Hands-free driving is still distracted driving and unsafe

The study was done by the American Automobile Association and points out hands-free technology to make a call is nearly as bad as holding your cellphone to your ear when it comes to keeping your attention on the road.

“Even though you’re no longer engaged in that distracting sort of activity, your brain, your mind, you’re still mentally distracted”, Ragina Cooper Averella, spokeswoman for AAA, said.

It might not sound like much, but when you’re on the road, it can be the difference between life or death.

Distracted driving killed more than 3,100 people and injured an estimated 424,000 in 2013 alone. Dorsey was jogging when he was struck by a auto driven by a high school student.

You may think all the new hands-free technology would put an end to distracted driving.

Jeffrey says voice activated systems are a distraction.

“He turned left through the red light”. Jacy Good’s college graduation went from a ideal day to a nightmare in seconds thanks to a distracted driver on a hands-free device. Lingering distraction was found across the board, “If you are now all of a sudden talking to your phone, you are now focusing on one task to the exclusion of tending to the driving environment”.

“Twenty-seven seconds after sending that text, at a speed of 25 miles-per-hour, you’ve traveled the length of three football fields”, Schimmer says, “and that’s pretty significant, especially for the commuters in everyday Houston traffic”.

“With the hands-free, I’m still watching the road”, driver Ethan Becker said. “Driving is 90 percent cognitive thinking”.

And the study also found that it doesn’t end when you’ve finished the task at hand.

“You could be the cause of killing someone of a period. If you are not concentrating on driving you are distracted and you just never know what can happen”, Jeffery added.