We all know the feeling. You’re driving and have a thought you need to write down. Or you realize you forgot to reply to an email, or a friend texts you. You think to yourself, Should I do it? Should I text, or email, or jot down my notes while driving? I know it’s wrong … but I could make an exception just this once.
But it’s never “just once.” In fact, I was in this exact situation when the idea for this article came to me. So, recently while driving to work, I deemed it my ethical responsibility to explain what’s really going on. Of course, I first jotted down my ideas in my phone—after pulling over into an empty parking space.
Most crashes are caused by people like you and me who think they can pay attention to the road and do something else at the same time.
It’s All About Attention
Everyone knows that texting and driving is a terrible idea, but few understand why. Taking your eyes off the road has obvious disadvantages. But the real story behind the danger of texting while driving is far more interesting: It degrades our attention.
Over 90 percent of crashes are the fault of drivers. The most frequent driver mistake is “recognition error,” which encompasses “driver’s inattention, internal and external distractions, and inadequate surveillance.” In other words, most crashes are not caused by flagrantly intoxicated people, nor that aggressive driver who will do whatever it takes to get to their destination one minute earlier. Most crashes are caused by people like you and me who think they can pay attention to the road and do something else at the same time.
When you are engaged in conversation, be it on a call or texting—or even with someone else in the car—your attention is divided. And as fallible humans, we only have so much attention to spare. In fact, while there are very few magic numbers in life, there is a magic number associated with how many things we can attend to at once. And it’s not a lot.
In 1956, cognitive psychologist George Miller found that people can hold about seven chunks of information, give or take two (or, five to nine), in their minds at one time. Today we call this working memory, and research since Miller’s time has found that the maximum number of elements that we can process at once may be even more limited, at only three to five chunks.
In all the driving-while-talking research, there is little to no difference in impairment between drivers using hands-free and hand-held phones.
In 2001, before texting while driving had invaded the public sphere and the BlackBerry had become the smartest phone around, two researchers linked our limited attention to driving impairment. They found that when drivers were engaged in conversation, drivers’ attention was drawn away from the visual scene, even without any actual visual impairment. In other words, even when we are looking at the road, we don’t perceive it as well as when we are not distracted. We are seeing, but not perceiving. The underlying phenomenon is the same as the famed “invisible gorilla” experiment.
Phone Calls Are Worse Than No Calls (and Just as Bad as Drunk Driving)
A study using a driving simulator found that participants who engaged in hands-free phone conversations took longer to react to a car slowing down ahead of them compared to those who drove without conversation. This driving-while-talking effect was exacerbated when there was high traffic density, because there were more attentional demands on the driver.
Research also shows that when people are talking on the phone, crash risk quadruples. Drivers who are on a call are about equally at risk as is someone driving at the legal limit of blood alcohol content. In one simulated-driving environment, drivers who were on their phones got into significantly more accidents than the drunk drivers.
Importantly, in all the driving-while-talking research, there is little to no difference in impairment between drivers using hands-free and hand-held phones. Because it’s an issue of attention—and there is only minimal extra distraction when picking up or holding a phone—it doesn’t really help to use a hands-free device. Merely thinking about something other than the road is enough to strain attention and increase your risk of a crash.
Despite this, intuition tells us that as long as our eyes are on the road, we perceive what’s in front of us. It’s easy to imagine the risks of removing your eyes from the road and your hands from the steering wheel, but not as easy to see the risks of divided attention. This is likely part of the reason (or, shall I say, driving force) behind the ill-informed policies that prohibit hands-on talking and texting but allow hands-free conversations.
Texting Is Slightly Worse Than Calling, and Passengers and Deep Thoughts Are Almost as Bad
It is no surprise that texting feels worse. When we text, our eyes are averted, and of course we need to see to drive. (Step 1: See. Step 2: Perceive.) I don’t need to tell you that it is not a good idea to drive wearing a blindfold.
But there is more to texting than meets the eye. While talking on the phone puts a strain on attention (interfering with step 2), texting fully switches our attention. It is not just divided, but completely taken over (getting in the way of both step 1 and even more so step 2). But while texting is indeed worse than conversing while driving, it is not by much.
Some researchers—using real cars, not simulators—found that hands-free phone calls are similarly distracting as conversations with another person in the car. The more complex the conversation, the more the driver’s attention was strained and their driving ability impaired. The researchers even found impairment for what they call “internal activity”—simply thinking about a lot while driving.
So Why Do We Drive Distracted?
First of all, distracted driving doesn’t feel dangerous. We may recognize on a cognitive level that distracted driving is stupid, but we have no accompanying visceral feeling of fear, no associated emotion to guide our decision-making in the moment of temptation. Our brains do such a good job making us feel like we’re in charge that we don’t realize it’s all an illusion until it’s too late. If our hearts started racing as soon as our attention started to drift, we might be more inclined to stay focused.
Furthermore, we feel immune to the risks that affect other people. Researchers who study texting while driving find that their participants “have observed others driving erratically while using a cell phone, but these participants rarely, if ever, thought that their own driving was impaired when they used the cell phone.” And despite the fact that there is no benefit to practice (people who regularly use their cell phone while driving perform no better in studies than those with less real-life experience), the belief that we can manage persists. Consistent with this, three out of four people think they are above average drivers (a statistical impossibility). We are simply overconfident in our abilities.
Finally, many of us have a lot of experience making bad driving decisions and not suffering any consequences. Most times that we text and drive we are lucky and don’t end up in an accident. Brains respond to feedback, and when the only feedback we’ve gotten so far is that texting and driving hasn’t led to an accident, it feels reasonable to infer that we are able to do it safely. We imagine that the past will predict the future and ignore the actual risk. But when the stakes include fatality and the benefit of texting is so marginal, it’s not just short-sighted to take the chance—it’s simply stupid.
We may recognize on a cognitive level that distracted driving is stupid, but we have no accompanying visceral feeling of fear, no associated emotion to guide our decision-making in the moment of temptation.
Don’t Trust Your Gut
Since we have a false sense of security and don’t feel like we are behaving dangerously, we need better cues to keep ourselves in check. If you’re thinking to yourself, “I want to use better cues … how can I?” then here are some tips from similarly challenging behavioral problems.
Watch the most gruesome car accident video you can find on YouTube and play it in your head every time you think of reaching for the phone. Take a ride in AT&T’s #itcanwait VR driving simulator and make a public commitment on social media. Make a rule that you will never use your phone while in the driver’s seat, and attach the rule to a contingency contract where you accept some form of awful punishment if you break the rule. Simply turn on Apple’s “do not disturb while driving” or Samsung’s “in-traffic reply” so that you can drive knowing that anyone who texts you will know why you’re not immediately responding. Or better yet, don’t even make it possible to use your phone while driving—put it in the trunk! Whatever you do, don’t trust your intuitions, and don’t wait for the moment of temptation to decide whether or not to pick up the phone.
The good news is that you won’t even have to worry about this in a few years because cars will just drive themselves. In the meantime, if you are the one in control of two tons of heavy machinery (the weight of an average car), remember the real reason why it’s a terrible idea to text while driving. Or to have a conversation. Or to get distracted in any other way. It’s not just about keeping your eyes on the road, or your hands on the steering wheel.
The real reason to stay on task while driving is to protect your most precious, most limited resource: attention.