If you own a mobile telephone, you are probably aware of text messaging, or texting. As with many other popular forms of communication, the next best thing to doing it at home is to do it in the car. Now we all know that driving while texting is probably not the smartest idea, but we come up with excuses to do it anyways. But how ‘not smart’ is this idea? According to Car and Driver, you’d be better off taking a couple shots sips of your favorite distilled intoxicant before getting behind the wheel.
Let’s let C and D explain:
“First, we tested both drivers’ reaction times at 35 mph and 70 mph to get baseline readings. Then we repeated the driving procedure while they read a text message aloud (a series of Caddyshack quotes). This was followed by a trial with the drivers typing the same message they had just received. Both of our lab rats were instructed to use their phones exactly as they would on a public road.“Our test subjects then got out of the vehicle and concentrated on getting slightly intoxicated. They wanted something that would work quickly: screwdrivers (vodka and orange juice). Between the two of them, they knocked back all but three ounces of a fifth of Smirnoff. Soon they were laughing at all our jokes, asking for cigarettes, and telling us about some previous time they got drunk that was totally awesome. We had them blow into a Lifeloc FC10 breath-alcohol analyzer until they reached the legal driving limit of 0.08 percent blood-alcohol content.”
Click through for their results.
While their results may make it look like driving drunk is the better of the two options, neither is a good idea. According to C and D, one intoxicated driver had to be told, not once, but two times which lane he was supposed to be in, which, in the real world would have resulted in a nightmarish head-on collision. It’s not exactly rocket science, but texting while driving seems to be much more dangerous than any of us had previously thought.
[Source: Car and Driver]
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1 “Hey grab the wheel so I can answer this text” : Driving // Jul 15, 2009 at 7:21 pm
[...] texting could be much much worse. As I was reading on this subject I came across a blog that did a test on two drivers to see which one is really worse.Texting while driving is something that I am sure [...]
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