Driving with Facebook on the dashboard

This appeared in the Chicago Tribune:

There was a time when a distracted driver was a parent fuming at a couple of kids yipping at each other in the back seat. Today, the internet and social media are all around — including on our dashboards.

Drivers can check Facebook posts, pore over email or chart a course for the nearest French restaurant, all while cruising down the highway. It may be a sign of the times, but it’s nonetheless an outcome of automobile innovation that needs addressing.

A new study commissioned by the American Automobile Association’s Foundation for Traffic Safety warns that the latest models are brimming with bells and whistles that dramatically ramp up the potential for distracted driving.

Distracted driving should be discouraged with the same urgency as drunk driving. About 10 per cent of the 35,000 traffic deaths in America in 2015 involved a distracted driver, a nearly nine per cent jump from 2014. And distracted driving is a factor in more than half of car trips that end in a crash, according to a study by Cambridge Mobile Telematics, which creates apps for car insurers.

It’s not that a neo-Luddite backlash to car technology is required. Navigation systems indeed help us get from A to B. Hands-free technology has rendered making phone calls safer while driving. But carmakers can do a lot more to minimize the risk of distracted driving.

For starters, they can install technology that blocks a motorist from sending a text or entering an address into a navigation system while the car’s in motion. Need GPS to help you find that friend’s party? Pull over and do it. Want to check the latest Trump tweet? Pull over and do it. The study’s authors say the goal for carmakers should be to design infotainment systems “that are no more demanding than listening to the radio or an audiobook.” That’s sensible, because it makes driving safer.