Distracted Driving Trend

Distracted Over the past two and half decades I have attended the Buffalo New Car Auto Show, year after year noticing manufacturing trends. The latest trend being touch screen controls. Basically these are an iPad or Android device mounted on or in the dash capable of syncing or being connected to your smartphone. This enables you to stay connected to your contacts while driving, allowing you to become distracted. The question of safety for me and others seems to be no concern to some drivers. The only concern for auto manufacturers is the bottom line. What is distracted driving? Distracted driving is any activity that diverts a person’s attention away from the task of driving. All distractions endanger the driver, passenger and bystander safety Types of

The government guidelines advise that drivers should be able to complete the tasks in a series of one and half or two second glances for a total of no more than twelve seconds. At highway speeds of sixty five miles per hour that equates to over ninety feet per second at fifty five miles per hour it is over eighty feet per second and at thirty miles per hour its over forty four feet per second (Mlot, Stephanie). Potential unsafe levels of mental interruption last between fifteen and twenty seven seconds after completing a distracting task. Peter Kissinger, CEO of AAA’s Foundation for Traffic Safety states “The lasting effects of mental distraction pose a hidden danger that would likely come as a surprise to most drivers”. The results indicate motorists could miss stop signs, pedestrians and other vehicles while the mind is readjusting to the task of driving (Mlot). A recent study testing three phone platforms in ten vehicles manufactured in 2015, rated mental distraction on a five point scale from mild to maximum levels of disturbance. The best vehicle earned a cognitive distraction rating of 2.4 the worst earned a 4.6. AAA considers anything rated two or higher to be potentially dangerous