Texting While Driving (Bad Idea)

Multitasking isn't something a human can do with accuracy, it is an illusion. People believe they can do it because they've continuously done more than one thing at a time not realizing there are more mistakes in multitasking than if they were to simply perform a single act with their full attention. One only appears to multitask. It has been described as time wasted because of human context switching and seems to cause more errors due to lack of sufficient attention. The term Multi tasking is from the computer engineering industry.

Continuous partial attention

"It usually involves skimming the surface of the incoming data, picking out the relevant details, and moving on to the next stream", this was the description of human multitasking given by Author Stephen Berlin Johnson. You're paying attention but only partially.

Research (Human Multitasking)

Experimental Psychologists; Experiments; the nature and limits of human multitasking

Studies show that humans show severe interference when asked to perform even very simple tasks at the same time if both tasks require selecting and producing action. This indicates the human brain only being able to perform one task at a time.

Studies

Psychiatrist Richard Hallowell describes multitasking as a "mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously."

Junco and Cotten did a study on multitasking affecting academic success. They found that students who multitask reported more problems with their academic work.

Mayer and Moreno researched the phenomenon of cognitive load in multimedia, which shows that it is difficult and maybe impossible to learn new information while multitasking.

Texting while driving is something that is considered to be extremely dangerous due to the distraction of reading and pushing buttons. In the time it takes to read or compose the text it's possible to drive as much as the distance of a football field. In 2009, an experiment with Car and Driver magazine with editor Eddie Alterman showed that texting while driving had more of an impact on safety than drunk driving. When Alterman was legally drunk the stopping distance from 70 mph was 4 feet greater; 36 feet was added while reading an e-mail, and 70 feet while reading a text message.

What are the odds of a person reading a text message running into you verses a drunk driver? If I had to choose I'd go with the drunk driver, not that I would want either.

It seems that some people are in denial about this, as well as a large amount of our teenagers are not concerned with the matter. A survey by Liberty Mutual Insurance Group was conducted in 2006 of over 900 teenagers from over 26 schools nationwide. 37% of teens found that texting is very or extremely distracting, and AAA found that 46% of teens admitted that they were distracted because of texting while driving.

It is extremely disurbing to be driving down the street and look over to witness a police officer texting. I recently saw a Shreveport police officer texting while driving, I told my husband that I wish I could be like Gomer Pyle on the Andy Griffith show and make a citizens arrest. In all honesty, how in the world can an officer expect to be taken seriously if he's seen doing the very thing he's trying to stop someone else from doing. That is like a heroin addict telling a crack addict to stop doing drugs, be for real people!

• On August 29, 2007, Danny Oates was killed by a young driver of a car, allegedly texting while driving. The defense argued that driver Jeffery Woods had possibly suffered a seizure during the time of the accident.
• On January 3, 2008, Heather Leigh Hurd was killed by a truck driver who was allegedly texting while driving. Her father Russell Hurd has been actively supporting a law in various U.S. states called the Heather's Law that would prohibit texting while driving.
• On May 28, 2008, a rail crash at Newton, Massachusetts was initially blamed on the operator using a cell phone while operating the train, although it was later found that "The cell phone was not in use at the time of the collision.
• The 2008 Chatsworth train collision, which killed 25 people, and which occurred on September 12, 2008, was blamed on the operator sending text messages while operating the train.
• In 2009, a crash on the MBTA Green Line of the Boston area was blamed on a driver who was texting.
• Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Frank Ryan's fatal crash on August 16, 2010 may have been the result of distracted driving due to texting.

There is an argument on the issue saying that there are special circumstances in which texting while driving is helpful and safe. Maybe traffic is at a standstill and one sends a quick text to an employer or family member notifying them that they will be late. We all experience emergencies and other events that take place and it is maybe a good thing that we have cell phones to use during those specific times. There was an incident this past week in the news, a husband drove over 90 mph on a interstate with his wife hanging on to the windshield wiper and the wheel well on the drivers side of the vehicle, he drove for over 35 miles while another driver called 911 as he stayed with the the dangerous situation. When the husband slowed down to exit the interstate the woman saw an opportunity to jump off of the vehicle, when she did the driver that was in pursuit got her to a hospital. We must use our judgement and common sense to determine a proper situation for cellular phone use while behind the wheel because there really are those times when we need to use them.

PLEASE, BE CAREFUL!

We do know that it is very dangerous to text while driving but we also know that we want what we want when we want it. Enjoying our modern luxuries comes at a great price, a debt not one of us can repay which is even more reason to be considerate of the fact that we can indulge ourselves with fancy things but cannot replace life taken away prematurely nor the life/lives torn and damaged by selfish habits.

Most of us have heard people say that they are fast and good at texting, so they won't make any mistakes while driving, That's bologna! The odds are that if they continue to do text while driving the consequences of their actions may very well be fatal, even worse they may kill someone else. It is not at all fair for one to assume they have the ability to text and drive without causing problems on the road.

I BEG ANYONE WHO MAY TEXT WHILE DRIVING (EVEN IF IT'S NOT OFTEN) DO YOU R VERY BEST TO BREAK THE HABIT, PLEASE!