成人头条

Of all the dangers on the road, drivers are what you have to watch out for the most.

Alex Chaparro, director of 成人头条鈥檚 psychology department, studies drivers who multitask behind the wheel, especially drivers who try to text or call while driving.

鈥淲hen you ask people to rate how good they are at driving and the kind of risks they pose, they often have very positive assessments,鈥� said Chaparro. 鈥淭hey believe that they鈥檙e good drivers.

鈥淏ut what we see when we look at participants in our experiments is that their driving is affected. What people believe in terms of their capabilities isn鈥檛 reflected in the data.鈥�

Chaparro has researched drivers鈥� behavior since 1998.

鈥淪ome tasks may be more distracting than others,鈥� Chaparro said. 鈥淔or example, there鈥檚 evidence that listening to a book on tape doesn鈥檛 seem to interfere much with driving.鈥�

Driving interference

One of the experiments Chaparro conducted was reading a set of letters to each participant while driving. Some only had to repeat the letters back in the order they received them, and that didn鈥檛 seem to affect their driving.

鈥淏ut when you asked drivers to alphabetize their set of letters it has a big impact on their driving,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hinking about generating a response is perhaps the main source of interference in driving.鈥�

Chaparro said when you鈥檙e thinking about generating a response, you鈥檙e not thinking about what鈥檚 going on in the road ahead.

Most recently he has been directing his research at texting while driving.

鈥淲e did an initial study looking at texting versus talking, and we found that texting was a lot worse,鈥� he said. 鈥淥n virtually every measure we found that drivers who were texting were significantly worse than drivers who were just talking on the phone.鈥�

When you鈥檙e texting, Chaparro said, you have the cognitive demands of talking. But now, you also have to physically interact with a device using small buttons that require visual confirmation.

Chaparro cited a study done at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University that used video cameras in vehicles to record drivers鈥� behavior on the road. The study attempted to correlate crashes and near misses with the drivers鈥� behavior.

The study found evidence that texting while driving increases the chance of a crash by as much as 23 times. That compares to being four times as likely to crash while talking on the phone.

Timely research

With Kansas鈥� new laws against texting while driving, Chaparro鈥檚 research has become more timely than ever.

鈥淚 think the law highlights the difficulties faced by both the police and drivers when it has to be enforced,鈥� he said.

Kansas law now allows law enforcement officers to stop motorists for 鈥渟ending, receiving or reading text messages or emails on their wireless devices.鈥�

鈥淔irst, it appears that many drivers are not aware of the law and that it covers not only the typing of a text message but also the act of reading a text message,鈥� Chaparro said. 鈥淎 public education program may be needed to raise awareness and educate drivers.

鈥淪econd, enforcement poses a challenge because it is not always clear from a short glance whether the driver was texting, using the phone to check the time or to turn off an alarm. Would all of these cases be treated as if the person was texting? Is dialing a telephone number any less risky than texting 鈥榞ot 2 go鈥�?鈥�

Even though some people are naturally better at multitasking than others, that doesn鈥檛 mean that they are immune from the risk, he said.

鈥淲hen people are engaged in these tasks, even when they鈥檙e good at them, those tasks still place a burden on the driving performance,鈥� Chaparro said.

This can be demonstrated without even getting in a car.

鈥淲e鈥檝e been walking since about age 1. It鈥檚 the most practiced motor task that we engage in. Yet walking is affected by the simple task of listening for two tones and responding to just one of them,鈥� he said.

His point is that people are not nearly as practiced at driving as they are at walking.

So, Chaparro said, no one should be surprised that using a mobile device behind the wheel impacts driving performance.

鈥淎nything that distracts drivers is a risk. Looking at accident statistics, you find that driver distraction is the most common cause of mishaps,鈥� Chaparro said. 鈥淎nything in a car that serves as a source of distraction in a car is problematic.鈥�