Sure, you can walk and chew gum at the same time, but can you use your cell phone, text, use a navigation system, choose entertainment programming, interact with your “smart” car and a dozen other activities while driving?
Highway safety officials and public policy makers are becoming increasingly concerned about distracted driving. A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study found that in 2009, 5,474 people were killed and an estimated 448,000 were injured in accidents involving driver distraction.
Distracted driving is a broad category. It includes not only the use of cell phones, but also things like putting on make-up, eating and looking in the back seat to check on a child in a safety seat.
But, increasingly, safety officials are focusing more on electronic devices because research shows the diversions caused by them tend to be riskier than other distractions.
Research by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that “manual manipulation of phones, such as dialing and texting on the cell phone, lead to a substantial increase in the risk of being involved in a safety critical event.”
In West Virginia, using your cell phone while driving will soon be illegal. A bill signed into law Tuesday by Governor Earl Ray Tomblin outlaws texting or using your hand-held cell phone while driving beginning July 1st.
West Virginia becomes the 36th state to ban texting while driving and the 10th state to make it illegal to talk on your cell phone while behind the wheel.
Public reaction appears to be mixed. Some recognize the inherent danger in texting or talking on your cell phone while driving, but others believe this is more intrusion by the “nanny state.”
Interestingly, texting and hand-held cell phones may be the low hanging fruit in this debate. National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman believes all cell phone use by drivers, even hands-free devices, should be banned.
Hersman is also drawing attention to the additional distractions that come with new technologies in “smart” cars. According to the Washington Post, Intel recently announced it is expanding its development of in-vehicle infotainment to meet consumer demand, which Hersman believes takes drivers in the wrong direction.
“If the technology producers focused more on what is safe than what sells, we’d see highway fatalities go down,” Hersman said.
The NTSB has issued guidelines for in-vehicle infotainment systems, suggesting that no task take longer than two seconds, and that the vehicle be parked before you can program navigational devices or use social network sites. Currently, these guidelines are voluntary, but it won’t be long before public policy makers begin looking at vehicle infotainment systems the same way they now view cell phones.
“We have got to dispel the myth of multitasking,” the Post quoted Hersman as saying at a distracted driving forum. “We are still learning what the human brain can handle. What is the price of our desire to be mobile and connected at the same time?”
It’s a great question, and one that becomes harder to answer as the merger of technology, work, entertainment and information increase our demand and desire to remain connected at all times, even while we’re driving.