Cell phones in cars

Clearly the Road Safety Authority is not making much headway in convincing people not to use cell phones in their cars. I am well aware of the danger as a friend wrote off his car and suffered severe bruising from his seat belt when he when distracted by his phone. The two people in the other car, which was extensively damaged, suffered whiplash. To add to his woes he lost his licence after being charged with careless driving causing an accident.

People using their cell phone claim that they are not distracted from their driving. However recently released results of tests prove that they, unwittingly, are.

Eyes are connected to a part of the brain called the visual cortex. The visual cortex compresses the information by a factor of ten. The information then passes to the centre of the brain the striatum where it is compressed further and then goes to the core. This selects what visual information gets through by adding prior knowledge, it subtracts what it computes as not mattering to determine what we will (and will not) know.

Using a phone while driving halves the sensory information which enters the mind. The eyes are still looking but the brain is editing out most of the information as unimportant. This information may be important to your driving but the brain process is based on the over riding phone call.

This process is referred to as inattentional blindness. The brain is focused on the conversation and does not let the driver see the child suddenly crossing the street. The same thing is happening when a pedestrian using cell phones step in front of a bus.
In one study researchers had eight people go for a short drive, four using their cell phones as they went, the others not. During their journey a clown on a unicycle passed by the drivers. All those not using a phone saw him. However three out of four using their phone did not. They were astonished, unable to believe that they had missed him. Their eyes had looked straight at him but they had not registered his presence. The clown crossed their paths but not their minds. Harvard researchers expanded the tests to other non driving situations which required concentration with the same results.
It is interesting to note that inattentional blindness does not happen when listening to the radio or conversing while driving, as these do not take the same precedence as a phone call.

So, when you fasten you seat belt please also switch off that cell phone, even the hands free one. No call can be that important that it won’t wait until the end of the trip. Failing to do so and you could end up like my friend.