There are so many distractions inside the car. For young drivers, a car is a social hub for decades. For many professionals, their SUV, truck, a car is their office on the wheels. This article is not for writing on these people. Distracted driving results in fatalities not only who are behind the wheel, but also the other passengers in the car, pedestrians, and fellow road occupants. A driving with a hand held device is four times more likely to get a crash which leads to serious injuries. In this article we will see the most dangerous habits while driving that can distract.
- Reading or surfing the Internet: Accessing Internet in the car through tablets and smartphones becomes easy to browse, car radio, etc. This is very comfortable to the driver. But it again becomes a big distraction. Drivers are doing multi-tasking at a time. They are doing both driving and using those devices.
- Texting: According to the distraction.gov website, if you text while driving you are 23 times more likely to crash. Prior to the year 2000, this is not even in the distraction list. But now with social media platforms and the technology improvement, it has become one of the major things for distraction. Texting reduces the situational awareness and the driver take his or her eyes off the road. To screen, typing and sending a brief text message it will take about five seconds of attention. As per NHTSA, distracted driving accidents with the hand held devices are the No.1 killer of teens.
- Eating and drinking: When compared with the other distracted driving habits, eating and drinking is not such a dangerous. There are somethings to go wrong like spill the coffee on your lap, deluxe burger or breakfast sausage could collapse, sending crumbs, patty pieces and sauce all over the work outfit, and one handed driving or greasy hands will result in less control over steering. In any of these cases unexpected event and impaired attention will cause to loss of control.
- Drowsiness: According to the AAA foundation of traffic safety, there are nearly 41 percent of drivers saying that they have fallen asleep while they are on wheels at some point. In the United States there are 100,000 crashes per year because of drowsy driving, which results 1,550 deaths and 40,000 injuries, as per NHTSA. It feel very difficult to control the drowsiness in the late nights even alcohol did not taken, all windows are opened and high volume stereo.
Other distraction while driving are include applying makeup, talking on the phone, operating navigation system, taking dropped items on the car floor, keeping an eye on kids or moving objects like animals, day dreaming or indulging in thinking, etc.