Texting and Driving Accident/Driving while talking on a cell phone, even one that is hands-free, can cause errors in decision making and delays in response time.
Description Sixteen-year-old Emily and five of her teenage friends piled into Emily’s mother’s minivan to drive to a local football game on a Friday night. Emily had just gotten her license and was excited to drive to her first event but made sure that everyone was seat-belted before departing. As they did, Emily cranked up the stereo and the girls began screaming and singing though Emily was driving safely and within the speed limit. Five minutes into Emily’s drive, she received a text message from her boyfriend Brian, telling her that he wanted to break off their relationship of one year. Rather than wait until she was out of the vehicle, Emily started texting and driving. Getting increasingly upset, Emily began texting using both hands, attempting to drive the minivan with her knees and elbows while reading text messages from Brian. While not looking at the road, and reading a long message, Emily failed to notice that the minivan began to careen off the road. Unable to correct her driving due to her relative inexperience and all the distractions, Emily accelerated and drove off the road into a ditch. In this car accident, Emily bumped her head on the steering wheel and all the passengers experienced whiplash, with one receiving minor cuts due to the passenger window shattering. All five passengers and Emily were taken to the hospital for various injuries. Emily is headed to criminal court for negligence and causing bodily harm while driving. Questions for Rough Draft assignment: Case Study 1 Explain how the central bottleneck contributes to those breakdowns in driving performance. How does inattentional blindness add to the problem? In your view, why do so many people believe themselves immune from these effects, even though others might be impaired by cell phone use during driving? Use course concepts on attention, remembering, decision-making, and problem-solving to explain your answer.