Dangers of Hands Free Driving in Traffic

People who use hands free driving and vocal instructions for mobile devices are distracted for almost 25 seconds after making a call or changing their songs, according to the American organizations in the traffic safety field. Working with scientists, the car owners’ safety division observed that this type of ongoing diversion increases the danger in traffic while using mobile phones and automobile infotainment techniques. Overwhelming medical proof indicates that hands-free driving is not a risk-free behavior, as specialists have noticed. The distraction affects people even when the driver focuses all his attention back to traffic conditions and puts his hands on the car’s steering wheel, the review said.

The outcomes show that drivers can miss important signs on the road, people on the streets and other automobiles while their interest is readjusting to the entire process of driving a car. The experts involved in these tests considered 10 modern vehicles from various manufacturers and 3 mobile phone systems and found out that not all these techniques are similarly diverting the drivers’ attention.

Ranking psychological distraction on a scale with five points, with a reduced number being better, the scientists discovered that the best executing system was implemented on cars with high-end options on their software. Vehicle producers have declared that they already have upgraded the program for their 2016 models, integrating lessons discovered from their previous versions of cars examined by the American specialists.

Companies’ representatives strove to create a motorist-focused program and an improved customer interface with little diversion from its main objective. Given the persistent speed of technology progress, auto manufacturers are always searching for new methods to develop the perfect interface between customer and vehicle better and more user-friendly.

Experts assessed a mental diversion ranking two or more to be very dangerous while driving in normal traffic conditions. At the speed of only 20 mph, vehicles travel the length of a football field during a distraction time of under 10 seconds. Even with their better techniques that leave motorists with around 5 seconds of diversion, vehicles go half this distance. If we add to it the multitude of pedestrians who can appear at any time in front of the car, we realize that the risk of an accident is considerably increased.

Specialists also analyzed the effects of applying vocal commands to manage their phone options while driving a car. Google Now worked best, ranking a distraction level of 3, while Microsoft Cortana and Apple Siri scored almost 4 on the experts’ scale. However, using vocal instructions and mobile phones to write text messages increased the level of distraction. While delivering voice-activated text messages, Google Now ranked approximately 3.3, while Microsoft Cortana and Apple Siri ranked 3.5 and 4, respectively.

The American scientists used 250 motorists with the ages between 21 and 65 to verify the automobile system, while 50 others were subjects to testing the mobile phones. The car teams are discussing their results with the auto and mobile phone sectors with the objective of creating procedures that are a lot less distracting than paying attention to the music or making phone calls, researchers said.

 Image source: Wikipedia