Eating and driving a recipe for disaster
You may want to reconsider tucking into that Big Mac while drivingIt's an all-too-familiar scenario. In the interests of saving time, you're steering your car with one hand (or your knee) while simultaneously shoveling down a Big Mac, fries and Coke.
However, a new study conducted in the UK by Privilege Insurance indicates this isn't a particularly clever way to consume your lunch.
Forget heartburn -- eating and/or drinking while driving could result in far worse outcomes, according to the study's findings. It revealed that drivers are almost twice as likely to crash when eating or drinking as when driving normally.
The study found that although drivers try to compensate for eating and drinking by driving more slowly and carefully, they are often unable to brake in enough time to avoid a collision.
Unsurprisingly, Privilege's study revealed that drivers' mental workload was significantly higher when eating or drinking, suggesting that the consumption of refreshments reduces a driver's ability to deal with other events.
So, although drivers were slowing down and steering more consistently, they were still not compensating enough to avoid a crash.
The experimental research was conducted on a driving simulator to uncover just how distracting eating and drinking at the wheel can be.
Participants were asked to drive an urban route once without eating, and once while eating from a bag of sweets or drinking from a bottle of water at two intervals, coinciding with a pedestrian stepping into the road.
The total number of crashes doubled during the food and drink trial. Nine out of 10 occurred at the point the driver was eating sweets or sipping water.
The research also revealed that eating and drinking at the wheel is more common than using the outlawed hand-held mobile phone -- three quarters of drivers in the UK eat and drink at the wheel, compared with just a third that use a mobile phone.
So, the message is clear: finish scoffing that Big Mac and fries, and then you can think about battling the cut and thrust of traffic in safety.
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