Technology distraction can lead to accidents

The only place you find a Unicorn, Leprechaun and Honest Car Mechanics is in fairy tales !

I became convinced of this after my car was involved in an accident. As I was listening to the car mechanic rattle of names of parts and components that I allegedly needed, I was thankful for not missing car insurance payments.

So yes, lets be honest, car insurance payments are a grudge-purchase. No one wants to pay a monthly amount where you don’t immediately see value.However in the event that something happens, you thank your lucky stars that you didn’t miss a payment as repairs on cars can cost thousands for even a minor dings. Not to mention hundreds of thousands in the case where the car is stolen or “written off”.

To illustrate this point, The “non-dating-duo” from Digital Custard got together with King Price insurance to highlight this fact and in true geekiness style they did it using a PlayStation game:

The Oscar-winning performances shows clearly that car repairs are expensive and that is if you can find a decent (read as: honest) mechanic. When King Price sponsored this post to help spread the message, the topic got me thinking about our cars and safety during the holiday season. I wondered just how our technology is distracting us from focusing on our driving ?

Distracted Driving

As we enter the holiday season, this is a time where South African roads are filled with holiday makers which means an increase in the number of road accidents. These range from minor bumper-bashes to fatalities. While we know about the dangers of drinking and driving, the hidden danger of tech-distraction is a major cause of accidents too.

We think we are in control as we “quickly” send a message or plug our phone into the music system. The truth is that we are not in control. In fact, according to the university of Utah, a teenager using his/her mobile phone while driving has the same reaction time as a 70 year old  driver who is not using their phone.

According to the United States Department of Transportation 1.6 million auto crashes occur each year as a result of mobile phone distraction which cause half million injuries and result in 6000 death. Up to 80 percent of all crashes involved some form of distraction according to FocusDriven which is no surprise as 11 percent of drivers are talking on their cell phone at any point during the day according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Lets test Driving Distraction

Wanting to test how distracted we can be, I selflessly wore a camera and ran three simple tech tests for the sake of research:

• Test 1 – Plug in the Aux cable to listen to music from my phone
• Test 2 – Plug in phone to charge
• Test 3- Send Hi via WhatsApp

Here are the results:

So as we head into the season, lets try to keep our hands off the tech and the steering wheel !

Oh and if you do need a decent and honest insurance company, get a quote from King Price and see why  60 000 clients rely on King Price with a further 7000 plus joining every month.

*Headline image from Shutterstock.com and as mentioned King Price sponsored the post but had no control over the content.