The Risk of Distracted Driving Essay Example

able to do anything about it (Pope et al., 2017). Besides, the field of view for distracted drivers narrows hindering them from processing all things in the roadway, which is required to efficiently oversee their surroundings, searching, identifying potential risks, as well responding to situations that are not expected. Moreover, drivers communicating on hands-free mobile phones cannot allocate attention to the essential information, thus cannot see high as well as low relevant objects.

On the other hand, distracted drivers miss visual cues that are vital to safety and also navigation, the out ways, go through the red lights and desist signs, and also miss the essential navigation signs taken collectively. In addition, inattention blindness leads to drivers’ failure to notice what is happening in the driving environment, thus making it impossible to respond safely, for instance, moving the steering or braking to prevent a crash (Huisingh et al., 2019).

Besides, when drivers are using a cell phone, they respond slowly to reactions due to attention switching because the brain must make decisions for every information input, whether to take action on the refined information, how to take action, how to begin the action, as well as how to stop the action. Therefore, these strides take time, and when driving, a fraction of a second is the time between a crash or no crash, life or death.

In addition, drivers on hands-free and hand-held mobile phones also respond slowly in reducing their speed when they are behind a slowing vehicle in front of them; thus, they are most likely to break hard compared to drivers who are not on a mobile phone. Therefore, hands-free phone usage leads to increased

response time to breaking vehicles ahead of drivers, hence resulting in an increment in the rate of crashes.

References

1. Huisingh, C., Owsley, C., Levitan, E. B., Irvin, M. R., MacLennan, P., & McGwin, G. (2019). Distracted driving and risk of a crash or near-crash involvement among older drivers using naturalistic driving data with case-crossover study design. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, 74(4), 550-555.
2. Pope, C. N., Bell, T. R., & Stavrinos, D. (2017). Mechanisms behind distracted driving behavior: The role of age and executive function in the engagement of distracted driving. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 98, 123-129.
3. Schroeder, P., Wilbur, M., Pena, R., & Abt, S. R. B. I. (2018). National survey on distracted driving attitudes and behaviors-2015 (No. DOT HS 812 461). The United States. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.