Opinion: Study reminds drivers to keep eyes on the road

As hard as it may be to believe, driver inattention is the cause of nearly 80 percent of auto accidents. Gasp!

Who would have thought that drivers not paying attention to traffic conditions around them would turn out to be the major cause of accidents and near accidents?

I am, of course, speaking with tongue firmly in cheek. This is like a study indicating that more married people get divorces than do singles.

The value of the results isn’t in discovery of new and sensational information but another reminder that when behind the wheel, job one is to give complete attention to everything around us. When applied to modern drivers, the old-time train engineer adage isn’t as corny as it may sound: “Keep your hand upon the throttle and your eye upon the rail.”

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration conducted the study. The researchers began with the assumption that drivers who pay attention are involved in fewer accidents and near accidents. According to the Associated Press, thousands of hours of video and data from sensory monitors linked to more than 200 drivers were studied. They were attempting to pinpoint those things that keep drivers from avoiding near or actual crashes.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the chances of a crash increase nearly threefold when a driver is dialing a cell phone. Common sense tells us that distractions can lead to accidents; however, this study is apparently the first to actually link cell phone usage and many other acts of inattention to collisions.

On the subject of cell phones, when I encounter a driver talking on one, I automatically compute mentally the degree of personal hazard based on traffic conditions. If I am alongside the phone talker in light traffic, I’m only mildly concerned. As conditions grow more complex, I become more wary. Way out there at the far end of the “Get me out of here” spectrum is the driver chatting away on a cell phone in heavy freeway-type traffic, traveling well over the posted speed limit while constantly changing lanes. That’s a driver I don’t want to have within a country mile of me.

The AP quoted Jacqueline Glassman, acting administrator of the highway safety group, saying that besides talking on the phone, they see people checking their stocks or sports scores. Now that’s scary.

Think about it: Stock market and sports scores may be in tiny print. It would be well nigh impossible to read them without taking the eyes completely away from the road. To the small-print checkers, I say “Get thee to a roadside park, now!”

Ms. Glassman mentions other diversions including “fussing with their MP3 players and reading e-mails while driving 40, 50, 60, 70 miles per hour or faster.”

Cell phones and reading aren’t the only diversions. Safety researchers found that reaching for a moving object increased driver risk of actual or real collisions by nine times.

Some distractions are outside of the car; others are inside it. Watching events away from the road, tuning radios, adjusting various knobs and buttons on the dashboard, eating and daydreaming were among the observed diversions. Even talking to passengers and singing were causes for crashes.

Conventional wisdom would point to smoking activities, such as lighting up and using the ashtray, as a major distraction. Surprisingly, smoking resulted in zero crash situations in this study.

Although this highway safety study provided additional proof of facts we already know, it’s good to be reminded that safe driving means keeping hands, eyes and mind on the road. Good advice cannot be repeated too often.

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.[[In-content Ad]]