No Phone While Driving

It is a well-known fact that the average person is not very coordinated or attentive. Along-side the fact that they are even more reckless with a phone in hand, so should they really be allowed to drive while actively using their phones. People should not be actively using their phone while driving.

First of all, it is known that humans cannot physically or mentally multitask. The most common thing people mistake multitasking for is repeatedly shifting focus on things, and that may work in any casual setting but in case of driving it can be fatal. With the average American highway speeds at 55MPH or 80.67 Feet per second, and according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration it takes four and a half seconds and another 144 feet to stop a car going at going at 50MPH assuming that the driver attentive to the road ("Safety in Numbers"). Going off of this, that is 1.5 secs reaction time (1.5sec x 80.67ft per sec = 121 feet) plus the 144 feet is takes to stop the actual car, and that come to a total 265 feet to stop a car going 55mph, with a driver who is not distracted by on the phone. With a phone a that only adds another additional 1 if being generous, which adds another 80.67 feet and brings the amount of road that it takes to stop a car to 345.67 feet. In which the additional 80 feet could have spared a life, but now has taken or seriously injured one.

Back on the topic a multitasking, the repeated shifting of attention from one thing to another. This shifting of attention is not even the full 100% attention. In the case of driving, no one never not wants 100% of their attention on the road while piloting a two-ton metal beast. According to the article Multitasking: Switching Cost by the American Psychology Association, "although switch costs may be relatively small, sometimes just a few tenths of a second per switch, they can add up to large amounts when people switch repeatedly back and forth between tasks". Going back to the previous paragraph, those couple feet in which a driver is not fully aware of the road around them is incredibly dangerous, and now adding other drivers also not fully aware, that's not a pretty sight.

Finally, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 3,450 people were killed from distracted driving in 2016 and 391,000 people were injured in motor accidents involving distracted drivers in 2015. All these deaths and injuries could have been easily prevented if the driver just put down their phones for a second and payed attention to the road. It is obvious at this point, that the people aren't meant to do more than one at a time, especially while operating a two ton metal beast.

Work Cited

"Safety in Numbers." The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Aug. 2015, one. nhtsa. gov/nhtsa/Safety1nNum3ers/august2015/S1N_Aug15_Speeding_1. html.

"Multitasking: Switching Costs." American Psychological Association, 20 May 2006, www. apa. org/research/action/multitask. aspx.