy and tax extender bill that also includes mental care benefits parity provisions that congressional negotiators earlier agreed to but which haven't received a final vote.

Sen. Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Grassley, the ranking minority member, said the measure could be voted on this week.

Mental health care benefits parity legislation has taken many twists since the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee early last year passed a parity bill. Later, the House and Senate both passed parity bills, and congressional negotiators later ironed out the differences between them.

But the compromise bill never was voted on by the House and Senate, and an effort this summer to include the measure as part of a broader energy bill faltered when the Senate—for reasons unrelated to the parity provisions—declined to take up the energy bill. Most provisions of the parity bill would be effective Jan. 1, 2010. The bill would require group health care plans to provide the same coverage for mental disorders as is provided for physical ailments.

That would be a significant change from current law enacted in 1996 that bars only discriminatory annual and lifetime dollar limits on coverage of mental disorders. Discrimination, though, is permitted in other ways. For example, it is legal for a health plan to limit how many annual outpatient visits for treatment of mental disorders it will cover, while imposing no comparable limit on other medical conditions.

 

NEW DELHI (AFP) — Indian pharmaceutical company Ranbaxy, which has had dozens of drugs blocked by the US over safety fears, announced Thursday it had signed up former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani as a lobbyist.

Ranbaxy said it had hired Giuliani to "provide advice and review compliance issues" after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an import ban on drugs manufactured at two of the company's factories in India.

The US regulators blocked import of more than 30 Ranbaxy drugs after discovering "deficiencies in its drug-manufacturing process."

It said hiring Giuliani, who was mayor of New York at the time of the September 11 attacks, demonstrated its wish to meet US regulators' demands.

"In announcing the addition of Mayor Giuliani, Ranbaxy reiterated its commitment to work cooperatively with the FDA," the generic drugs giant said.

Ranbaxy spokesman Raghu Kochar said Giuliani had been engaged for "his strong reputation and great professionalism."

Ranbaxy, which is being bought by Japan's Daiichi Sankyo, earlier said it was deeply disappointed by the FDA's move, which caused its shares to fall as much as 10 percent on Wednesday.

The FDA said it did not plan to remove drugs already in shops because it had no evidence that Ranbaxy -- one of the main suppliers of generic drugs to the US -- had shipped defective products.

"We are sending a clear signal that drug products intended for use by American consumers must meet our standards of safety and quality," said Janet Woodstock, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, on Tuesday.

FOND DU LAC, Wis. - Talk about a Big Mac attack! Don Gorske says he has eaten 23,000 of the burgers in 36 years.

The Fond du Lac man said he hit the 23,000 milestone last month, continuing a culinary obsession that began May 17, 1972, and is fed by his obsessive-compulsive disorder.

“I enjoy them every day,” said Gorske, 54. “I need two to fill me up.”

Gorske has kept every burger receipt in a box. He says he was always fascinated with numbers, and watching McDonald’s track its number of customers motivated him to track his own consumption.

Despite a diet some would call unhealthy, Gorske says he keeps himself in good shape. He says he’s 6-foot-2 and weighs 185 pounds, and walks as many as 10 miles a day.

He used to order fries every day in the 1980s but began to cut back in the ’90s, now eating them about once a month. He eats two Big Macs and two parfaits a day. Gorske has written a book about his experience.

'I'm not going to change'
“Sometimes people call me a freak but it doesn’t bother me. I just say respect people as they are,” he told The Associated Press. “I just want to make sure people understand I’m not going to change.”

He can instantly recall the eight days in which he failed to satisfy his craving. One was in 1988, the day his mother died, to respect a request she made.

“I made a promise to her and I always keep my promises,” he said. “I also promised her I wouldn’t cut my hair and in 20 years I haven’t.”

He twice failed to attack a Big Mac because of his job. A correctional-institution employee, he said a number of work emergencies kept him on the clock past midnight so he recorded those days as missed days.

Three other times he was traveling and couldn’t find a McDonald’s. He also went Big Mac-less on Thanksgiving Day 2000, and during a 1982 snowstorm that prevented the local McDonald’s franchise from opening.

“That’s when I started a habit where I kept them in the freezer,” he said. He keeps one or two burgers on hand but increases his inventory to four to five during the winter.

 

 

The cold shoulder is more than just a metaphor. A new study found that social isolation can actually make people feel cold.

Researchers wanted to learn just how icy loneliness can get. So two University of Toronto psychologists, Chen-Bo Zhong and Geoffrey Leonardelli, asked some subjects to remember a time when they felt socially excluded, such as being rejected from a club, while others recalled memories of being accepted into a group. Afterward, the researchers asked all the participants to estimate the temperature of the room, telling them this task was unrelated to the previous activity and that the building's maintenance staff simply wanted to know.

While estimates ranged from 54 degrees Fahrenheit to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, in general, those who had been remembering emotionally chilly times also literally felt chillier, even though the room's temperature remained constant during the experiment. People who had recalled feeling ostracized estimated the temperature to be about 71 degrees Fahrenheit, on average. Participants who were remembering the warm, fuzzy feeling of social inclusion felt the room to be a balmy 75 degrees Fahrenheit, on average. The discrepancy is a statistically significant difference, Zhong said.

"We found that the experience of social exclusion literally feels cold," Zhong said. "This may be why people use temperature-related metaphors to describe social inclusion and exclusion."

Craving hot coffee
In a second experiment, Zhong and Leonardelli had participants play a computer-simulated ball-tossing game in which some people were passed the ball more often than others, so some volunteers felt included and others felt excluded. Afterward, the participants had to rate the appeal of various foods and beverages, such as hot coffee, crackers, an ice-cold Coke, an apple and hot soup.

The unpopular players were much more likely to hanker for warm items such as soup and coffee than those who had just felt socially accepted. The findings imply that participants who had been feeling left out were also literally feeling left out in the cold, and wanted the warm foods to heat them up.

"It's striking that people preferred hot coffee and soup more when socially excluded," Leonardelli said. "Our research suggests that warm chicken soup may be a literal coping mechanism for social isolation."

The study is detailed in the September issue of the journal Psychological Science.

The researchers speculate that this link between temperature and social inclusion might arise when people are babies.

"For an infant, being closer to a caretaker brings warmth," Zhong said. "When you're a kid, being held by your mother means warmth, and being distant means coldness."

This connection continues throughout life, since when a person is in a room with 10 other people, the ambient temperature is warmer than when in a room alone.

"When we talk about metaphors, they're not just language; they're literally the way we experience the world," Zhong told LiveScience.

This finding fits well with a previous study of Zhong's, in which he asked people to recall a time when they were morally challenged and did something they feel guilty about. Afterward, those people felt a greater need for physical cleansing, such as washing their hands.

"Social experience and physical experience actually overlap to a great extent," Zhong said.
Our social perceptions are not always abstract, but include other information such as bodily perception."