It goes without saying that there are a myriad of dangers that road users face every single time they get behind the wheel, from pedestrians crossing the road to other drivers who are unaware of other cars. These hazards can put you and your passengers in danger, even when you are focussed on your surroundings. You can only imagine how much more dangerous it is to drive when you are being distracted.
The UK motoring experts Kwik Fit wanted to demonstrate exactly how much a small distraction can affect your driving. To do this, they created an interactive game titled Driven To Distraction which you can find on the company’s website. In the game, players are asked to react as soon as they see a stop sign on the road in front of them. They are then asked to do the same thing, but this time, there are questions to answer on a smartphone in front of them.
When you play the game, you realise just how much a small distraction like that can affect your reaction time – even if you are only playing the game online. Driven To Distraction also reveals the real-world effects of not responding immediately. Just a few milliseconds longer and your stopping distance can be significantly increased. That can have serious, even grave, consequences when you are actually on the road.
Kwik Fit also commissioned some brand new research which shows just how serious the problem of phone distraction can be. They revealed that nearly 2.7 million drivers had a collision or veered off road because they were distracted by their mobile phone. This is partly due to the fact that almost a quarter (24 per cent) of drivers admitted to reading text messages whilst driving, even though it is illegal to do this.
