Reckless Driving Hypothesis

In the past few years, there have many deaths and car accidents that have occurred due to reckless driving. Reckless driving would include talking or playing with one’s cell phone while driving. Even though through commercials cellphone use can be a one of the major causes of driving accidents, what ways of cellphone usage is the most distracting? Strayer and Johnston (2001) wanted to figure how dual tasked and single tasked could affect an individual’s driving while operating a driving simulator. In Strayer et al. research, they focused on cellphone conversations, wanting to figure out the extent of how talking on one’s phone is a distraction and its’ interference. In the study, the researchers conducted two hypotheses. The first hypothesis, the peripheral-interference hypothesis, is associated with the peripheral interference that cell phones can cause such as holding the phone while talking with it. The second hypothesis, the attentional hypothesis is associated with any intervention to sidetracking one’s attention to actual phone conversation. In Experiment 1, the purpose …show more content…
(2001) sought to identify the source of cellphone intervention during driving (Strayer et al., 2001, p. 464). The participants completed the driving simulation on both an easy course and difficult course. After being introduced to the simulator, the participants completed the course in single task condition and then in two dual –task conditions using a cellphone. One of the dual task was participants repeating words that were asked of them by the confederate over the hand held cellphone. The other dual task was similar to first task, yet participants had to create a new word that began with the last letter of the word the confederate told them. The purpose of Experiment 2 was to measure “deviations from the ideal tracking position”, (Strayer et al., 2001, p. 465) assuming that risk could be increased while driving with a cellphone due to these