Kindling While Driving

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Boston Blackie, Sherlock Holmes, and Johnny Dollar here. It's sad that so many were lost and never even recorded.

We are fortunate in the UK in having a radio station (BBC Radio 7) which is dedicated to playing old (and new) drama 24h a day from the BBC's enormous sound archives. I record lots of stuff from it to play on my iPod. Radio drama is still alive and well in Britain.

[yakuzaboss]

Originally Posted by omgnookftw

Kindling while driving -- Good or Bad? You decide.

Sorry, I couldn't get the embedded video to work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR1iUmq6ilA

Reply and tell me what you think.

Not a good idea. Stupid.

It's right up there with 'drinking and driving' and 'running with scissors'.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

We are fortunate in the UK in having a radio station (BBC Radio 7) which is dedicated to playing old (and new) drama 24h a day from the BBC's enormous sound archives. I record lots of stuff from it to play on my iPod. Radio drama is still alive and well in Britain.

But not as alive and well as it was a few years ago. There's still a lot of new drama produced, but there is a lot that has been cut to "save" money (while they spend millions on a new ident for BBC1 or some consultant that tells them putting coming next banners on during programmes is a good idea). World Service has stopped producing drama completely, doesn't even repeat any either.

There used to be a lot of radio drama made in Canada as well, but I haven't seen anything new on any of the radio download sites for quite a few years now.

[emellaich]

Originally Posted by RichyRich

I like listening to old radio shows while driving. Since they were created before TV existed, they had to allow you to mentally visualize what was going on by being very descriptive about the environment and with what was happening. Plus there are plenty of shows that are free to download. Currently, my two favorite shows are "The Shadow" and "The George Burns and Gracie Allen show".

Yes, I would do more of that, but I find the sound quality to be too poor for the ones that I have found. Too much hiss/static and boosting the volume just boosts the background noise. And, of course, the sound fidelity is not that rich to begin with.

Do you have a source for 'clean' recordings that you can recommend?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by emellaich

Yes, I would do more of that, but I find the sound quality to be too poor for the ones that I have found. Too much hiss/static and boosting the volume just boosts the background noise. And, of course, the sound fidelity is not that rich to begin with.

Do you have a source for 'clean' recordings that you can recommend?

That's what AM radio is like. It's a part of the "experience". Best source for old (US) radio programmes that I know of is the OTR section at www.archive.org

[EowynCarter]

I sometimes wonder why hands free are allowed while driving. I once tried to play Warcraft while phoning with the hand free, total disaster. So hand-free certainly distracted me.

When i get the driving license, i'll know better than using the hand-free.

[lene1949]

The drama is all on the road... When I drive home at 11pm at night, I often have STUPID people yelling at me or driving crazy.. and on holidays it gets even worse... with people wanting to interact, and get extremely peed off, when I don't...

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

I sometimes wonder why hands free are allowed while driving. I once tried to play Warcraft while phoning with the hand free, total disaster. So hand-free certainly distracted me.

When i get the driving license, i'll know better than using the hand-free.

That's kind of what some of the folks here are getting at. People can't really multitask - they can't concentrate effectively on more than one thing at a time. You can switch back and forth rapidly, but your performance suffers (at both activities).

I don't think that's a good enough reason to ban anything that distracts the driver, but certainly, anything that is taking your eyes and/or brainpower heavily off of the road (like composing messages, or reading) is highly dangerous.

[Hadel]

It is not just against the law but also against any common sense...

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

I sometimes wonder why hands free are allowed while driving. I once tried to play Warcraft while phoning with the hand free, total disaster. So hand-free certainly distracted me.

I don't think your experience is typical. Admittedly our raid leader who watched TV was a bit much, but there are plenty of people who play games while doing something else. At one point, for example, I was doing WoW raids (dps) while eating a full dinner and talking to another person. I'm pretty sure other people were doing worse. Mind you, we're talking about playing a computer game here -- nobody's life was on the line (though from the screaming when a group wiped, you might think it was). I sure as hell wouldn't eat, chat, and drive at the same time!

I suspect it's related to experience. The more experience you have, the better you are at prioritizing. When I was first learning to drive, for example, an experience I've remembered forever, I was surrounded by insane numbers of complicated things. Too many things to do with my feet, too many things to do with my hands (opening the window was right out!), and all these cars whizzing at me head-on, trying to kill me. Wait, what was I supposed to do with the clutch? Now, on the other hand, everything from the neck down takes care of itself. I want to be in a different lane? Send the "change lane" signal to the body, and all matters of signaling, shifting, speed changing, and so on, are all taken care of. I know it happens, and I can bring it to conscious awareness if I really want to, but in general, the mechanics of driving stay out of the way so my mind can focus on that guy who is in fact trying to kill me. I think that's a big reason why experienced drivers are safer than beginners: the beginner hasn't learned to automate and prioritize yet. When they're thinking about the mechanics of turning right, and that's occupying their awareness, a more experienced driver has automated that part and isn't even thinking of how to turn right; he's thinking about that fool on a bicycle who just shot out from between parked cars and is trying to commit suicide ... something that, for the beginner, would get all tangled up in everything else, if they even had a particle of awareness free in the first place.

Driving does, in a sense, become like walking, in that you go from concentrating on the mechanics of it to the outcome of it. This is a good thing; it keeps people from crashing into each other while they're trying to figure out what to do with the brake. So, just because one person can talk on a handsfree (or adjust the radio, open the windows, talk to the guy in the other seat, or figure out where the heck he really is) doesn't mean that another can. It's all about how much you as an individual need to pay direct attention to.

[Xanthe]

I've got a few audiobooks of books that I've already read and enjoyed that I've burned as MP3 audiobooks. I keep them in my car to listen to on long drives. Because I've already read the story, I'm not shutting out the world to listen to the plot. Instead I'm listening to story to hear how the inflections and emphasis the reader puts into the story changes the experience of it for me.

I really can't drive and talk on the phone at the same time; I find it very distracting. If my cell phone rings, I just check to see who called me. I tend to use OnStar for calls when driving, the rare times I absolutely have to make a call from the car. Otherwise, I pull over to call or to read driving instructions.

Then again, I'm not the type of person who has a cell phone glued to her ear. That would be a ring of Hell for me.

[shanghaichica]

Unless you are going to be using text to speech then it is a very bad idea.

[Joseph Mitchell]

I don't even read while walking, so I'd never try doing it while driving. It's scary to think there are people who would.

[greencat]

Heck I go almost everywhere listening to an audio book - but actual reading? I don't even do that on a bus let alone in a car.

[dee_dee]

Beyond stupid - I hope he stopped after getting so much attention for it!