Technology and Distracted Driving

June 28th is the last day of the National Safety Council's National Safety Month. Their 2009 campaign has addressed Teen Driving, Fall Protection, Overexertion, and Distracted Driving. Because of MSC's focus on highway traffic safety, I thought this final week of the campaign warranted an additional post.

Distraction is often defined as when a driver focuses his or her attention on something other than the driving task. When this happens, perceiving the nature of a potential roadway hazard and responding to it takes longer.

"New" technologies (cell phones, wireless e-mail, and so on) have received quite a bit of unfavorable attention as potential distractions. However, the real problem is that drivers misuse the technology: they send text messages while driving and have cell phone conversations that are intense enough to create a high mental workload. If we are honest, a) I think we all know better, but b) we all do it anyway, at least occasionally.

Since we can't put the technology-genie back in the bottle (and we wouldn't want to even if we could), and because we generally do a poor job of changing people's driving behaviors, this is an area where we will have to rely heavily on other technologies to assist educators and enforcers in keeping roadways safer.

One great example of engineering technology coming to the rescue is a new product called Zoomsafer. MSC doesn't have any interest in this company, we don't receive any kickback from them, and we haven't studied it ourselves (or seen other peer-reviewed studies of it). However, these folks definitely have the right idea: use technology to assist the user and make his or her experience better and safer.

Zoomsafer may or may not work--I've signed up to be a beta customer so I can find out for myself. And the product is still in its infancy (it's still signing on beta customers). But this is absolutely on the right track: making people's lives better and safer with technology, and then finding an effective way to bring that technology to market.