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A vehicle traveling at 55 mph covers a distance greater than a football field in five seconds. With the average text taking approximately five seconds to read, that's at least a football field's worth of driver inattention. Texting while driving is dangerous, and possibly even fatal, especially in a highway work zone.
Now, researchers at the University of Missouri say drivers not paying attention—such as answering a phone call, a text message, or being distracted by a passenger—for any length of time are 29 times more likely to be involved in a collision or near collision in a highway work zone.
The results from this study could provide recommendations on "behavioral countermeasures" to state transportation agencies and the Federal Highway Administration, which are implementing countermeasures to decrease injuries and fatalities in a highway work zone. These recommendations include better public education, laws to ban texting and driving, and policies that deter driver distractions. The results could also be used when developing new technology, such as driverless vehicles.
Journal Reference:
Nipjyoti Bharadwaj et al. Risk Factors in Work Zone Safety Events: A Naturalistic Driving Study Analysis, Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board (2019). DOI: 10.1177/0361198118821630
More data highlight the danger of texting while driving.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Entropy on Wednesday March 06 2019, @06:21PM (1 child)
1. That drivers are always(or ever) fully attentive to the road. Almost everything we do(driving included) requires a small percentage of our attention. Things like doodling actually have been proven to increase our attention to things like phone conversations. I think everyone is fractionally attentive to driving. It simply takes too long to hold our full attention for the entire trip.
2. That a person reading a text on a phone is completely unaware of the road. You know you've read a text while in the car: Did you hold it in your lap where you can see nothing..or did you hold it at the top of the wheel where you can read it and also watch the road? How long does it take your eyes to refocus from a cell phone to the road? 0.1 seconds?
In an ideal world we'd all focus entirely on driving but we're not in an ideal world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @01:45AM
As the article clearly says, it takes 2.8 Canadian ice hockey rinks for your eyes to refocus for every hockey puck radius your eyes have to move.