The major causes of distracted driving are well known to most drivers. They include eating, drinking, putting make up on, and talking on a cell phone while driving. This last one is the most common type of distraction, which is why it is a practice that is prohibited in almost all U.S. states. Distracted driving laws ban drivers from using hand-held cell phones while they are behind the wheel, proposing hefty fines and other severe penalties for violators, which has helped raise their awareness of the dangers of distracted driving. A lot of states, however, allow hands-free cell phone use, which is thought to be less distracting. But, a recent AAA study has revealed that using hands-free devices is not as safe as we think.
There are various alternative solutions to the hand-held devices that drivers are banned from using. Many new cars today have infotainment systems that can be controlled through voice commands, so that you don’t have to use your hands when you need to enter a location into your GPS system, send a text message, play a song on your stereo, or adjust some other device in your car. This has been considered a safer way for using in-car devices, since it eliminates the manual and visual distractions that make drivers take their eyes off the road and their hands off the steering wheel.
However, this doesn’t eliminate the sources of cognitive distraction. It’s a type of distraction that makes your mind wander and turns your focus away from driving. When you give voice commands to the in-car infotainment system, you can keep your eyes on the road, and you don’t have to push any buttons with your fingers, but your brain isn’t focused on the act of driving itself. This is because cognitive distractions may cause inattention blindness, which prevents you from seeing things that are in your field of vision. This means that you can miss some pretty obvious things that are right in front of you, such as pedestrians, traffic lights or vehicles.
A lot of people have the habit of sending or reading text messages while driving. It’s a huge distraction, and that’s why using a hand-held phone for texting is prohibited in most states. The latest advancements in technology allow you to read, compose, send and receive messages with voice commands, which is supposed to be safer, according to auto makers that sell vehicles with voice-activated infotainment systems. But, using a speech-to-text system can be pretty complicated, since you must concentrate pretty hard to dictate a text that the system will understand, because it can’t get it right if you don’t enunciate. Also, some systems require drivers to dictate words or phrases letter by letter, and some of them can’t function properly if there is other noise in the car. All this makes you put a lot of mental effort into using voice-activated infotainment systems, which decreases your ability to focus on the act of driving.
With these latest findings, car makers might have to reduce the number of voice-activated in-car devices in the future, as a significant source of driver distraction, in order to improve traffic safety.