Driven to Distraction

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Driven to Distraction

We all know that texting or reading texts while driving is a bad idea. But the temptation to take a sneak peak at the message that you have just been alerted to can be very hard to resist even though you know it will almost certainly be a pointless piece of information that you probably never needed to read let alone while driving a car. And then there’s the urge to reply…

Well Volkswagen put together this clever stunt to illustrate just how dangerous checking your mobile phone can be while driving. A bunch of people enter a cinema and take their seats. The movie starts and the audience is given a driver’s view from behind the wheel of a car as it drives down a straight piece of road. Through a cunning piece of magic all the audience members are sent a text simultaneously at which point most of them pull their phones out to read the message. You can guess what happens next, or watch the video. Needless to say an important point is made in a fairly attention grabbing fashion.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in America there were 3328people killed and 421,000 injured in 2012 due to distracted drivers on US roads. Texting is the worst offender “[B]ecause text messaging requires visual, manual, and cognitive attention from the driver, it is by far the most alarming distraction” according to the NHTSA.

Watch the clip here