Texting And Driving Experiment of the Day

[HardOCP News]

All of you know that texting and driving is bad, but did you know texting while driving has the same impact on Mario Kart drivers?

All 9 subjects completed the experiment. The average time without texting was 2 minutes 3 seconds (range 1 min 47 sec to 2 min 36 sec) and the average time with texting was 3 minutes 31 seconds (range 1 min 54 sec to 4 min 26 sec). During the texting laps the slower time was the result of the car going off track (with reduced speed on grass), collisions with cows, crashing into the fence, and inadvertently driving backwards.

 

[Trigger]

great and useful study, because driving mario kart is pretty much exactly the same as driving in real life

 

[Bone_Enterprise]

Fuck you blue turtle shells.

 

[dr.kevin]

they're doing it wrong. You have to look at the screen every half second. It results in much slower texting time, but little impact on lap time.

 

[Danith]

...and inadvertently driving backwards.

How do you manage that

 

[Spidey329]

I'm not sure I understand the choice of game here. Wouldn't it have been better to use something like GTA IV or V where things like traffic, pedestrians, and other stuff is simulated? Start them off at a destination, tell them to go to another destination and obey the laws (traffic lights, etc). See what happens.

 

[Kotak]

I'm not sure I understand the choice of game here. Wouldn't it have been better to use something like GTA IV or V where things like traffic, pedestrians, and other stuff is simulated? Start them off at a destination, tell them to go to another destination and obey the laws (traffic lights, etc). See what happens.

Look at the link. They are children maybe 6-10 years old. Read the material before you post. Or at least skim through it like an adult.

 

[BBA]

Look at the link. They are children maybe 6-10 years old. Read the material before you post. Or at least skim through it like an adult.

...because adults do not drive like freaking idiots when they text?

Yes, I was being totally sarcastic, people who text while driving are idiots. Plain and simple.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Cute experiment. Slight difference is most people could drive with a knee to keep themselves going in a straight line, not quite sure you could do that with Mario Kart. Of course the other side of that if you hit a wall in Mario Kart you still drive as if your car isn't completely wrecked.

 

[Vorret]

Back when it was legal I used to text while driving a lot, on those old non-smart cell phone too.
Not sure how I did it. Now if I send a very small "be home soon" text I feel like I'm gonna kill people, it's crazy how unsafe it is.

 

[CreepyUncleGoogle]

This is why its a lot smarter to use an actual tablet to do stuff when you're driving. It's easier to rest it on your steering wheel and you don't have to look as closely at it. Also, the texting really should wait until later and you should do things that take less concentration like playing Plants versus Zombies or Angry Birds when you don't need it for the GPS navigation stuff. You could also mount the tablet in like a bracket holder thing just above the steering wheel so you don't have to hold it up with your hand and you can at least be looking up at it instead of down.

 

[Kueller]

This is why its a lot smarter to use an actual tablet to do stuff when you're driving. It's easier to rest it on your steering wheel and you don't have to look as closely at it. Also, the texting really should wait until later and you should do things that take less concentration like playing Plants versus Zombies or Angry Birds when you don't need it for the GPS navigation stuff. You could also mount the tablet in like a bracket holder thing just above the steering wheel so you don't have to hold it up with your hand and you can at least be looking up at it instead of down.

Or, you could mount the tablet in front of the instrument cluster on the dash, entirely out of your field of view (and out of the way of things like turning that steering wheel you're talking about mounting it on), with the screen facing directly up. Then use the reflection off the windshield as a heads-up-display. The brighter the tablet the better the HUD would work. Touchscreens don't work when you can't touch them you say? Yeah, that's indeed a problem, solved by a trackpoint style mouse pointer mounted on the steering wheel.

This is the least problematic solution I've imagined so far for carputing.