Cell Phones Make the Young Drive More Like the Old
Drivers who use cell phones end up driving like elderly people, with slower reaction times and a tendency to miss what is right in front of them, researchers said yesterday.
Even when they used "hands-free" devices, young drivers who normally have the quickest reflexes drove like 70-year-olds, the team at the University of Utah found.
"If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell phone, their reaction times are the same as a 70-year-old driver who is not using a cell phone," said psychologist David Strayer, who led the study.
Writing in the journal Human Factors, Strayer's team said it tested people 65 to 74 years old against drivers 18 to 25 years old using a driving simulator. Braking time slowed 18 percent when young or elderly drivers used a cell phone, the researchers found.
Earlier Testing and Treatment Are Urged for Diabetes
Doctors need to check patients for diabetes if they even suspect a patient may have the condition, and must start using drugs to treat it right away, according to new guidelines released yesterday.
An estimated 90 percent of all patients in whom diabetes is diagnosed are not controlling it well enough to prevent heart disease and other complications, the experts at the American College of Endocrinology and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists said.
At-risk patients should start getting screened at age 30. If they show poor control of blood sugar, they should begin taking medication right away, the two groups said.
Stroke Death Rate Higher Among Southern Blacks
Blacks in the South die of stroke at much higher rates than either Southern whites or blacks who live elsewhere.
Researchers have long known that stroke deaths are greater among blacks and people in the "Stroke Belt," but they thought the added risk was small.
"Much to our surprise, the finding is: No, it's not," said George Howard, a biostatistician at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health who presented his research yesterday at an American Stroke Association conference in New Orleans.
The rate of stroke deaths for black men in the South was 51 percent higher than for blacks in other parts of the country. Black men in the South had about four times the risk of dying of a stroke as white men living outside the South.
-- From News Services
