Tag: DISTRACTEDDRIVING

Driving while talking and texting may seem dangerous enough, but just wait and see what happens as the roads fill up with people driving and browsing the Web. According to a survey by State Farm, it's already happening: More than 19-percent of respondents admitted to browsing on their phone while behind the wheel. That number is significantly lower than the 74-percent that said they'd made or ...

Well, 'Grand Theft Auto,' you've done it again. According to a Continental Tyre study, enthusiasts of driving games "take more risks than non-gaming drivers" and more frequently engage in dangerous street maneuvers. The statistics (culled from 1,000 gamers and 1,000 non-gamers) indicate that driving gamers crash, hit parked vehicles, sideswipe other cars, violate one-way streets and run red lights ...

No matter how many times scientists, the Mythbusters, the government or even we bloggers tell you that driving while talking on the phone is dangerous, you just don't listen. So, why isn't the road littered with the shells of burned-out cars and the bodies of drive-time chatterboxes? A new study from economists Saurabh Bhargava, at the University of Chicago, and Vikram Pathania, of the London ...

It won't be able to help the U.S. drivers who are taking long trips this holiday season, but a new in-car device available in Denmark prevents drivers from dozing off by testing their awareness and monitoring their vehicle's movements. The Anti Sleep Pilot sits on the dash, and monitors the car's speed and direction, while intermittently asking the driver to tap its surface in order to combat ...

Eradicating distracted driving has long been a top priority for U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Now, he's apparently willing to go to even greater lengths to ensure that we never have the opportunity to call or text from behind the wheel. During a recent appearance on MSNBC, LaHood said the U.S. government may one day require all cars to come equipped with devices ...

We not only want our cars to get us to our destinations, but to get us there safely, too. According to DVICE, German researchers have developed an in-car, eye-tracking system that monitors facial features, and delivers an audible warning whenever the driver appears sleepy. Dubbed Eyetracker, the system uses two cameras to monitor the pupils' positions, and then watches for changes in a person's ...

Murata Manufacturing produces a multitude of diverse technological devices, including capacitors, resistors and various types of sensors (as well as the awesome Murata Boy and Murata Girl robots). The company just revealed one of its new sensor devices at the CEATEC Japan 2010 conference, and the gadget could offer (virtual) life-saving benefits. Murata equipped the product with EKG electrodes ...

We've learned by know that stubbornly following your GPS can lead to all sorts of trouble. Usually, the incidents result in little more than embarrassment and a lesson learned the hard way. Sadly, for a man on his way home from a street fair near the Spanish town of Capilla, it led to a close call for his passenger and to his own death. The 37-year-old man was driving home in his Peugeot 306 ...

Most of us probably don't need to be reminded that texting while driving can put our lives at risk, but, if you're in the mood for especially morbid statistics, here's some food for thought. A new study from the University of North Texas finds that roughly 16,000 people died from 2001 to 2007, simply because their phone distracted them behind the wheel. As Reuters reports, the study used data ...

Most motorists are, by now, fully aware of the dangers of tech-related driving distractions. U.S. drivers even support, almost universally, outright bans on various vehicular phone activities. Apparently, the laws against in-car mobile usage, the terrifying government campaigns and the gory scare tactics intended to frighten the text out of drivers are finally starting to achieve their desired ...

Plastic surgeon Dr. Frank Ryan, the man who turned Heidi Montag into a tragicomedic freak of science, died in a car crash on Monday after driving his car off of a cliff in Malibu. And, according to one of Ryan's former flames, texting might be to blame. Charmaine Blake, Ryan's ex-girlfriend, recently revealed to People that the surgeon was tweeting about his border collie just before his fatal ...

In May of 2009, we learned that, despite fully knowing the dangers of doing so, most teens were still driving while texting. A new survey from AAA and Seventeen Magazine shows that, even though awareness has improved, still more teens are engaging in distracting behavior while driving. The study asked 1,999 teens (apparently unable to get just one more kid), ages 16 to 19, about the sorts of ...

Augmented reality has primarily been used to locate nearby restaurants, insert 3-D baddies into video games, and offer glorified advertisements. General Motors, however, is trying to put the technology to good use, and integrate it into the windshields of future automobiles. Under the generic title "enhanced vision system," the prototype uses sensors, GPS, and video cameras to overlay useful ...