subject: Does Your Driving School Understand That Multitasking is Deadly? [print this page] It is somewhat accepted that digital natives, those who grew up with 21st century technology, are great at multitasking. However, the research indicates that multitasking when applied to driving increases the risk of a collision and indeed can be deadly. If your driving school doesn't include discussion about these dangers, walk don't run to another school. The concept of how well people can multitask has received much press lately and teens actually believe they can effectively manage multiple, concurrent tasks in parallel. A new topic today is how driver's ed programs incorporate issues related to focus and the dangers of assuming minimal levels of risk surrounding multitasking.
First off, when people mention multitasking, most don't even really understand the true meaning of the term. Along with multiprocessing, these terms come directly from the computer world and we have applied them to humans. Most driver training was developed before digital natives were born and has not kept up with the times. The human brain, according to research by people such as John Medina (see his book "Brain Rules"), is a uniprocessor and hence can only do one cognitive task at a time. In other words, humans can not truly perform multiple complex tasks in parallel regardless of how much we believe this is possible.
Now we can discuss multitasking, which is usually confused with multiprocessing. Multitasking is the ability for someone to APPARENTLY perform multiple tasks concurrently. Behind the scenes, the brain does a bit of one task, switches, works on another task, switches, another task, etc. The end result is that the brain is spending a lot of its time switching between these tasks and has less time to focus on actually performing the tasks.
Given the confusion over these terms, it is no surprise that most driving schools do not teach this item properly, if at all. Without a dedicated development effort, driving schools have a collection of driving lessons that was probably taught to your grandfather. Teen novice drivers are in the highest risk category to begin with as they are just beginning to learn how to drive. If their driver training don't explain and subsequently reinforce the issues surrounding focus, they are at higher risk of a collision.
And don't just take my word for it as there is research directly showing the failure of multitasking. Reaching for a moving object while driving will increase crash risk 9 times! Yes, you read that right - 9 times. This number came out of a study done by Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. Driving schools that don't work with the research community probably don't have an up to date drivers education program. And their students will be at greater risk.
If nothing else, please take away from this that trying to perform one or more tasks in addition to driving an automobile increases risk. And this is magnified for teen novice drivers. And lastly, make sure that the driving school providing your teen's driver training understands this issue and instructs their students on this critical issue.
Does Your Driving School Understand That Multitasking is Deadly?
