adminIn the last two articles I dealt with tips and guidelines on how to drive safely in the rain. I hope that some drivers out there find some of the safety hints useful. The most important gain from all these road safety messages would be a positive driver behavioural change, that is likely to lead to a reduction in road traffic accidents, deaths and injuries. The seven family members, including a three-year-old girl, who perished when their Toyota Corolla was involved in an accident with a bus in Daylesford, Gweru, on October 27 (The Herald, October 28) made very sad reading. The tragedy with death is not that things are broken but the broken things cannot be resurrected.
Anderson (2012) claims that statistics prove that 97 percent of all road traffic collisions are a direct result of driver error. Some prefer to refer to the driver error as “human error”. If this is the case, it implies that the 97 percent of accidents caused by driver error can be prevented when drivers correct these errors. In this article, I am focusing on a very high risk driving behaviour error, “distracted driving”. Distracted driving, a subset of driver inattention, can be generally expressed as doing other activities which take the driver’s attention away from the road and traffic.
There are three types of distractions whilst driving, namely, visual, manual and cognitive distractions. Visual distraction means literally taking one’s eyes off the road and traffic. Manual distraction means taking one’s hands off the steering. Cognitive distraction means taking one’s mind off from the basic task of driving. Driving is a skill that requires the driver’s full attention to safely control the vehicle and respond to events happening on the road around the driver’s lane. It involves constant and complex co-ordination between the driver’s mind and body.
In towns, cities and along the highways, distracted driving cannot be ruled out. Eating, reading, talking to other occupants in the car, cellphone use, drinking, smoking, adjusting radio, adjusting environmental control, reaching for an object in the car, grooming (applying make-up), meditation and looking, or admiring an object or event outside the vehicle, are some of the examples of distractions. Indeed, looks can kill. Looking at what you are passing while you are driving is called rubber-necking. This can be a distraction, if you are concentrating on getting a good look at say, an accident, a dazzlingly dressed lady/gentleman, a vehicle pulled over by traffic police, a construction work, a billboard advertisement, a scenic view, street names and addresses.
Sometimes the driver’s mind is off the driving job. His/her attention won’t be on the outer world, the world of the vehicle, the driving, the road and the traffic situations obtaining. This means that the driver’s attention will be focused on his inner world, the world of troubles. Even if the driver’s eyes are wide open, he/she might not be seeing and reading the road ahead, the road behind and the road at the sides. This state of mind that is sometimes referred to as highway hypnosis (sleeping at the wheel) is very dangerous when driving.
This possibly explains why some drivers appear like they involuntarily drive onto crossing trains at rail road level crossings in broad daylight.
Therefore, emotional and spiritual instability are other salient forms of driver cognitive distractions which must be avoided.
There are six conditions which when un- favourable can cause road traffic crashes. These are road, light, vehicle, weather, traffic and driver conditions.
Research shows that the driver condition is the greatest contributor of these road crashes. While the road condition cannot be changed overnight, the attitude of the driver can. There are road traffic laws.
New laws can be enacted and enforced accordingly. However, these road signs, signals and markings do not carry out any action. For example, a stop sign does not stop a car. It is the driver who stops the car at a stop sign.
Unfortunately, some negligent drivers do not stop at a stop sign. It is this negligent behaviour, this coarse attitude by some drivers, that we hope to appeal against through continuous driver improvement programmes and education. The opposite of “distracted driving”, in my own words, is “concentrated driving”. According to the ZRP Driving School Road Craft Manual, and the system of car control, concentration is the full application of mind and body to a particular endeavour, to the complete exclusion of everything else not related to that endeavour. This is precisely what the driver should do, concentrate on driving from point A to point B. No matter what rank of office one has, one must concentrate.
During parties (wedding, birthday and graduation) those passengers in euphoria who thrust their heads out through the windows and wave their hands while the vehicle is in motion, distract the driver.
In my next article, I will explore “distracted walking”.
The writer, Tatenda Chinoda, is a Traffic Safety Officer, Marketing and can be contacted on email: [email protected]/[email protected]; cell: 0772 966 075 or phone 04-751208.
Online Reporter