Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Distracted Driving - Hands Free Technology is not Risk Free





Car makers and mobile electronics are creating a tempting vision of the future, where you can remain fully connected while driving. New additions include voice-to-text systems, so you can keep both hands on the wheel. However, recent studies indicate that hands free technologies that are voice activated to create talk-to-text tasks or talking on a cellphone create brain overload and leave little capacity for attention on the road. "There are three parts to distraction", says David Strayer, professor of psychology at the University of Utah's Applied Cognition Lab, "manual, visual, and cognitive."  A task such as texting represents the manual distraction, taking your eyes off the road is the visual distraction, and having your mind off the drive is the cognitive distraction."

"The fundamental problem is that safe driving demands our attention, but multitasking divides our mental resources.  Just because a new technology does not take the eyes off the road does not make it safe to be used when the vehicle is in motion."

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says distracted drivers killed more than 3,300 people in the United States in 2011.  In April, the agency recommended that manual text entry and the display of text messages or Web content be blocked in all moving vehicles.

Source: Hands Free Tools Leave Less Brain Power for Driving?

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