A new study from relative newcomer Root insurance wants to prove what we all suspected in recent months: that we drive more distractedThere are a few things that raise my suspicions about it.
Obviously, insurance companies have a vested interest in proving the dangers of driving, but one report NBC News took Root’s study and concluded that the accidents are the result of our new reliance on video chatThe report says Zoom and the like is responsible for these car accidents. Fine. Fair enough.
The thing is, these drivers don’t video conference while driving. They drive after video conferencing. NBC claims that driving after a Zoom or FaceTime or Google Meet call makes us crash because drivers are more distracted following them. It seems strange to me. This is what NBC claimed about the dangers of getting your car keys after ending a video call:
In addition, a national consumer survey of 1,819 American drivers found that 54% of Americans who drive after video chatting report difficulty concentrating. As work life became synonymous with private life, COVID-19 created new distractions and challenges for American drivers getting behind the wheel of a car.
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The report too claims there is a greater “risk of cognitive distraction if you look at the road while your thoughts are elsewhere. That zoning plan can mean that you don’t notice a dangerous situation quickly enough to react. “It calls these drivers ‘Zoom Zombies’. That’s catchy and all, but it draws a weird conclusion.
The funny thing is, the report mentions that the driving ability has decreased, which seems to be a much more likely reason for the accidents. The best way to get good at something is to practice, and we have been drive less this past year.
Many of us are stuck indoors, working online instead of commuting to work. We’ve lost our lead, that’s all. When you add that to the sheer amount of sensory overload that driving involves, it makes sense that people will have serious accidents.
Think of the monotony of working from home, of lockdowns that have kept children out of school. Cars are stuck in driveways. I don’t think I’ve ever been so familiar with the sound of the A / C system in my house. I have never been more in tune with house sounds! Because we need incentives, but we’re not used to the sensory overload of driving as much as we were before the lockdowns.
I think when you combine the “risk of cognitive distraction” with atrophied driving skills and The sensory overload of images and sounds on the road gives you a better idea of why we crash so hard.