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Distracted While Driving

In the United States, 39 states have passed legislation banning texting while driving. By comparison, no state bans hands-free cellular phone use by adults while driving. The concern regarding texting reflects an underlying assumption that it poses a greater risk than talking on a cellular phone. However, there have been few published studies directly comparing these two tasks and their effects on driving performance. This study investigated the effects of texting and talking on a cellular phone on simulated driving performance while equating task duration. Even after equating the time spent on each task, texting still had a greater impact on driving performance. Drivers in the texting condition had significantly slower reaction times, made more eye movements away from the roadway, and failed to detect as many peripheral letter targets compared to when they were in the calling condition. The results of this study suggest that texting is a more disruptive form of distraction than talking and that its effects are not simply due to differences in task duration.