In one study of simulated driving led by David Strayer and colleagues at the University of Utah, subjects talking on their phones “missed seeing up to 50 percent of their driving environments, including pedestrians and red lights.” (They were also ten times more likely to not stop at a stop sign.) Another experiment by Strayer and colleagues found that people talking on their phones had slower reaction times than drivers with a blood alcohol level at the legal limit.
What causes these mental deficits? The scientists blame inattention blindness, which occurs whenever the amount of information streaming into the brain exceeds our ability to process it.
Excerpt from: The Smarter Screen: Surprising Ways to Influence and Improve Online Behavior by Shlomo Benartzi and Jonah Lehrer
