Driving While Distracted More Dangerous Than Supposed

Science News reports on recent research indicating that any kind of multitasking while driving is dangerous. Not just the obvious distraction of juggling a cell phone, but even talking to a passenger or listening to a book on tape. The researchers used a driving simulator inside an MRI machine to measure brain activations. "Attending to what someone says galvanizes language-related brain areas while simultaneously reducing activity in spatial regions that coordinate driving behavior. This finding suggests that people who combine relatively automatic tasks, such as speech comprehension and car driving, exceed a biological limit on the amount of systematic brain activity they can accommodate at one time, the researchers propose. As a result, the less-ingrained skill — in this case, driving, which is learned long after a person grasps a native language — takes a neural hit."

Comments

Re:I can testify

[x00101010x]

Too bad not everybody puts a natural priority on public safety. In this ego-centric civilization, parent is unfortunately the exception and not the rule.

Is it just me or are women especially bad about this?

Re:Training required to deal with distractions

[syousef]

There's a major difference between flying a plane and driving a car: a fast moving car is always one or two seconds away from utter disaster, whereas a plane nearly always gives its pilot much more time to react.

If you're suggesting that flying an aircraft is easier than driving a car, you know nothing about flying. Stall your plane and unless you're a few thousand feet high, good luck with that time to react theory.

Think about driving on the highway. You're driving along at 75MPH at a minimal safe distance from the guy in front of you. He slams on his brakes. You have at best perhaps three or four seconds to slam on yours, and that's assuming that your minimal safe distance is larger than is typical and that your braking system is at least as powerful as his. There are many other situations when driving a car where you only have a second or two to react. A small twitch of the steering wheel can send your car straight into a concrete pillar.

Think about flying a plane. You're traveling much faster. If you allow your airspeed to stall, your plane falls out of the sky. Often you have to be careful if you want to have visibility in the direction you're travelling. Think about raising the nose during takeoff. If you think that staying in your lane is hard, try lining up a plane with the runway and a crosswind blowing. If you're worried about collisions consider that unless you're doing exactly the right thing and both you and the flight controller are on the ball you won't have 4 seconds to react since the plane that hits you will have done so before you know what hit you.

Flying, on the other hand, is much slower and more cerebral. There are very few events which require immediate reactions.

It is very VERY clear you don't know what you're talking about. The slowest plane on landing is about as fast as a car is allowed to travel on a highway. I seriously suggest you have some idea what you're talking about before writing paragraphs and paragraphs about it.