Habit – they are used to checking messages frequently and reaching for their device without thinking about it. Recklessness – checking a text message does not take much time, so drivers may feel that it is safe to glance away from the road long enough to read or type out a message.
Lead by example: Set rules for new drivers, and for yourself, regarding distracted driving. Never text while driving – if you are driving and you need to text or talk on the phone, pull over to a safe place before doing so. Be engaged: Tell family and friends, about the importance of driving without distractions.
But it's cell phone use — specifically, texting, talking, and social media use — that has become the most common distraction. Texting, which includes messaging, is considered the most dangerous type of distracted driving because it combines visual, manual and cognitive distraction.
Our brain has what is called a cognitive load—an amount of mental activity that it can engage in at one time. If you are texting or engaged in a cell phone conversation while driving, that leaves your brain with less cognitive load to focus on driving. Consequently, your driving is not as good as it could be.
Rather than spending their time navigating traffic and staying on route, drivers could catch up on emails, hold group calls, or work on documents. Getting there faster: As the number of autonomous cars on the road increases, one of the hopes is that traffic congestion will decrease.
15 percent of injury crashes were the result of distracted driving. There is a 400 percent increase of time spent with eyes off the road while texting. The risk of a crash or near-crash increases by 95 percent when reaching for or dialing a phone. AAA found that 12% of crashes involved engaging with cell phones.
Atchley et al. reported a similar finding and claimed that texting while driving alters the attitude toward texting through a reduction in cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957).
You're Taking Your Eyes Off the Road
Of all the activities associated with distracted driving, sending text messages is the most dangerous. A person is 23 times more likely to have a motor vehicle crash while sending a text message than if they were only driving.
Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the distracted brain sacrificed areas in the posterior brain important for visual attention and alertness to recruit enough brain resources to perform a secondary, cognitive task.
Cognitive distractions take your focus and concentration away from driving. This could be anything from talking to other passengers in the vehicle to road rage or driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Stress and fatigue are also a factor.
Inability to Concentrate – An inability to concentrate over significant periods of time can be detrimental to road etiquette. Note that those suffering from ADHD overcome distractions while driving, which means you can too.
Texting while driving is 6 times as deadly than driving while drunk. 25% of car accidents are the result of cell phone usage. 11 teens die from texting and driving every day. While 94% of teen drivers acknowledge the dangers of texting and driving, only 35% of those polled admitted to texting and driving.
Most people believe that talking instead of texting or shifting to a hands-free device is enough to mitigate the risks. However, this simply is not the case. The shocking truth is that talking while driving is just as dangerous as texting; and no, using a hands-free device does not lower the risk.
According to the National Safety Council, cell phone use while driving leads to 6 million accidents per year. Drivers distracted by texting are 8 times more likely to be involved in a collision than non-distracted drivers.
There are five primary types of cognitive dissonance: post-decisional dissonance, dissonance from wanting something we can't have, dissonance due to inconsistency between attitude and behavior, dissonance due to inadequate justification, and dissonance due to inconsistency between commitment and information.
Signs you might be experiencing cognitive dissonance include: Discomfort of unclear origin, confusion, feeling conflicted over a disputed subject matter, people telling you you're being a hypocrite, or being aware of conflicting views and/or desires but not knowing what to do with them.
The reason for the high mortality associated with texting while driving? A Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study found that “texting took a driver's focus away from the road for an average of 4.6 seconds,” enough time at 55 mph to travel the length of an entire football field.
Texting increases the risk of a crash or a near-crash by up to 15 times for car drivers and over 20 times for truck drivers. The distraction caused by passenger interaction is the cause of 3.2% of all casualty crashes.