Sándor Kalmár, M.D., Ph.D.

The development of civilization acquainted men with a new danger: making a phone call during driving a car. Its significance does not only derive from taking a considerable number of lives, but also from causing vast financial damage. The two major groups of mortality due to external reasons are suicide and traffic accidents. Compared to EU-15 and EU members, SMR shows alarming data for Hungary, although the situation is much worse in several European states. Inadequate driver behavior, largely cause by lack of attention plays a huge part in traffic accidents. These could be forestalled by complex prevention.

Table 1. Main external causes of mortality data. Hungary. 2010.

2010	male		female		total
	number	%	number	%	number	%
population	4 756 900		5 257 424		10 014 324
60< population	870 064	18.3	1 358 835	25.85	2 252 965	22.5
mortality	65 137	49.93	65 319	50.07	130 456	100.0
60< mortality	48 221	74.03	57 712	88.35	105 933
External causes of mortality	4 696	7.21	2 377	3.64	7 073	5.42
60< External causes of mortality	1 932	41.14	1 698	71.43	3 630
Suicide	1 945	41.42	547	23.01	2 492	35.23
60< suicide	667	34.3	255	46.62	922
Fatal motor vehicle traffic accidents	590	12.56	203	8.54	793	11.21
60< Fatal motor vehicle traffic accidents	143	24.24	84	41.4	227	28.6

These data support that elderly people are at an especially high risk both due to suicide and due to traffic accident-related mortality.

Table 2. Standard Mortality Rate: motor vehicle traffic accident all ages; suicide and self-inflectes injury, all ages and 65+; by gender. Hungary, EU-15Members & EU-Members. 2009.

2009	SDR, motor vehicle traffic accident, all ages per 100 000			SDR, suicide and self-inflected injury, per 100 000			SDR, suicide and self-inflected injury, 65+, per 100 00
	male	female	total	male	female	total	male	female	total
Hungary	13.61	3.86	8.51	37.12	8.84	21.79	75.69	17.11	38.21
EU-15-Members	10.0	2.67	6.29	14.43	4.38	9.19	28.67	7.85	16.32
EU-27	11.68	3.19	7.35	16.7	4.4	10.25	30.85	8.03	17.21
Austria	10.09	2.58	6.23	20.87	5.67	12.8	51.76	14.21	28.85
Estonia (2008)	15.66	4.32	9.72	29.07	6.23	16.49	44.22	8.92	20.18
Finland	7.42	2.24	4.73	27.33	9.5	18.26	35.14	7.63	19.05
Greece	22.02	4.69	13.42	5.23	0.86	3.02	7.73	1.53	4.26
Ireland	7.33	2.35	4.8	18.57	4.67	11.61	14.29	4.74	9.34
Latvia (2008)	22.5	6.71	14.23	38.29	6.48	20.85	68.09	15.2	32.77
Lithuania	19.27	4.41	11.38	58.5	8.78	31.47	82.75	15.67	38.84
Netherland	5.33	2.89	3.51	12.15	5.04	8.52	17.05	7.11	11.11
United Kingdom	5.82	1.57	3.68	10.52	2.78	6.6	9.22	3.07	5.8

There is plenty to do in Hungary in decreasing both traffic and suicide-related mortality. It is not accidental that the “European Pact for Mental Health and Well-being” (Brussels, 2008) listed suicide prevention as first, improving mental health of youth and mental health in education as second, and improving mental situation of the elderly as fourth among the five priority areas; and this year the 3rd EuroSafe Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion was held in Budapest and Gödöllo.

Unfortunately there are no exact statistical data of motor vehicle traffic accidents caused by cell phone in Hungary. Cell phone usage during driving is strictly prohibited in Hungary, however, hands free devices are allowed. This indulgence is meaningless, because the using of cell phone during driving is always dangerous. It changes the attention and the selective perception. In the midst of various stimuli man reacts better or worse to certain groups of stimuli and behaves more or less rationally. Focusing selectively on phenomena carrying a personal significance is called attention. Perceptive, affective, cognitive, and psycho-motor functions play a significant role in attentional focus. The primary momentum of attention is affective orientation, and its absence leads to lack of attention and as a consequence, the observed phenomenon is pushed to the background. Although attention is usually conscious and voluntary, when it switches from one object to the other the previous active attitude is pushed to the background, perception changes and lack of attention occurs. A phone ringing during driving a car (or driving any other vehicle) almost instantly turns the partly conscious and partly automatic attention focused on driving into thoughtlessness, making safe driving impossible. Do you remember the Duck boat that sunk after the collision with a large barge on the Delaware River on July 7, 2010, where two Hungarian students died? The captain of the barge was using a cell phone and laptop during driving.

The person using a mobile phone disregards the traffic situation for some seconds and is easily prone to accidents. Unfortunately the mentally illiterate person who does not know himself also does not know how attention works, and knows only the conscious and voluntary part of attention, and he is not aware of the fact that if some unexpected characteristic of his experiential field grabs his attention, then his attention will automatically be drawn from its previous focus object. It is similar to when a wasp flies into the car, which the driver would like to catch when driving, and in the meantime he doesn’t notice that he has lost control over driving. If we teach all these to our kids during the mental education in primary school, then when they grow up to be adults our children will attempt neither to catch a wasp or a falling cigarette, nor to pick up the phone during driving a car, being aware of its dangers. That’s why it would be important to introduce mental education in schools, which is absent today from the Hungarian educational system. Based on all this, mobile phone use should be banned everywhere, although the ban is not worth much without knowledge, because stupid people will try to go around it even if they play with their own, their family’s or others’ life.

References:

• Juhász P, Petho B. (1983) Általános pszichiátria. Pszichopathologia. Medicina Könyvkiadó, Budapest. pp. 240-244.
• European Health for All Database (HFA-DB). Last accessed on 12 August 2011.
• Masahito Fushimi (2011) Comment on the article, “Cell phones and driving” by Leo Sher, M.D. published on our website, www.internetandpsychiatry.com
• Hungarian Central Statistical Office.

This is a commentary on the article, “Cell phones and driving” by Leo Sher, M.D. published on our website, www.internetandpsychiatry.com