On the topic of Human Factors/Cognitive Ergonomics; Guidelines on Visual Manual Distraction when Driving

OPC Recommends this as a timely read, especially as I passed more than 5 people on the Highway 401 this afternoon who were texting while driving at 120 KPM.

The Human Brain can only really process one thing at a time despite people claiming they can multitask. Read more and stop texting while driving please.

JE Sleeth and the Ergonomic Team at OPC Inc.

Many people who still drive while texting or using the phone we can still see you and know very well that you are doing this while driving. Your speed changes, you drive all over the road, you forget to use or signal and check blind spots. In short, you are IMPAIRED.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today released distraction guidelines that encourage automobile manufacturers to limit the distraction risk connected to electronic devices built into their vehicles, such as communications, entertainment and navigation devices.

“Distracted driving is a deadly epidemic that has devastating consequences on our nation’s roadways,” said Secretary LaHood. “These guidelines recognize that today’s drivers appreciate technology, while providing automakers with a way to balance the innovation consumers want with the safety we all need. Combined with good laws, good enforcement and good education, these guidelines can save lives.”

Issued by the Department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the voluntary guidelines establish specific recommended criteria for electronic devices installed in vehicles at the time they are manufactured that require drivers to take their hands off the wheel or eyes of the road to use them.

The guidelines include recommendations to limit the time a driver must take his eyes off the road to perform any task to two seconds at a time and twelve seconds total. The guidelines also recommend disabling several operations unless the vehicle is stopped and in park, such as:

Manual text entry for the purposes of text messaging and internet browsing;

Video-based entertainment and communications like video phoning or video conferencing;

The recommendations outlined in the guidelines are consistent with the findings of a new NHTSA naturalistic driving study, The Impact of Hand-Held and Hands-Free Cell Phone Use on Driving Performance and Safety Critical Event Risk. The study showed that visual-manual tasks associated with hand-held phones and other portable devices increased the risk of getting into a crash by three times.

“The new study strongly suggests that visual-manual tasks can degrade a driver’s focus and increase the risk of getting into a crash up to three times,” said David L. Strickland, NHTSA Administrator. “The new guidelines and our ongoing work with our state partners across the country will help us put an end to the dangerous practice of distracted driving by limiting the amount of time drivers take their eyes off the road, hands off the wheel and their attention away from the task of driving.”

The study found text messaging, browsing, and dialing resulted in the longest duration of driver’s taking their eyes-off-road. Text messaging increased the risk of a crash or near-crash by two times and resulted in the driver’s eyes off the road for an average of 23.3 seconds total. Visual-manual activities performed when completing a phone call – such as reaching for a phone, looking up a contact and dialing the number – increased the risk by three times.

The study did not find a direct increased crash risk from the specific act of talking on a cell phone. However, the manual-visual interactions involved with using a hand-held phone made its overall use 1.73 times more risky, since the use of these devices involve visual-manual tasks 100 percent of the time. Even portable hands-free and in-vehicle hands-free cell phone use was found to involve visual-manual tasks at least 50 percent of the time, which are associated with higher risk.

The guidelines and research announced today are part of Secretary LaHood’s Blueprint for Ending Distracted Driving, a comprehensive plan that builds on the national momentum the Department has spearheaded for the last three years. Recognizing the extent and complexity of the problem, the Department will continue to work with federal, state and local partners, the auto industry, and safety community to address distraction. Currently, the Department is partnering with the Transportation Research Board on a naturalistic driving study involving nearly 3,000 vehicles to examine the nation’s highway system including speed, curves, intersection control, lighting, driver fatigue, and distraction, among others. Distraction is one of many safety topics that will be examined as part of this large-scale data collection.

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Many people do not know that Ergonomics has a subspeciality called Human Factors or Cognitive Ergonomics. These specialists in the Ergonomic community look at human error, cognition, decision making, accident prevention etc. Read more on this Voluntary Guideline which makes an effort to impact human error whilst driving. OPC Inc.