We have all seen it…
\nDistracted drivers swerving, veering over the yellow line with a cell phone held to the ear or fingers tapping out a text message.<\/p>\n
It’s something we may see even more of this Memorial Day weekend as 32 million drivers take to America’s roads.<\/p>\n
While many drivers will admit they’ve done it themselves, the consequences of driving while distracted can be deadly. Thousands of people are killed each year due to multitasking behind the wheel.<\/p>\n
Now a new, high-tech driving simulator is proving just how dangerous it is to drive when your focus is elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Created for the Arbella Insurance Group by engineers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst under the direction of Dr. Donald Fisher the program, dubbed Distractology 101, is on a public tour aiming to teach young drivers the risks of driving while distracted.<\/p>\n
“We started to notice a very alarming trend coming out of our claims data. We’re one of the larger automobile insurance companies in America so we have a lot of claims,” said John Donohue, the Arbella Insurance Group’s CEO and chairman.
\n“We started seeing accidents where bad weather wasn’t involved, alcohol wasn’t involved, but young people were getting into very serious accidents. As we looked into it we realized it was coming from what we called distracted driving.”<\/p>\n
The simulator travels in a massive, neon-yellow trailer and works like a giant video game, putting participants behind the wheel and running them through a variety of possible real-life scenarios.<\/p>\n
It shows what can happen if you come around a blind curve with your attention momentarily diverted- CRASH! A simulated fender-bender is the result.<\/p>\n
“It does kinda make you think about stuff that you wouldn’t normally think about like seeing around corners and stuff,” said Billy Richman of Taunton, Massachusetts, one of the first of thousands of teenagers the Arbella Insurance Group hopes to put through Distractology 101.<\/p>\n
The course even has it’s own lingo with buzzwords like-
\nTextident: An accident while texting
\nSmerging: Swerving while merging
\nSender Bender: A collision caused by a text message being sent before impact<\/p>\n
“What we really try to get across is the consequences. Maybe you’re right nine times out of ten, but that tenth time you’re not, you’re not only going to hurt yourself- you might hurt a lot of other people,” said Donohue.<\/p>\n
According to the National Highway Safety Administration 6,000 people died and a half million were injured in accidents involving a distracted driver in 2008.<\/p>\n
For more information or to see where the simulator is heading next go to:
\nwww.DistractU.com\/Students\/Tour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We have all seen it… Distracted drivers swerving, veering over the yellow line with a cell phone held to the ear or fingers tapping out a text message. It’s something we may see even more of this Memorial Day weekend as 32 million drivers take to America’s roads. While many drivers will admit they’ve done […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4642,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-581048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4642"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}