Inattention, Blindness on the Wheels

Road Safety

If you are one of my regular readers on this column, you would have realised that I have spent the better part of this column focusing on the increasing risk behaviour of driving and phoning behind the wheels. This is in spite of the provisions of the National Road Traffic Regulations, 2021 which prohibits this risk behaviour.

On several occasions, I have taken you through memory lane on the numerous strategic interventions introduced by the Federal Road Safety Corps to address and checkmate this behaviour which to me is suicidal. They include robust advocacies and awareness campaign strategies, as well as the emotional evaluation for defaulters.

Recently, I spiced this focus by raising my voice with those who feel that the time to turn up the dial of enforcement against distracted driving through the deployment of appropriate technology which developed climes like the United Kingdom are experimenting through a pilot study.

The adopted pilot study has revealed tremendous impact in its capacity to track and arrest defaulters and I am happy that the current leadership is tinkering with these novelties. Today, I wish to share a material on the same subject by Gemma- Briggs and Graham Hole which I sourced online. I believe you will find it quite revealing.

Before their writing rolls, I do hope you still remember the data I shared with you on the level of infraction in the United Kingdom which revealed that 26 percent of 1,700 motorists were reported to be using a handheld mobile phone while driving, despite it being illegal.

Phone addiction has grave consequences. This distraction addiction is neither a white or blackman’s disease, nor is it a developed or developing clime problem alone. A similar survey had been done in our clime although I couldn’t lay my hands on it but I recall that the findings equally raised cause for concern.

Let me now allow you to enjoy their submissions which kickoff by emphasizing that observers at varying times and platforms suggest that people are “glued” to their smartphones and therefore miss important and enriching experiences and interactions going on around them.

Such people, according to psychological research, shows that not only do motorists miss things because they are staring at their phone’s screen, they also miss things when they are looking ahead but talking on their phone. In fact, people conversing on a phone can appear to look at something yet fail to consciously detect it.

These writers tag this behavior behind the wheels, “inattention blindness” which has been demonstrated in various ways, including the famous “invisible gorilla” experiment. By focusing on one particular task (such as counting how often a basketball is passed between team members) we can miss other, highly salient events in the scene – such as a person dressed as a gorilla.

The ability to focus our attention like this is extremely useful, as we simply couldn’t process all of the incoming visual information that we are constantly bombarded with. But in some situations, inattentional blindness can have serious consequences.

What are the five things you can’t do properly while on your phone according to research findings? The first is your failure to notice hazards when driving. This was the thrust of my recent engagement with my son on the need to stay away from all forms of distraction. The truth is that drivers using a hands-free phone are far less likely to notice and react to hazards, even those directly ahead of them. This leads to increased stopping distances and a four-fold increase in accident risk. Available research suggests this inattention blindness is produced by the need to share limited mental resources between tasks.

The next is that Phone conversations have a visual component. This is why when phoning, you picture where your conversation partner is and what they are saying. This mental imagery draws on resources which are needed for accurate visual perception. Consequently, someone on the phone can look at, but not see, a hazard.

Another risk is not crossing the road safely. Vulnerable road users such as pedestrians talking on the phone are more likely to be injured crossing the road. They tend to take longer to decide to cross, and then walk more slowly. They also make more unsafe judgements on crossings.

In a particular study, phone-users successfully crossed a simulated street only 84 percent of the time. Compared with other distractions, including listening to music, phone use is associated with poorer decision-making, missed opportunities to cross and increased likelihood of being involved in a collision.

There is also the risk of taking the most direct route. Phone-users may change the way they walk and this in turn affects the route they take and what they notice around them. The result of an   observational study is that people talking on the phone were more likely to change the direction they were walking in.

The study notes that such people were less likely to be aware of other people around them, resulting in them getting in other people’s way. Such people tend to walk more slowly than people who were either listening to music or undistracted.

When a person’s attention is diverted to a phone conversation, even the highly practiced and “automatic” task like walking can become disrupted. Another study looked at participants’ gait while walking to a previously learned destination. Compared to undistracted walkers, phone users walked slower and made more lateral deviations from the set route, meaning they walked further than needed.

Have you ever missed a billboard or failed to notice advertisements you passed. Well, Phone-users are less likely to recall seeing advertisements that they have passed while on the phone. Studies conducted reveal that even though people distracted by a phone conversation look at advertisements as often as those who are undistracted, they don’t remember them when later questioned.

Specifically, a study demonstrated the power of inattention blindness in phone users by observing people distracted either by a phone call, a conversation with another person, or listening to music. And this underscores the need for us to stay away from all forms of distraction.

This last point got me laughing at a very sad and risky behavior. It notes that while walking across a large square on a college campus, participants passed an unexpected and highly visible item; a clown on a unicycle. While those talking to another person or listening to music mostly noticed the clown, only twenty five percent of people on the phone reported having seen him. Expectedly, these phone users were stunned to have missed such an attention-grabbing sight.

The conclusion of these researches is that people talking on their phones have diminished “situation awareness”. They are less conscious of what is happening around them and this has important implications for general road safety. Lastly, phone users especially those behind the wheels are more likely to miss important and highly visible events, objects as well as hazards. These users are crucially often unaware of how unaware they may be which is a dangerous trend for one’s safety.