How many times have you gotten in the car for a long trip and picked up the phone while you were driving? I do it almost everyday. Today, however, during the workshop I attended I found out some interesting information that made me think twice about talking (and definitely texting) while driving, and hopefully will make you think twice too.
Your brain operates with primary and secondary attention. While driving, one would hope that the primary attention is focused on driving, but once you begin a conversation on your phone (whether you are hands free or not) your brain switches its primary attention from driving to the conversation you are having on the phone. (Actually, anytime that you have been driving and have found yourself at your destination and thought, "oh wow, I didn't even realize I had made it this far already!" you were driving with your primary focus on something other than driving.) Big deal right? As long as some sort of attention, whether it is primary or secondary, is focused on driving then you should be fine, right? WRONG!
When your brain has to transition your activities from secondary attention to primary attention the reaction time is worse than driving at OVER 2 TIMES THE LEGAL LIMIT OF ALCOHOL!!!
Apparently there are so many more texting while driving deaths each week that they (who ever it is that keeps this data) can not calculate a national average.
New Hampshire is one of the states that is jumping on the bandwagon for banning texting while driving, but honestly, if a student can send a text in a classroom without a teacher noticing, how is a police officer suppose to recognize someone that is texting in his/her car?
Ford Motor Company is currently working on a new piece of technology that will block cellphone signals in a car, so that people will be unable to use their phones while driving. However, there is a law from the 1930s that does not allow communication signals to be blocked, so that will need to be taken into consideration.
There is also a piece of technology available called Key2SafeDriving that blocks cellphone signals to people once their keys are in the ignition. (check it out here http://www.key2safedriving.net/ )
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