Distracted Driving: Are You Sure You are in Control?

Written by Michael Vu

Driving is a responsibility and a privilege. Think back to when you first got your driver’s license. You felt so free and the world was your oyster. With the keys to your first car in your hand, you were ready to explore the world, but your parents would not hesitate to remind you, “Don’t text and drive!”

We all know that when you text, your eyes stray from the road for a couple of seconds, which could make a difference between life and death [1]. On the other hand, what about calls? In 2008, California Governor Schwarzenegger passed a law that prohibited driving with cell phones unless they had hands-free capabilities [2]. With the passing of this law, society was encouraged to consider hands-free devices as safe. If we are not doing something with our hands and eyes, we can focus on the road, right?

To understand whether driving with hands-free cell phones make a difference in safety, we’re going to discuss a two-part experiment performed by psychologists David Strayer and William Johnston, at the University of Utah in 2001. Their first experiment involved participants performing a simulated driving task, where they were expected to control a cursor and keep it as close to a moving target as possible. With participants listening to the radio as a control, the two main experimental groups of interest had conversations through either handheld or hands-free cellphones. On the computer screen, traffic lights would flash, and the participant would have to react accordingly. The results from this experiment demonstrated that there were no reliable differences between the results from hands-free cellphone users and handheld users, but the error rate increased greatly between just listening to the radio and using a cell phone.

Now, knowing that cell phones, in general, do affect our driving, the goal of their second experiment was to localize the source of cell phone interference. To do this, Strayer and Johnston set up an experiment where they tweaked two specific aspects of the course: the difficulty of the course and the difficulty of the conversation participants are supposed to partake in while they drive. The overall task was essentially the same as the first portion of the experiment, yet these results brought into light the validity of safety behind hands-free cellphones. The simpler conversation task demonstrated no reliable increase in tracking error between handsfree and handheld. However, there were consistent increases in error rate when it came to the more difficult conversations, especially in conjunction with the difficult course. The fact that there were no reliable error increases in error goes against the public belief that whether a device is handheld or hands-free makes a difference [1,3].

So, the next time you get a call while you drive, remember that attention is a limited resource. Do you really want to shift your focus to a simple cell phone conversation or will you choose to be in control?

References:

Share this post:

X (Twitter) Facebook LinkedIn Email