Texting and Driving

Ryan Smith        

UNV-100        

September 22, 2016

Bruce Bennett

Distracted Driving

        Distracted driving is the root of 78% of crashes and 65% of near crashes (Adeola, R., & Gibbons, M., 2013). Over the past 7 years, drivers on city streets and freeways from all across the country are dealing with driving their own car, as well as cooperating with drivers that are distracted in some sort of way; whether it be a driver going 20 under because the driver is texting, or getting rear ended because the person was changing the radio station instead of realizing that you were stopped due to a red light. On our local and national roads and freeways, many road accidents can be traced back to a distracted driver.  

        One way that road accidents occur is because drivers are attempting to multitask by texting and driving at the same time. Obviously this is dangerous because the eyes of the driver are not focused on the road, but focused on their current text message. All three types of distractions are used when texting and driving; visual, manual, and cognitive-simultaneously. If the average text message is 4-6 seconds long, and the driver is traveling at 55 mph, then the car has traveled the distance of a football field (Adeola, R., & Gibbons, M., 2013).  Clearly the chances of a road accident are higher because a driver mentally cannot focus on doing so many things at once.

        Also, radio distraction is a contributing factor to the fact that distracted driving is becoming a nationwide problem. When driving on a freeway the driver needs to be focused on the road, not on the radio station. Similarly, loud music could be a contributing factor to an accident because when the music is loud the brain is trying to multitask by hearing the music and driving. This though is an easy fix because some of the radios in today’s day and age have a remote; but this only fix half of the problem. Radio volume can only be controlled by the driver, so the driver must have the courage to do so.

        With this in mind, it is good to think about how to communicate safely while driving a car. The most effective way to avoid the use of a cell phone while driving is to either turn off the cell phone or turn off notifications so the driver can still stream music from their phone to their car. With technology as advanced as it is today, newer vehicles are able to use Bluetooth technology to sync with today’s cell phones. Likewise, in newer cars the radio can be controlled with your voice; so that you can talk to change the radio station or to control the volume. If the technology is used correctly this could reduce the distracted driving collision rate significantly because drivers will not have to manually control their car, but they can do it with their voice.