A Position on Vehicles and Cell Phones

Over the last several years, mounting evidence has suggested that paying any sort of attention to a cell phone while operating a vehicle can have disastrous consequences. However, people continue to overestimate what they are capable of, at the expense of themselves and others. What the scientific community has concluded is that the bottom line for why accidents happen is distraction. This comes in the form of anything that requires you to pay attention to things other than the road, such as a text message. Cell use may not have to be prohibited while in a vehicle per se, but certainly while operating one on an open road.

The largest study ever conducted on texting while driving likely also offers the best data.

This study is of course the one done by Zendrive, which analyzed the driving behavior of 3.1 million Americans. What this study found is that, of the people that drive, 88% use their cell phone in some capacity. What's more, this in spite of rigorous campaigns railing against distracted driving. Given the slight changes between two generations of drivers, we can assume it will take some time to get the habit worn away from most members of our society. This said, it's unlikely that legislating harder restrictions will change the amount of people who text and drive to an observably good degree. The biggest changes happen culturally, and slowly.

The dangers of texting while driving rival the dangers of drinking while driving. Several studies have shown in driving simulations that being distracted by a text can be as dangerous as operating a vehicle while intoxicated. A quarter of adults report that texting while driving doesn't hinder their driving performance. Any form of activity that takes attention away from the task is a costly chance.

Multitasking is the real killer here. People aren't good at it; it's asking too much of the brain. Humans are really good at focusing on one activity at a time, and anything more than that dramatically decreases proficiency. One study from the Scientific American shows that confident multitaskers are more prone to mistakes than their non confident counterparts.

None of this is to say that there is never a time to use a cell phone while in a car. Just, never while driving. It's a risk with little to no reward, but given the amount of people already doing it, knowing it's a mistake, it's unlikely that legislating against it will bring about the cultural shift required to make good changes. What we can do, though, is encourage safer practices for cell phone use in vehicles. Like pulling over to make phone calls or texts.

http://blog. zendrive. com/distracted-driving/

www. ncbi. nlm. nih. gov/pubmed/16884056 https://www. scientificamerican. com/article/confident-multi-taskers-are-the-most-dangerous-behind-th e-wheel/