Is 'Dialing While Driving' the Worst Thing a Motorist Can Do?

From Swiched.com

Dialing while driving can sure ruin your day in a hurry. Over the weekend, a Boston trolley driver slammed his passenger-loaded trolley into another, injuring 50 people because he was distracted by text messaging his girlfriend. Just last month, a texting driver veered off of Idaho's Interstate 84 straight into a parked police cruiser. In March, a California driver dunked her car into the Oakland Estuary after trying to reach for a ringing cell phone -- fortunately, she saved her coffee. These accidents got us thinking: Is dialing (be it texting, talking, reaching, or actual dialing) while driving the most dangerous distraction on the road?

Local governments are taking action by enacting bans on texting and talking while driving, but why stop there? Handsfree units and touchscreen GPS units should be banned too, and we definitely can't allow CD players. That coffee you just bought to go? Ban it. It's not our gadgets that are causing us to drive like idiots on the road, it's distraction, which is just as likely to come from thinking about balancing a checkbook as it is to come from switching Pandora stations on your car-stereo-connected iPhone.


Back in 2006, Virginia Tech researcher Charlie Klauer co-led the '100-Car Naturalistic Driving Study.' The researchers monitored the driving habits of 100 volunteers in a study that placed hidden cameras and other sensors (like GPS and radar proximity detectors) inside the vehicles of 100 volunteers. Klauer and his team found that almost all of the crashes (and more that 60-percent of near crashes) were caused by driver distraction within three seconds of the incident. This means that it doesn't matter whether you are on your phone or reaching for a CD -- if something on the road immediately demands your full attention, you will be unable to give it.

Although cell phones certainly can be distracting, Rae Tyson, a spokesperson for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, told the Dayton Daily News that the worst deterioration in driving ability they have ever seen was a when testers told drivers to start at 842 and start subtracting by 7. By the same token, even talking to a passenger sitting next to you can be a distraction.

Sure, banning cell phones will help eliminate dialing while driving, but this is only one of the distractions on the road. We think it's more important for drivers to examine their driving habits and make a concerted effort to concentrate on the task at hand. So think about what's distracting you on the road -- just don't think do it while driving. [From: Dayton Daily News]