As a society we’ve seemingly lost some of our ability to focus on the task at hand. Ordinarily that’s an annoyance, but as Hawaii sadly noted this past week, it can have tragic consequences.
Based on some witness testimony, texting while driving has been cited as a possible factor in the death of a young passenger, 19-year-old Jessica Lum, in a car crash Wednesday in Waimanalo.
There is little to offer to console the families and friends devastated by this terrible loss, only the time and space for grieving. The rest of the community, however, should take this moment to think about how this has become an all-too-common occurrence.
Technology has made us increasingly mobile, and we take everything along for the ride. A lot of experts on the human brain believe that what’s called the "working memory," the part that enables multitasking, peaks at age 25. This may be why young people take to doing two things at once with apparent ease, although distracted driving isn’t the exclusive province of the young — ask anyone who’s watched busy parents school their offspring in the back seat.
And it isn’t easy, or even particularly effective, to multitask, experts also advise.
"Tests show that people who drive while performing a mentally demanding task have a reaction time that is up to 11⁄2 seconds slower," wrote Torkel Klingberg in his 2009 book "The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory."
Klingberg is a Swedish physician and a professor in cognitive neuroscience for whom issues of multitasking have been a particular interest.
Still, we do it. The compulsion to find something other than driving to occupy the mind, to cite the most pernicious example, seemingly has become an addiction. The public policy response, correctly, has been to heighten penalties on distracted driving.
Texting has been seen as especially threatening to safe driving, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration topical website (distraction.gov), "because it requires visual, manual, and cognitive attention from the driver."
The facts presented there are truly distressing:
» In 2013, 3,154 people were killed and 424,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes involving distracted drivers.
» Drivers in their 20s make up 27 percent of distracted drivers in fatal crashes.
» At any given moment, about 660,000 drivers are handling electronic devices or using cell phones while driving.
The federal agency enables a national campaign against distracted driving, providing pledge forms, posters and information at the site.
That may seem to be a response unequal to the challenge. But, really, almost all states and territories have banned text messaging for all drivers, and the rest have more limited prohibitions.
The public policy, largely, is in place. There’s not much more to offer than that pledge form.
Whatever you are trying to do while behind the wheel can wait. If it really can’t, pull over and take care of it. It’s a promise worth making in memory of Jessica Lum, and all who have suffered through similar tragedies.
