Safety alert: Experts recommend disabling many of your new car’s features due to risks of driver distraction

( Natural News ) Many vehicles come with infotainment systems meant to make the task of driving that much easier. Researchers from the University of Utah have found these features to be anything but helpful, however. According to the researchers, these infotainment systems place high demands for the drivers’ attention that make them distractions and, as such, should be disabled while vehicles are in motion . They came to this conclusion after reviewing the infotainment systems of over 30 different vehicles manufactured in 2017 . The participants they had recruited were then asked to make calls, send text messages, tune the radio, or program the navigation system while in the middle of driving. All of the aforementioned tasks made use of the vehicles’ interactive technologies. To determine how distracting each task was, the team developed a rating scale ranging from low (what amounted to listening to the radio) to very high demand (the equivalent of balancing a checkbook on your head in the middle of driving). The researchers discovered that programming the navigation system was the most distracting task, as it took the drivers an average of 40 seconds to complete. Text messaging was found to be the second most distracting task. Making calls and tuning the radio were the easiest to perform and were deemed low-demand tasks. By contrast, the voice-based and touch-screen technologies took the drivers’ mind, hands, and eyes off the road for more than 24 seconds. “This is troublesome because motorists may assume that features that are enabled when they are driving are safe and easy to use,” said psychology professor and lead study author David L. Strayer. (Related: Safety not a major concern as House gives self driving car bill the fast lane .) Get more news like this without being censored : Get […]

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