Why Texting while Driving is Dangerous
Texting on your cell phone while trying to drive is dangerous because people can’t focus their eyes and attention on two things at the same time. There are other dangers as well.
One of the less commonly known dangers of texting is process your eyes go through when shifting from looking at something up close, to something far away, then back again, and so forth. The muscles that control the lens in your eye, is just like any other muscles in your body. They pull and release, causing tension that in turn causes changes in the lens. This process, like any other that uses muscles, causes fatigue, with the net result being that these muscles move slower and slower as they get tired. Trying to drive while texting causes a constant shifting of the lens in your eye, which in turn causes the muscles that control it to become tired, which means that it takes longer and longer for your eyes to adjust each time you shift between the tiny screen on your phone, to the open road in front of you. This means that you have less reaction time and thus, when things happen in front of you that you don’t expect, you wind up reacting slower than you would otherwise which could result in an accident.
Another problem with texting while driving that is not very well known is the fact that your mind and state of mind don’t switch between virtual worlds as quickly as most people believe. When you are texting, your mind is thinking about what you’ve just read or about what you are going to write, or even what you are currently writing, not about what is going on outside of your car. To control your car, you have to tear yourself away from the virtual world inside your head that is immersed in the thoughts and emotions associated with whoever you are texting and whatever it is about; to focus on the other cars on the road, the road itself and the path your car is on. Even though it might seem that this process is very nearly instantaneous, it is not. You can find this out for yourself by timing your reaction to things in your driveway. You’ll discover that it might take as much as a full second to fully disengage from the activity involved with texting, and then to engage fully with all that is required to drive a car. And full second is more than enough time to run into the back of a car in front of you that has stopped, or to run over a pedestrian or someone on a bicycle. Thus, texting while driving is more dangerous than not.
These two examples of the dangers of texting are just a couple of the main arguments showing how texting can reduce your driving capabilities, there are others, such as the effect of emotional reactions from upsetting news on a text message on reaction times, or the effects of dexterity when crimping your fingers to type on a tiny keypad.
The bottom line is this: texting while driving is dangerous.
