Distracted Driving Car Accident Lawyer St. Louis

Cognitive distraction can be as dangerous as any other type of distraction and can lead to serious accidents.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), distracted driving is driving while doing another activity that takes your attention away from the primary task… driving. Distracted driving can take three primary forms:

• Manual distraction: taking your hands off the steering wheel
• Visual distraction: taking your eyes off the road
• Cognitive distraction: taking your mind off of driving

Of these three types of distractions, cognitive distraction quite possibly gets the least amount of attention. Whenever there is a mention of distracted driving, we often think of manual or visual distraction. However, the reality is that any distraction is dangerous and can lead to serious accidents.

Why cognitive distraction is dangerous

Cognitive distraction can be defined as any form of distraction that affects a person’s mental processing. It occurs when the driver’s mind wanders. This can happen when:

• reading a map kept on one’s lap, looking at directions
• changing the radio station
• looking at something or someone by the roadside
• dealing with children in the back seat
• voice controlled texting
• being deep in thought
• being stressed out about work or reaching a destination in time

Each of these types of distractions can cause a driver to lose focus, and this can result in a physical change in the driver’s behavior. This, in turn, increases the risk of an accident. For example, if the driver is thinking deeply about something that happened at home or at the office, they are less likely to identify and properly respond to any risks or dangerous conditions encountered on the roadway.

Cognitive distractions occur when you are trying to multitask. The struggle to juggle tasks reduces the ability of the driver to perform each of the tasks properly. For example, when you are typing a text message using voice command, your attention is diverted into forming words and sentences, vocalizing them, and possibly checking the screen to see if everything is being typed correctly. This creates a major distraction and takes your attention off the road even if it is for a second. This subdivided attention, renders the driver impaired.