When it comes to distracted driving, studies have shown that most motorists are aware of the dangers. Yet, people continue to talk on their phones, text behind the wheel and engage in other distracting behavior. Many people feel while others should not use their phones behind the wheel, they are fully capable of juggling this task with driving, and doing so safely. However, this is not true, and yet another study, conducted at the Duke Institute, confirms the fact that people are unable to engage in conversation while driving without taking some of the focus off of the more pertinent task.<\/p>\n
The researchers studied 60 video game enthusiasts who are accustomed to taking in many different bits of information all at once, such as reading instructions or maps while simultaneously fighting bad guys. The subjects were asked to play the TrackMania racing games as well as two puzzle games. They played each game through once, and the second time, they were asked to answer Trivial Pursuit questions over a speakerphone to simulate talking on a cellphone.<\/p>\n
The gamers did better at the driving game than non-gamers, beating the non-gamers' times by an average of 10 seconds. When they were also concentrating on answering the questions, they times dropped by about 2 seconds, and the same rate was seen in non-gamers. This suggests it doesn't matter how good someone might be at multitasking, anything that takes their mind off of driving has a significant impact on their ability to navigate.<\/p>\n
"It doesn't matter how much you've trained your brain, we just aren't set up to do this," said Stephen Mitroff, associate professor of neuroscience and member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences.<\/p>\n