Read Online Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation by Edward Humes - Free Book Online
Authors: Edward Humes
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routine tasks while also remaining alert forsudden, unexpected dangers that may or not materialize. Robots and computers excel in that scenarioâwhich is why autopilots on airliners have become essential tools during long flights.
Using cell phones, employing GPS devices, and engaging in other tasks unrelated to driving (eating, putting on makeup, using an electric razorâalmost anything can become a distraction) heighten this risk. And so distracted driving happens every day in America. The results are fatal: about once an hour that we know of.
When danger loomsâa car jamming on the brakes in front, a stop signal unnoticed, a curve in the road when attention is divertedâa lot of bad things can happen before a distracted driver can refocus attention and react.
âYou put your life in the hands of everybody passing you on a two-lane road every day,â Jim McNamara says, and the CHP officerâs tone makes clear that he does not enjoy this particular aspect of driving. McNamara knows that trust is violated daily. Heâs seen it. Heâs cleaned up after it. It happens so fast and so easily: the physics of four-thousand-pound objects racing toward one another, pitted against the temptation so many drivers indulge, to read that text or find that playlist, because itâll only take a few seconds looking away from the road. The problem: two cars traveling 65 miles per hour in opposite directions have a closing speed of 190 feet per second. All you have to do is look down at your phone and inadvertently drift across the centerline: in just three seconds, two cars that had two football fieldsâ worth of distance between them are in a head-on collision.
âI wish we could impress that on people, the ramifications of looking down at your phone,â McNamara says. âWe see it all the time.â
Even when there is time to react, the sudden refocus from a distracted state can lead to overcorrectionâa too-vigorous swerveof the steering wheel or skid-causing jam of the brakes that can make things worse. This, too, happened several times on Friday the thirteenth.
For the police, proving a case of distracted driving is difficult. Unlike drunken driving, which can be verified with blood alcohol testing, or speeding, which can be calculated from traffic cameras, impact force, skid marks, and physical damage, distraction rarely leaves hard evidence and, in the absence of witnesses, can be inferred though seldom proved. 14 But now an unusual and sobering analysis of 1,700 videos of teen drivers taken from in-car recordings of crashes suggests distracted driving may be a much larger problem than previously believed. Two particular types of crashes stood out: 89 percent of road-departure crashesâin which cars drifted onto shoulders or off roadbeds entrielyâand 76 percent of rear-end collisions were caused by distraction.
The videos are horrifying, one crash after another in which death or major injury was avoided by luck rather than skill: teens staring down at cell phones for four seconds, applying makeup, staring out the side windowsâall while their cars veered off the road, slammed into the back of other cars, or spun out as the drivers looked up and overreacted. The seven most common distractions observed in this video study played out this way:
⢠  Interacting with one or more passengers: 15 percent of crashes
⢠  Cell phone use: 12 percent of crashes
⢠  Looking at something in the vehicle: 10 percent of crashes
⢠  Looking at something outside the vehicle: 9 percent of crashes
⢠  Singing/moving to music: 8 percent of crashes
⢠  Grooming: 6 percent of crashes
⢠  Reaching for an object: 6 percent of crashes
The study, released in March 2015 by the American Automobile Association Foundation for Traffic Safety, found that distraction was a factor in nearly six out of ten moderate
Using cell phones, employing GPS devices, and engaging in other tasks unrelated to driving (eating, putting on makeup, using an electric razorâalmost anything can become a distraction) heighten this risk. And so distracted driving happens every day in America. The results are fatal: about once an hour that we know of.
When danger loomsâa car jamming on the brakes in front, a stop signal unnoticed, a curve in the road when attention is divertedâa lot of bad things can happen before a distracted driver can refocus attention and react.
âYou put your life in the hands of everybody passing you on a two-lane road every day,â Jim McNamara says, and the CHP officerâs tone makes clear that he does not enjoy this particular aspect of driving. McNamara knows that trust is violated daily. Heâs seen it. Heâs cleaned up after it. It happens so fast and so easily: the physics of four-thousand-pound objects racing toward one another, pitted against the temptation so many drivers indulge, to read that text or find that playlist, because itâll only take a few seconds looking away from the road. The problem: two cars traveling 65 miles per hour in opposite directions have a closing speed of 190 feet per second. All you have to do is look down at your phone and inadvertently drift across the centerline: in just three seconds, two cars that had two football fieldsâ worth of distance between them are in a head-on collision.
âI wish we could impress that on people, the ramifications of looking down at your phone,â McNamara says. âWe see it all the time.â
Even when there is time to react, the sudden refocus from a distracted state can lead to overcorrectionâa too-vigorous swerveof the steering wheel or skid-causing jam of the brakes that can make things worse. This, too, happened several times on Friday the thirteenth.
For the police, proving a case of distracted driving is difficult. Unlike drunken driving, which can be verified with blood alcohol testing, or speeding, which can be calculated from traffic cameras, impact force, skid marks, and physical damage, distraction rarely leaves hard evidence and, in the absence of witnesses, can be inferred though seldom proved. 14 But now an unusual and sobering analysis of 1,700 videos of teen drivers taken from in-car recordings of crashes suggests distracted driving may be a much larger problem than previously believed. Two particular types of crashes stood out: 89 percent of road-departure crashesâin which cars drifted onto shoulders or off roadbeds entrielyâand 76 percent of rear-end collisions were caused by distraction.
The videos are horrifying, one crash after another in which death or major injury was avoided by luck rather than skill: teens staring down at cell phones for four seconds, applying makeup, staring out the side windowsâall while their cars veered off the road, slammed into the back of other cars, or spun out as the drivers looked up and overreacted. The seven most common distractions observed in this video study played out this way:
⢠  Interacting with one or more passengers: 15 percent of crashes
⢠  Cell phone use: 12 percent of crashes
⢠  Looking at something in the vehicle: 10 percent of crashes
⢠  Looking at something outside the vehicle: 9 percent of crashes
⢠  Singing/moving to music: 8 percent of crashes
⢠  Grooming: 6 percent of crashes
⢠  Reaching for an object: 6 percent of crashes
The study, released in March 2015 by the American Automobile Association Foundation for Traffic Safety, found that distraction was a factor in nearly six out of ten moderate
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