The Twin Cities
Nichole Morris is a student of the streets—or, more precisely, an adjunct professor. On the day we call, the director of the U of M’s HumanFIRST Laboratory is out of the office, conducting pedestrian field research.
On this day, her team is studying how drivers react to people in crosswalks and intersections by walking them and trying not to get creamed, but paying especially close attention to when they almost do.
One of the biggest threats to their safety? Distraction, one would think. So, it’s a good thing for Morris’s team, and for you, that in April the state legislature finally passed the Hands-Free Law. Come August 1, the bill makes it illegal to hold and use your cell phone while driving. Right?
According to Morris, only kinda.
“Hands-free driving is safer than manually interacting with your phone,” she concedes. “But I don’t believe that the hands-free bill will do anything to change driver speed, which is one of the biggest factors to pedestrians’ survivability in a crash.”
If there’s an authority on the matter, it’s Morris. She has studied how we’ve adapted to driving in connected vehicles. Our mental faculties, Morris has concluded, prohibit us from equitably dividing our attention between driving and secondary tasks. Such as, say, taking a photo of that giant turkey on the bus bench and posting it to Instagram while steering…oh no!
Some safety experts maintain that any involvement with your phone—even hands-free talking—represents a driving danger. But she won’t go that far.
“If we’re just talking about a simple conversation, I feel good about where the literature stands on that.” she says. “This isn’t to say there is no risk of taking your mind off of the road by talking on the phone.”
When the rubber hits the road, though, Morris ranks distraction fourth if you’re drafting a data-driven approach to safer driving. Her top three? The driver’s ed greatest hits: or in social-media terms, #seatbelts, #speeding, #alcohol.
Promise you won’t tweet it until you’ve parked the car?
