Students Against Distracted Driving Haley WesterkampAlison Brokaw Madeline WrightTevien Pinckney

What is Distracted Driving?  The practice of operating a motor vehicle while engaged in another activity  Examples  Cell Phone  Eating  Drinking  GPS  Etc.

4 Types of Distractions  Visual Distractions  Manual Distractions  Cognitive Distractions  Audio Distractions

Visual Distraction  When your eyes are taken off the road while driving for any reason

Manual Distractions  When your hands are taken off the wheel while driving for any reason

Cognitive Distraction  When your brain activity is being used for something else other than driving

Audio Distraction  When any sound takes attention away from the road while driving for any reason

Our Culture  Americans place too much emphasis on multitasking  Americans also overestimate their ability to multitask  Cell Phone Statistics Cell Phone Statistics

American Teenage Trends  Drivers in their 20’s make up 27% of the distracted drivers in fatal crashes.  At any given moment, about 660,000 drivers are using an electronic device while driving.

American Teenage Trends  25% of teens respond to a text message once or more every time they drive.  20% of teens and 10% of parents, admit to having extended, multi-message text conversations while driving.

Laws on Distracted Driving  Texting and Driving is prohibited in 44 states  Not Banned: Arizona, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, Texas  Hand-Held Cell Phone use is prohibited in 14 states  No state bans all cell-phone use while driving  Novice drivers  School bus drivers

Laws on Distracted Driving  Bans are only effective for around four months  Hand-held bans are more effective for adults  Primary enforcement laws are more effective  Bans have not significantly reduced teen use of mobile devices

Hands-Held vs. Hands-Free  Hands-held devices  Trending toward being banned  Stigma of being more dangerous than Hands-Free  Hands-free  No state has a ban on Hands-Free  Companies and government officials can ban workers from using Hands-Free

New York Times Distracted Driving Simulator New York TImes Guaging Your Distraction

Multitasking  Not Possible  Brain can only completely focus on one task at a time  Takes time to switch attention between tasks  Select  Process  Encode  Store  Retrieve  Execute

Primary VS. Secondary Tasks  Primary Task – the task requiring your full attention  Pot on the front burner  Secondary Task – the concurrent task requiring equal attention  Pot on the back burner  You decide which is most important

Pie chart Driving Texting Make-up Music GPS Eating Talking Other

Reaction Times  Conversations slow your reflexes cognitively because your mind is switching its primary focus  Your brain processes danger at a slower rate  76% of accidents involving a cell phone the conversation was only 2 minutes or less

Video Distracted Driving Video

References  d_Driving/Documents/Cognitive%20Distra ction%20White%20Paper.pdf d_Driving/Documents/Cognitive%20Distra ction%20White%20Paper.pdf  cellphone_laws.html cellphone_laws.html   the-facts/facts-and-statistics.html the-facts/facts-and-statistics.html  M M

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