14 DAY TRIAL // Authorities have been trying for many years to educate drivers about the dangers of driving while speaking on their mobile phones, but it would now appear that texting is a lot more dangerous to the safety of these people, as well as of others in traffic and on sidewalks. A new scientific study has recently revealed that drivers who type and send text messages while behind the wheel tend to get into six times more crashes than others who do not engage in such risky behavior, LiveScience reports.
The researchers behind the new investigation say that the experiments were conducted inside a drive simulator, so the results may not apply to the real world 100 percent. However, the stark difference that was discovered in crash numbers between regular drivers and those using mobile phones hints at the fact that there is some merit behind the research. One of the main results of using cell phones while driving, the team says, is the reduced reaction time. In other words, drivers found it more difficult to break, or to avoid sudden obstacles, when using their cell phones.
Additionally, the study also revealed that there was a tendency among people that were texting to reduce the minimum safe distance from the car in front, which in turn translated into more people bumping into those in front. Forward and lateral controls also had to suffer, the team reports, because of texting. On average, those who sent messages tended to exhibit a median reaction time about 30 percent longer than when they were driving without using a phone. People who were only talking on the phone had a reaction time about nine percent longer.
“Drivers apparently attempt to divide attention between a phone conversation and driving, adjusting the processing priority of the two activities depending on task demands,” the team says. Texting “requires drivers to switch their attention from one task to the other. When such attention-switching occurs as drivers compose, read, or receive a text, their overall reaction times are substantially slower than when they're engaged in a phone conversation,” the group also says. Frank Drews and Dave Strayer, both psychologists at the University of Utah, have been in charge of this investigation.
The 40 participants in the new work (20 men and 20 women) were all experienced text-message writers, and had been driving their cars for an average time of about five years. The new study adds to a growing body of pieces evidence that could see authorities ban the use of mobile phones and text-message devices while driving. The National Safety Council (NSC) has been pleading for such bans to come in effect since this January.