Gadgets in cars too distracting
Lewis DiuguidToday’s cars come with too many distracting electronic devices.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is right to require carmakers to disable some of the gadgets when the vehicles are in motion to prevent drivers from using the gizmos. That includes built-in GPS systems.
Naturally there will be some push-back by motorists and the auto companies. It’s impossible to unring the bell. The use of those devices now have consumers hooked on having them in their cars.
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RD Porter
2 months, 4 weeks agoEven when you are right you get it wrong. DOT has issued ‘proposed’ ‘guidelines’ for comment (meaning consumers have 60 days to sound off). If the guidelines are enacted they will be exactly what their name implies: voluntary guidelines - not mandatory laws. (source: NHTSA website)
The part you got right is that there are indeed too many distractions for today’s driver. Study after study has shown that humans cannot effectively multitask. When they do more than one task at a time all the tasks they are engaged in suffer in quality. Drivers should be concerned solely with driving. They should not be texting, talking on the phone, talking to passengers, adjusting the heater, listening to the stereo or admiring the scenery.
Every year, for the last 40 years, we lose between 40 and 50 thousand people on American highways. Virtually every accident is caused by some type of driver distraction. There are those very rare occasions when a part on a car breaks or a part of a road gives way causing an accident. Everything else is caused by a driver not paying attention to driving and driving alone.
Some have speculated that he guidelines are being put out to test the political will power of the auto industry and that they are a precursor to actual laws that will be implemented down the road if the political climate is right. That’s a gutless move. The ‘guidelines’ should have been implemented as law – now, not at some future date.