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I don't know about accident statistics, but people driving with dogs in their faces couldn't be too good of an idea.
Or dogs bouncing around loose in the car, which I have frequently seen causing drivers to wander or swerve repeatedly.
Anything that takes eyes off the road or hands off the wheel is bad news. The former is by far the worst, because there is no such thing as keeping one eye on the road while the other looks at something else. It IS possible to safely take one hand off the wheel for a brief time. Still not good to drive that way for a long time.
A bee in the car is a dangerous distraction. One time I almost crashed into a pole because of that. It had stung me. But I assume you are asking about regular, voluntary activities, not swatting at a bee.
The difference is in the number of people who use the phone while driving. The average driver generally leaves their vehicle audio system on one favorite station. The advent of station presets means not having to tune the dial to another station. Sensible people sit in their parked vehicle to learn and program their vehicle’s infotainment system. I can change the station with a tap of my thumb on a steering wheel control. I don’t know many people, personally, who drive while listening to books on tape. I did this once and I was so focused on the road I missed most of the audio book and never tried it again. The issue is most people take the time to learn their vehicle’s audio system while parked and hardly use those other features when in motion. However, far too many people are so addicted to their phones they feel they must absolutely respond to their phone whenever they receive a call, text, or alert. They reach for their phone, answer a call, read and respond to a text, take a selfie to post on social media, or respond to other people’s social media post as if it’s a matter of life or death. This addiction means more time with their eyes and mind off th road and their driving. If you can, try this trick. Set up a video camera to record yourself or someone you know as they drive and another camera on the road ahead. Review the video after a week of daily driving and see how often the eyes are off the road, phone in hand, and near misses you or your friend do while driving. My phone is in my front pocket where I can’t reach it. If it’s charging in the car then it’s in the cup holder. If I feel I may need to make a call or am expecting an actual important call then I turn on my phone’s Bluetooth and make or receive important calls. What constitutes important calls includes an emergency at work and I need to return, wife in severe pain and needs me to pick up medication (spinal problems and severe arthritis), wife or other family member going to the hospital, calling 911 to report an emergency (last one being a van on fire parked next to a house).
Audio books depends on the type of driving. I don't do it that often on my morning commute because of the same reason. Traffic picks up and I need to focus more and just miss whatever happened and then have to go back. That gets annoying. If you're just mindlessly chewing up the miles on empty freeways though I do. Also going over the bridge to San Francisco since it's totally mindless and involves 45 minutes of roll forward, stop, roll forward, stop, roll forward, stop, roll forward, stop, roll forward, stop.
Some people don't have that ability to multi-task. I've never really found it to be a problem. Same thing with phone calls. If I'm driving and on a call and I need to pay attention, I just ignore the phone. That's not a conscious decision on my part, just happens. For some people it doesn't work that way.
Info screens etc it doesn’t matter people are trading one distraction for another. And drivers aid for the most part are making driver’s less prone to pay attention.
All of this is bearing out my thought that the concentration on cell phone use is hysterics.
They are.
Cell phone use produces nearly identical distraction to passenger conversation, both for handheld and hands free phones. By and large it's nothing but hysteria. We've been having conversation with passengers in the car since the car. The one area there's a real difference in distraction between cellphone use and conversation with passengers is dialing. But then who dials anymore? If I have to dial I wait for a red light or pull over. That's really rare though as I can just do that with voice commands.
Now obviously text messaging produces much more distraction as your eyes are off the road same as with dialing but even more so. Again, for something very simple and brief I can just use text to speech and voice commands. If I need to send a text message I pull over.
Cell phone use produces nearly identical distraction to passenger conversation, both for handheld and hands free phones. By and large it's nothing but hysteria. We've been having conversation with passengers in the car since the car. The one area there's a real difference in distraction between cellphone use and conversation with passengers is dialing. But then who dials anymore? If I have to dial I wait for a red light or pull over. That's really rare though as I can just do that with voice commands.
Right, voice commands, and voice activated functions are the solution to the texting and driving problem!
Why do you think we never see them encouraging people to use it though? Everytime I look around, they sound like a broken record. "dont text and drive, period"!! How about instead, encouraging more people to give 'voice' activated or Voice functions a try when in the car!!
Id think the cell phone companies would be all over this, obviously they dont want to see ANY laws restricting use of their products/service, this seems like its perfect for them, but again, even they dont seem to be encouraging people to use it in the car...I dont get it.
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