3/05/2008

Driving While Listening

Dialing, texting and otherwise juggling a cell phone is obviously a distraction for a driver and is causing many legislatures to consider new laws restricting cell phone use in cars. New Jersey, for instance, just became the first state to make text messaging while driving a primary offense, which means police officers don't need another reason to pull a driver over. Simply seeing a driver texting is enough to stop and cite a driver.

The Pennsylvania General Assembly is considering a number of bills regarding driving safety, including the banning of hand-held phones while driving. But as Carnegie Mellon neuroscientist Marcel Just will testify today at a hearing of the House Transportation Committee here in Pittsburgh, drivers need not dial, hold or even talk into a cell phone to be distracted. Simply listening intently is enough to impair driving.

Just and his colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study volunteers using a driver simulator. When they concentrated on a sentence they heard, they were more likely to weave in their lane than when they were driving undisturbed. Moreover, the fMRI scans showed that listening reduced by 37 percent the activity in the area of the brain associated with driving.

Byron Spice