Lecture by Dr. David Strayer, Professor, Department of Psychology

Recorded: April 14, 2010

Driver distraction accounts for up to 80 percent of accidents on the highway. One of the leading causes of driver distraction is the concurrent use of a cell phone to talk or text message. In fact, accident rates are quadrupled for drivers talking on a cell phone and increase by a factor of eight for those drivers who text. Cell phones cause a form of inattention blindness, wherein drivers look but fail to see important information in the driving environment (e.g., children in a crosswalk). These impairments differ quantitatively from other sources of distraction (e.g., listening to the radio) and are similar to the impairments associated with drunk driving. You cannot practice to become an expert cell phone driver, however, there are intriguing individual differences for a small group of “super-taskers” who can drive and talk on a cell phone with little or no impairment. Together, these have important implications for theories of attention and cognitive control.

Dr. Strayer has joined forces with Car Talk, the call in NPR program, to raise awareness about the dangers of distracted driving: Car Talk’s Driver Distraction Center

Dr. Strayer’s research was featured in the University of Utah’s Continuum Magazine: Texting While Drving