What makes talking on the phone while driving more dangerous than talking to another passenger in your car? Does talking on speaker-phone mitigate any of this risk?

Question

What makes talking on the phone while driving more dangerous than talking to another passenger in your car? Does talking on speaker-phone mitigate any of this risk?

In: 26

Answer 1

Having a light conversation that doesn’t need much thought might not be much of a distraction.

Deeper conversations, or even just listening to “intellectual” radio programmes, where you start to engage your mind thinking about the subject or topic, thinking ahead, imagining scenarios, pondering what-ifs … all start using the parts of the brain that ought to be engaged as part of competent driving, monitoring the surroundings, hazard perception etc.

Basically anything which starts making you have to think about something else while driving puts your headspace someplace else.