The fundamental issue addressed is how distracted an inattentive and distracted driver is while s/he converses on a cell phone. Car crashes are common and one of the major causes of distracted driving is cell phone usage. Cell phone usage distracts the driver from the primary task of driving. Human brain capacity does not allow humans to multitask, but it is rather a seemingly simultaneous alternation between the two tasks (Strayer, Drews, & Crouch, 2006). This study highlights the impairments associated with cell phone usage while driving. Its main purpose is to point out the similarities in impairments between an intoxicated driver and a distracted driver that is on the cell phone (Strayer, Drews, & Crouch, 2006). This would allow the legislative
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These subjects had an average of eight years of driving experience and were all social drinkers consuming between three to five alcoholic drinks per week. The team used a high-fidelity driving simulator to compare the behavior of cell phone drivers and ethanol intoxicated drivers with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08% weight/volume (Strayer, Drews, & Crouch, 2006). The participants were to tailgate a pace car and react to it accordingly to avoid a collision. The experiment lasted for 10 hours and was divided into three separate sections spanning over three days. Each session was completed in each day. In the first session, the drivers were allowed to familiarize themselves with the driving simulator. The first session provided a baseline for the conductors. The latter two sessions compared the behavior of cell phone drivers and intoxicated drivers with each other and their baselines (Strayer, Drews, & Crouch, …show more content…
When drivers were communing on a cell phone, they were involved in more rear-end collisions, their initial reaction to vehicles breaking was slowed down by 9%, and the inconsistency in the following distance was increased by 24% compared to their baseline. Cell phone drivers also took 19% longer to recover the lost speed during breaking (Strayer, Drews, & Crouch, 2006). By disparity, intoxicated participants saw little to no variations between accident rates, reaction times, or recovery times when compared to their baseline. However, the intoxicated participants drove more belligerently. They followed closer to the pace car, had twice as many trials with time-to-collision values below 4 seconds, and braked with 23% more force than in baseline conditions. The accident rates were not much different from the baseline conditions but these factors point to elevated accident chances over the long duration. More accidents occurred while the drivers were on their cell phones than in either other condition (Strayer, Drews, & Crouch, 2006). In addition, it is reported that in 2012 about 7% of the fatal crashes in the age group ranging from 20 to 39 were cell phone related accidents (U.S. Department of Transportation, 2012). Consequently, theoretically if cell phone usage was eliminated
These subjects had an average of eight years of driving experience and were all social drinkers consuming between three to five alcoholic drinks per week. The team used a high-fidelity driving simulator to compare the behavior of cell phone drivers and ethanol intoxicated drivers with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08% weight/volume (Strayer, Drews, & Crouch, 2006). The participants were to tailgate a pace car and react to it accordingly to avoid a collision. The experiment lasted for 10 hours and was divided into three separate sections spanning over three days. Each session was completed in each day. In the first session, the drivers were allowed to familiarize themselves with the driving simulator. The first session provided a baseline for the conductors. The latter two sessions compared the behavior of cell phone drivers and intoxicated drivers with each other and their baselines (Strayer, Drews, & Crouch, …show more content…
When drivers were communing on a cell phone, they were involved in more rear-end collisions, their initial reaction to vehicles breaking was slowed down by 9%, and the inconsistency in the following distance was increased by 24% compared to their baseline. Cell phone drivers also took 19% longer to recover the lost speed during breaking (Strayer, Drews, & Crouch, 2006). By disparity, intoxicated participants saw little to no variations between accident rates, reaction times, or recovery times when compared to their baseline. However, the intoxicated participants drove more belligerently. They followed closer to the pace car, had twice as many trials with time-to-collision values below 4 seconds, and braked with 23% more force than in baseline conditions. The accident rates were not much different from the baseline conditions but these factors point to elevated accident chances over the long duration. More accidents occurred while the drivers were on their cell phones than in either other condition (Strayer, Drews, & Crouch, 2006). In addition, it is reported that in 2012 about 7% of the fatal crashes in the age group ranging from 20 to 39 were cell phone related accidents (U.S. Department of Transportation, 2012). Consequently, theoretically if cell phone usage was eliminated