Distracted Driving Essay

Distractive driving causes you to not only get into an accident, but it can also cause you to lose focus. When we are driving a car, we are constantly looking ahead looking for things that could possibly cause a distraction to us. Some distractive things while driving could be, receiving text messages or calls, music playing from the radio, construction vehicles, a billboard sign, an accident, or even someone pulled over to the side of the road. Even if we don’t notice some of the things distracting, there are things everywhere that could possibly distract you from being focused on driving a car. There are different parts of our brain that come into play when we drive a car. To name a few they are the Broca’s area, pons, the reticular formation,
and the visual cortex. I would say both the cognitive and physical factors contribute to accidents when talking or texting on the phone because the factors of both can simply cause you to get into an accident that is not worth it. It causes you to get distracted by another object where you simply just lose control of the vehicle and crash into somebody in front of you or someone in the other lane.
The cognitive factors that can cause an accident from talking or texting on a phone are, responding slowly to what’s going on around your car such as pulling over to the side of the road if there is an emergency vehicle behind you, stopping at a stop sign or even a stop light, or slowing down so you don’t crash into the person in front of you. The other factor is visual distraction. The texting or even a phone call falls into this because you are simply taking your eyes off the road because you hear or see the phone ring or receive a message. Some of the physical factors include, not paying attention as to what is going on around you, acting drowsy from not getting enough sleep the night before, missing a stop sign or stoplight, not paying attention to the flow of traffic, or again simply receiving a text or a phone call. The article that I found is about teens who listen to music while driving in the car which causes them to lose their focus while driving. Its just not about using cell phones anymore, its about teens listening to music while they are
driving. In that case, it is causing them to get distracted instead of paying attention as to what is on the road. While music is playing in the car, its not just about adjusting the volume of it or trying to skip a song, it’s the “music itself can interfere with teens ability to stay focused while driving” (Warren Brodsky, and Zack Slor, 2013”. It also talked about how some people have more driving mistakes along with dangerous behaviors when they listen to their own music such as, “speeding, aggression, and weaving” instead of listening to instrumental music or no music at all. An interesting thing that it stated at the end was music may not have an effect in older people, but it may show a different effect on younger drivers. In chapter 4 of our textbook, while using their cell phones, they were given a driving task where they had to apply the brakes as fast as they can while using their cell phone. That certain task caused them to miss “twice as many red lights as when they weren’t talking on their phone” (David Strayer, and William Johnston, 2001, p. 103). That is why it is so dangerous using a phone while driving because even though you don’t know what is going to happen whether its missing a stop sign, or even a red light, it just isn’t safe and worth the accident waiting to happen.