Another nugget of wisdom from the Lifesavers Conference: The dangers of teen drivers having passengers, especially other teens or siblings, are well documented. For teen drivers, any passenger who is not a supervising adult driver is a potential distraction, and the distraction outweighs any “another pair of eyes” safety benefit.
But with the acknowledgement that the following does NOT apply to teens, one speaker at Lifesavers explained why talking to a passenger is less distracting than talking to someone on a cellphone. First, a passenger who is an experienced driver actually can provide some modest benefit as an extra pair of eyes on the road. Second, a passenger knows when to stop talking, because he or she can see when the driving situation requires the driver’s full attention, which someone on a cellphone cannot. Third, studies have now shown that it is more cognitively challenging to talk to someone who is not in the car than it is to a passenger. In other words, a driver and a passenger talking are “in sync” as to the driving situation, but a driver and a cellphone caller are not. A caller has no idea when the driver needs to switch attention back to the traffic situation, and might in fact say something that requires careful thought — cognitive distraction — at just the wrong time.
So, for teen drivers, any passenger is a distraction, and for experienced drivers, talking on a cellphone is more distracting than talking to a passenger. Thus, anyone who says that “if I can talk to a passenger, I can talk on a cell phone” is off the mark.
