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It seems that humble creatures such as you and I, simply aren't good at multi-tasking when we have one task taxing our auditory channel and another taxing our visual one.

This, we're told, is why it's dangerous to drive and talk on a cellphone at the same time.

Well, if this is true, I can see a big problem here.

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Should we now ban car radios?

Or perhaps there should be a strictly-enforced "no talking" law to cover the situation where a vehicle contains more than one person.

Quite frankly I think this is surely a load of hog-wash. After all, we've been driving and talking (to passengers) for as long as there have been cars and roads.

If maintaining a conversation and driving a car safely were mutually exclusive activities then why aren't there far more crashes than we currently see -- and why don't more of those crashes involve multiple-occupant vehicles?

And how on earth do those V8 Supercar drivers manage to talk to their pit crews (or even to a live TV audience) while racing at 250Km/H down the back-straight of some racetrack?

Thinking a bit further -- if this report is true, how on earth do we manage to walk and talk at the same time? Or watch TV and chat?

How about this for an answer...

It's much safer to talk with someone "in person" while driving than to talk with someone over a cellphone because your brain doesn't have to visualise that person.

When you're sitting next to someone, your brain doesn't need to constantly redraw the mental picture of that person -- so your visual processing is free to focus on the task of driving.

If the person you're talking to is not present however, I strongly suspect that our brains have to search for a memory of that person and build a (perhaps subconscious) image of them in your mind -- something that probably ties up a significant amount of our visual processing.

There can be little doubt that talking on a cellphone does adversely affect your concentration while driving -- I've experienced this myself. The strange thing is that chatting to a passenger while driving has little or no perceptible influence on driving abilities.

What about you...?

Do you find your driving ability and focus dulled if you're talking on a mobile phone? What about if you're engaged in conversation with a passenger?

And don't you hate those drivers who turn around and look at you while they're driving and chatting -- especially when you're sitting in the back seat! :-)

Lighten Up
Come on folks, my lighten-up folder is bare -- get to your keyboards and send in your best links.

Here's something an eagle-eyed reader spotted on a local website yesterday and it just goes to show that some people will buy anything.

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