Cognitive psychologist David Strayer was among those called in to help the Army with its Apache problem. Since then, he has watched as civilian cars and trucks have filled up to an even greater extent with the same sorts of digital interfaces that trained pilots with honed reflexes found so overwhelming — touch screens, interactive maps, nested menus, not to mention ubiquitous smartphones. In his lab at the University of Utah, he’s been documenting the deadly consequences.

“We are instrumenting the car in a way that is overloading the driver just like we were overloading the helicopter pilots,” said Strayer, director of the university’s Center for the Prevention of Distracted Driving.

“Everything we know from pilots being overloaded we can apply to motor vehicles,” Strayer said. But rather than apply it, makers of smartphones and automobiles largely have ignored the research, persistently adding popular but deadly diversions. “They’ve created a candy store of distraction. And we are killing people.”

Read more:

Mitchell, R. (2022, July 6). ‘We are killing people’: How technology has made your car ‘a candy store of distraction.’ Los Angeles Times. Yahoo! Finance. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/killing-people-technology-made-car-120013196.html