Driving is a full-time job and requires full focus

As a volunteer instructor in the AARP driver safety program, I want to respond to an Oct. 28 letter about cellphone use and driving (“Texting while driving not worth risk”).

In our four-hour classroom defensive driving course, we note that the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration says

85 percent of crashes now involve some type of distraction by the driver. A University of Utah study has interesting results:

l If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cellphone, his/her reaction times are the same as a 70-year old driver.

l When people talk on a cellphone, they are as impaired as they are when they drive intoxicated at the legal blood-alcohol limit of 0.08.

A University of North Carolina Highway Research Center study shows that when you're having a phone conversation, the brain is less engaged in the task of driving.

A Stanford University study shows that multi-taskers are worse at absorbing information, have weaker memories, are more distractible, are slower to switch to new activities and are lousy at everything that's necessary for multi-tasking.

Using hands-free is no better. The human brain can only process one thing at a time.

We teach that driving is a full-time job. Every time you take your eyes off the road for 2 seconds, you are endangering the lives of everyone in your car and everyone around you.

Larry J. Neppl

Marion