By IANS
New York : Using a mobile phone while driving could be as dangerous as being under the influence of alcohol, according to a new study.
In fact, the study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that drivers under the influence of alcohol and those speaking on cell phones tend to commit the same errors.
Using brain imaging, the study has documented how mobile phone use alone reduces 37 percent of brain activity engaged in driving. For instance, drivers using a simulator while on the phone were found to zigzag out of their lanes.
The findings – published in the latest issue of the journal Brain Research – also suggest that making cell phones hands-free or voice activated is not enough to eliminate distractions.
“Drivers need to keep not only their hands on the wheel, they also have to keep their brains on the road,” said researcher Marcel Just.
Talking on a cell phone has a special social demand, and not interacting with the caller can be interpreted as rude or insulting behaviour, he added.
A passenger, by contrast, is likely to recognise increased demands on the driver’s attention and stop talking.
The 29 volunteers for the study used a driving simulator inside an magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scanner. They steered a car along a virtual winding road either while they were undisturbed or while they were deciding whether a sentence they heard was true or false.
Just’s team used state-of-the-art functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure activity in 20,000 brain locations, each about the size of a peppercorn. Measurements were recoded every second.
The listening-and-driving mode produced a 37 percent decrease in activity of the brain’s parietal lobe, which is associated with driving.
The study emerges from the new field of neuro-ergonomics, which combines brain science with human-computer interaction studies that measure how well a technology matches human capabilities.