Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Special Interests Pushing Distracted Driving For A Reason?

We've been hearing about "distracted drivers" for awhile now. First it was GPS devices under attack, then it blew up big with texting and driving. Now, according to an article on Engadget, a study has been conducted that has concluded that just using voice-only input for your smart-device while driving causes as much driver distraction as physically texting.

If using your voice to operate a device is distracting to a driver, why wouldn't just talking to someone in the car with you while driving be a distraction?! I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps there is an agenda behind all this "driver distraction" hoopla lately. Maybe there are special interest groups out there that see pushing driver distraction issues will in the future make "driver-less cars" more appealing to the general public. After all, if they've convinced everyone that unless a driver is completely cut off from every distraction possible, we'll always be unsafe on the road until we take the driving away from the human.

I'm all for the development of the driver-less car, but I don't think it's necessary to "dumb-down" people to get us there. Most adults are capable of doing multiple things at once, hence the term, multi-tasking. There are always going to be those that can't multi-task and could therefore be a problem when driving, maybe instead of tying everyone down with rules and regulations, we should instead concentrate on making sure that only competent people are issued licenses to drive!

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