The deadly gizmo glut

In the late 1980s, the U.S. Army turned to outside experts to study how pilots of Apache attack helicopters were responding to the torrent of information streaming into the cockpit on digital screens and analog displays. The verdict: not well.

The cognitive overload caused by all that information was degrading performance and raising the risk of crashes, researchers determined. Pilots were forced to do too many things at once, with too many devices demanding their attention. Over the next decade, the Army overhauled its Apache fleet, redesigning cockpits to help operators maintain focus.

Cognitive psychologist David Strayer was among those called in to help with the Apache problem. Since then, he has watched as cars and trucks have filled up to an even greater extent with the same sorts of digital interfaces that the pilots found so overwhelming — touch screens, interactive maps, nested menus, not to mention ubiquitous smartphones.

"We are instrumenting the car in a way that is overloading the driver just like we were overloading the helicopter pilots," said Strayer, director of the University of Utah's Center for the Prevention of Distracted Driving.

"Everything we know from pilots being overloaded we can apply to motor vehicles," Strayer said. But rather than apply it, makers of smartphones and automobiles largely have ignored the research, persistently adding popular but deadly diversions.

"They've created a candy store of distraction. And we are killing people," he said.

To be sure, new automotive technology also includes innovative safety features such as lane-departure warning and blind spot detection. Yet, despite these and other crash-prevention systems, the highway death count continues to rise.

A poll by Nationwide Insurance shows its agents believe 50% of all crashes involved distracted driving. At even at that, experts suspect that the incidents are being undercounted because drivers are hesitant to report them.

"It's against people's self-interest to say, 'I was on the cellphone' or 'I was using the infotainment system'" after a crash, "because there can be serious consequences," said Cathy Chase, who heads Advocates for Highway & Auto Safety.

Most people know that distracted driving is bad — 98% of those polled told Advocates for Highway & Auto Safety they are extremely or very concerned about it as a safety issue. But most do it anyway. In April, State Farm released a survey in which more than half of respondents said they "always" or "often" read or send text messages while driving, 43% said they watched cellphone videos and more than a third said they engaged in video chats.

How do the companies behind all those distracting screens and apps — the automakers and smartphone manufacturers — view their responsibility for the problem and their role in solving it?

It's hard to say. The five top-selling carmakers in the United State — General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Stellantis and Honda — declined requests to provide executives to speak about what they're doing to help prevent distracted driving. Apple and Samsung, the two leading smartphone makers, also declined interview requests.

But one problem with this approach is that it often backfires. The ability to control features such as air conditioning and music playlists via voice commands theoretically improves safety by letting drivers keep their eyes on the road. But with the technology still a work in progress, scientists are learning it can be just as dangerous as fiddling with a smartphone.

In a 2019 paper, Strayer's team reported that completing tasks using voice commands significantly increased the driver's cognitive load. The problem is asking the brain to do too many things at once. The technical term is cognitive overload, which includes distraction and multi-tasking and sensory input from a variety of sources.

Meanwhile, building the distractions into the car has the effect of sanctioning its use in the eyes of drivers. Thomas Goeltz, a Minnesota man whose 22-year-old pregnant daughter, Megan, was killed by a distracted driver in 2016, said that although people know that talking or texting on the phone while driving is dangerous, the options offered on a car's dashboard offer a false basis for complacency.

"People think, 'It came with the car, it must be safe,'" he said.