A new study of relative newcomer Root insurance it wants to show what we’ve all suspected in recent months: that we drive more distraction. There are few things that raise my suspicions about it.
Companies obviously have a strong interest in demonstrating the dangers of driving, but in report of NBC News took Root’s study and concluded that accidents are the result of our new dependency video chat. The report says Zoom and the like are responsible for these traffic accidents. Really good. Fair enough.
The fact is that these drivers do not videoconference while driving. They drive after Video conferencing. NBC claims that driving after a Zoom or FaceTime or Google Meet call is blocking us because drivers distract them more. I find it strange. That’s what NBC does claimed about the dangers of picking up your car keys after you hang up a video call:
In addition, a national consumer survey of 1,819 U.S. drivers shows that 54% of Americans who drive after video chat report having problems concentrating. When working life became synonymous with living at home, COVID-19 created new distractions and challenges for American drivers who got behind the wheel of a car.
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The report too claims there is an increased “risk of cognitive distraction, looking down the road while your thoughts are elsewhere. This zoning may mean you don’t notice a dangerous situation soon enough to react.” Call these drivers “Zoom Zombies.” This is sticky and all, but it draws a strange conclusion.
The most curious is above, the report mentions that driving skills have atrophied, which seems a much more likely reason for crashes. The best way to be good at something is to practice, and we have been drive less this last year.
Many of us are trapped inside and work online instead of commuting to work. We have lost our advantage, that’s all. If you add this to the large amount of sensory overload that driving entails, it makes sense for people to have serious accidents.
Think of the monotony of working from home, the closures that have kept children out of schools. Cars stuck at the entrances. I don’t think I’ve ever been so familiar with the trum of the air conditioning system in my house. I have never been so attuned to the sounds of the house! Because we need stimuli, but we are not used to the sensory overload of driving almost as much as before the closures.
I think when you combine the “risk of cognitive distraction” with atrophied driving skills i the sensory overload of views and sounds on the road, you will have a better account of why we were so bad.