Today, many spend in the car most of the day. This is where important calls are made and plan considered. A mobile phone is an integral part of any modern driver. When learning how to drive, we hear hundreds of times that you can’t talk on the phone while driving, because it can easily lead to accidents, but still, we do it, being distracted from the road. What is the danger of a phone driving? Why is talking on a cell phone while driving dangerous?
Ramifications
As you know, when talking on a cell phone, part of the driver’s attention switches, that is, as auto-instructors say, there is some element of distraction. A person is talking on the phone, so his thoughts are directed in the other direction, and therefore the concentration weakens to some extent. If, during a conversation on the road, a difficult situation arises, where a quick reaction and an equally quick maneuver are required, what should be done in such a situation?
Most likely, the driver with the phone will not be able to quickly respond, and the risk of an accident or emergency increases several times. What do the statistics say? By the way, talking on the phone while driving is prohibited in many countries. However, statistics show that this ban does not reduce the number of accidents on the road (McDonald, Ward, Huang, Wiebe, & Delgado, 2019). The thing is this: a neat motorist will never be distracted by a mobile phone while driving. Such a driver would rather stop to answer or call back later. But the scorcher answers any calls, and without reducing the speed of the car. Talking on the phone, writing SMS, using other devices while driving, experts call absent-minded driving, when a person, being distracted from the road, cannot always notice the danger in time, and besides, he can provoke an emergency.
Hands-Free
Headset and a sense of confidence? Does the headset problem solve hands-free? On the one hand, they were created in order to make life easier for the motorist. But on the other hand, according to experts, the use of a wireless headset in a car creates a false sense of confidence in a person. Talking on the phone, even if both hands are free, in any case, negatively affects the productivity of driving and attention. Thus, the efficiency of the drivers who use the hands-free drive is no different from the efficiency of motorists holding a mobile phone in one hand.
On the contrary, without hands-free, during a conversation, drivers slow down or drive to the side of the road more often, which motorists with hands-free, unfortunately, do not. Studies at one university show that talking on a cell phone while driving a car increases the chance of an accident four times (Telemaque & Madueke, 2015). It doesn’t matter if you use a wireless headset or a regular phone.
Conclusion
In conclusion, any form of distraction increases the “external telephone risks” – namely, the danger of colliding on the road with the unexpected maneuver of another driver, absorbed in his gadget. The mere fact that every tenth driver on the road is not so much driving as talking should convince drivers to abandon any phone calls and texting while driving. Instead, it’s better to track the scattered phone using drivers on the road and predict their actions. If you are busy with the phone, it is likely that sooner or later, your paths will intersect with another “occupied” driver, and on both sides, there will not be a space of braking distance.
References
McDonald, C. C., Ward, K., Huang, Y., Wiebe, D. J., & Delgado, M. K. (2019). Novel smartphone-based measures of cell phone use while driving in a sample of newly licensed adolescent drivers. Health Education & Behavior, 46(1), 10-14.
Telemaque, J. H. R., & Madueke, C. (2015). Cell Phoning and texting while driving: Multitasking ourselves to death. SAGE Open, 5(3), 1-9.