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Distracted Driving: Everyone Hates It, But Most of Us Do It, Study Finds
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Insurance company Esurance has a new study out on distracted driving, and it makes for interesting reading. Almost everyone agrees distracted driving is bad, yet it's still remarkably prevalent. Even drivers who report rarely driving distracted also report that they engage in distracting behaviors. The study also raises some questions about the growing complexity of modern vehicles, particularly the user interfaces they confront us with. The Esurance report includes survey data from more than a thousand participants. More than 90 percent said that browsing for apps, texting, and emailing were distracting. Yet more than half of daily commuters admitted to doing it. The survey also found that the longer your commute, the greater the chance is you'll get distracted, probably by your phone. Even participants who reported they were "rarely distracted" admitted to distracting behavior like talking on the phone or even viewing GPS Navigation data. (Any task performed while driving should be able to be performed in under two seconds to avoid becoming a distraction.)
My dash cam has captured two car accidents where you can clearly see the driver is playing with their phone. One where a woman with a baby and a toddler in the car drove at 35mph directly into the back of a work van while wandering between lanes. Another where a guy simply drifted off the road and into a rain ditch at 45mph causing the car to go airborne and do a 360 spin in mid air. I gave the videos to police and the insurance companies. Everyone should be using a dash cam.
People follow far too closely.
From the summary:
"Any task performed while driving should be able to be performed in under two seconds to avoid becoming a distraction"
The rule of thumb for vehicle separation on highways is to leave two seconds between you and the vehicle ahead. The next time you are on a busy highway, Note how few drivers actually leave that much space. And when you do leave such a gap some jockey cuts right in.
The two misbehaviours taken together are leaving a lot of wreckage around.
Don't drive distracted! It is illegal! There is no multi-tasking and driving!
No kidding, I can't believe a woman beside me this morning was trying to put on makeup while driving. It's a good thing I looked up from my book when I did, otherwise she would have hit me when she came over into my lane.