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What Do You Look At When You Drive?
Yesterday I witnessed an accident on our local beltway (I-695). I was behind another vehicle. The driver partially moved into the left lane, realized another car was there (though it was tight, she was not actually going to hit it), thought she was going to collide, over-corrected (twice) to get back into her own lane, almost rolled, and ended up glancing off the concrete median barrier. No other cars were hit, but it could very easily have become a multi-car pileup.
I avoided the collision because I watched it happen, and took appropriate evasive action. But I know that had I been distracted at all, we would have been in the middle of a lot of dissipating kinetic energy.
But then I thought: in the movies and TV, the driver turns his/her head to look at the passenger, during a conversation. Invariably. And I wondered: do real people, real drivers of cars, ever turn their heads while driving, in normal conversation? Or do they do as I do: keep looking ahead, and talking while seemingly addressing the road?
In other words: is the entertainment depiction accurate for some people, or is it just a convention to allow conversations in cars to not look too weird?
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I keep focused on the road. I think the head-turning in movies and TV is to give the actors some activity other than focusing straight ahead. OTOH, sometimes they deliberately look at the person they’re talking to so as to cause (or almost cause) an accident as part of the plot. This sounds like a question for @garymcvey . . .
Whenever I see the driver turn and talk to the passenger – and they sometimes do this for a full ten seconds – I reflexively shout “Watch the road, you imbecile!” It’s very irritating, the stupidity of the scene (for me), and me (for everyone else in the room).
I don’t have conversations in the car when I’m driving. I’m too busy taking a drink while watching cat videos on My phone.
As to movies and television portrayals, turning the head joins several other unrealistic actors do while acting out driving, including excessive movement of the steering wheel and upshifting through a ridiculous number of transmission gears. All done for some cinematic reason other than precise portrayal of realistic driving.
I notice the same thing. I suspect in many cases it’s not really a deliberate decision by the filmmakers, but rather just natural subconscious behavior. The actors know they’re not really driving, but rather being towed, and so they converse naturally. I do find it distracting, though.
It would be far more realistic to show drivers looking at their phones.
What I too often look at when I drive is a car or pickup going oddly slowly. This on pretty empty, fairly straight roads in flattish country. There is little to slow down for. Speed sometimes increases, for no obvious reason. The vehicle may drift in the lane, though seldom too much. I assume the driver is looking at a screen – a phone, or a dashboard display.
I can’t tell, of course, because windows are tinted. Maybe it isn’t a matter of electronic distraction at all, but a crowd inside, having a spirited debate! With fiery words, steely gazes, and dramatic gestures!
Whoever the motorist is, I suppose it is good that he has reduced his speed. For all I know, he is congratulating himself on his safe, responsible driving. Anyway, I think about this a lot, and not just when I’m behind a wheel. I think about it when I’m bicycling.
I’m texting this from front seat in the slow lane on 287 N in Texas.
PS relax I’m the passenger.
Nice phrasing!
I saw somewhere that future cars are supposed to automatically brake to avoid hitting pedestrians, cars, objects. Will that make people care less about driving carefully paying attention?
It is why Teslas have these features, and are the most accident-prone cars on the road.
Drivers mentally check out.
Eyes out. All the time.
I am an extreme loner, so I rarely have passengers in my car. I remember sometimes that I was conversing with passengers, and turned my head to talk to them. Sometimes I ask the passenger not to converse, or at least to remind me not to look at them while I am driving. I don’t think I have had this problem lately. So far, no accidents. But I try to be mindful of my weaknesses.
Now, an amusing story. I drove through a Scooters a couple of months ago, and ordered something or other with whipped cream on top and a “pup cup” for my dog. After a short time I became aware of an unusual noise coming from the passenger seat. I kept my eyes on the road for a bit, but then decided I needed to find out, so I glanced quickly at my dog. She had almost finished off the whipped cream in my drink.
I thought I was the only one who did that.
Same thing with pilots and aircrew in WWII movies who keep taking off their oxygen masks.
And who aren’t nearly cold enough.
Last week we were on I-64 in Virginia, traffic was not heavy but there were quite a few vehicles on the road. We were in the center lane doing about 65 when a beat-up, multicolored (meaning replaced fenders and doors) pickup went past in the left lane doing 75 or so. He was coming up on traffic and began to move to his right in front of us, but he veered across two lanes, over the shoulder and ran off the road through a ditch, up the bank and slid back down it as we passed him. It was a steep bank, so he was lucky he didn’t flip over.
Dana said “Should we stop?” but I said there were plenty of cars behind us. If he’d flipped I might have stopped.
I’m scanning the shoulder for
hitchhiking chicks in bikiniswildlife.The one that causes accidents is talking on the phone. Putting on makeup, eating, all those things pale next to talking on the phone. At least the driver’s attention is in the car. When people talk on the phone, they are somewhere else. Constructing and holding a model of a person who isn’t there is a cognitively demanding task – that’s why it’s rude to talk on the phone around others. One is physically there but not mentally. Hands-free does not help in any way.
Interesting about the Subaru drivers.
Agreed.
“Hands-free”
It ain’t about where Yer hands are, but where Yer mind is.
That’s why every time I’m driving through a “no cell phone” or “hands-free only area” I put My hand to My ear as if I’m on the phone wanting to get pulled over.
I’d tell the pig it ain’t illegal to hold My ear while driving.
Unfortunately I ain’t been pulled over, yet. But I’ll report if it ever happens.
But the biggest tell when someone is on Their phone is the phantom braking.
I’m yelling, “There ain’t nothing in front of You, jackass!”
I keep my eyes on the road. Several years ago I was in a minivan full of people and multiple times we all yelled at the driver, “John, keep your eyes on the road!” He kept wanting to look people in the eye when talking to them, even if they were in one of the rear rows of seats.
I’ll tell you one thing that too many people look at while driving; crashed vehicles on the other side of a divided highway. That is super annoying when traffic is going very slow and you finally find out the reason why. There are smashed-up cars and emergency vehicles on the other side of the highway. There are zero obstructions in the lanes going your way, but a bottleneck is created because everyone wants to drive slowly hoping they can see something grisly on the other side of the highway.
The odds of a second accident on an interstate while we work on the first one go up by an incredible amount as time goes on. It’s why we always try to get the road back open as soon as possible. People have also become incredibly inattentive, which means we close as many lanes as we think we need for safety. Last year someone rear ended an engine parked on the right lane of the interstate with its lights on – it was visible for a good half mile on approach. The auto occupants got the worst of it (one firefighter had minor injuries) but now a prime piece of equipment was out of service for months being repaired. We have had people literally park on the I10 median and exit their car to take video (the tongue lashing that guy got from a trooper was very satisfying). Imagine the kind of defective thinking that took. We sometimes have to cover up corpses just to keep them from being on video.
And the driver almost never talks on the radio – the front passenger seat (officer seat) occupant works the radio, lights, and siren. The driver gets to work the air horn, which is a special treat.
How about folding laundry while driving? We saw that once, many years ago, on I290 or I294 around Chicago. I didn’t see it myself as I was busy driving, but my wife and kids saw it.
Eyes on a swivel, just like a fighter pilot . . .
I was once in a commuter van in heavy traffic on I-95 in Maryland. Looked down and in the next lane a woman driving had a Harry Potter book open on the steering wheel, reading to her kid in the passenger seat.
This demonstrates that our speed limits are too slow. If we could go faster, people might feel they need to actually pay attention. I bet you don’t see motorists on the autobahn reading, folding laundry, or eating cereal while driving.
Honestly it’s not the speed that’s the problem in this situation, it’s the “heavy traffic”.
Driving 75 across I-94 in North Dakota with no vehicles around, knock yourself out – at least you’re not going to kill anyone else.
Exactly. Keep the scan going. Of course if you see that nothing is behind you, you can skip the rear view mirror for while and spend more time on the scenery and blessed billboards. They’re designed to distract us, but how could we live our best lives without advertising?
The scan also includes drivers. Avoid those drivers with dogs in their laps, or even toddlers! Be on the lookout for the drivers deep into their phones, the ones who get right behind you, or even close behind an 18 wheeler, and follow like zombies, not too close but close enough to monitor your vehicle without actually looking at it. They almost subconsciously mirror your speed but are actually focused on the phone in their face.
If it’s not too crowded, I like to let them settle into formation and then slowly, imperceptibly reduce speed by 15 or 20 mph. They don’t even notice! Then I accelerate and leave them behind. Hopefully, loosing their formation lead startles them into recognizing that they need to be more actively engaged in actual driving.
My dad taught me something about looking when you are driving that I find invaluable. He trained to be a Navy Pilot in World War II. He said he was taught to snap his head into position when looking at something to the side (or above or below) rather than turn his head slowly. Then you snap right back into your original position. Turning the head slowly causes one to lose track of his orientation to the environment, whereas snapping the head into place helps a pilot (or driver) maintain a fixed reference on everything around him. He told me this while we were watching figure skating competition in the Olympics and noticed that the skaters did the same thing whenever they changed direction on the ice.
Interesting. I had never heard this before.
While watching a movie: Do you tell teens exploring an abandoned house not to go into the attic or basement to find out what that strange noise is?
Until we moved to Mississippi I didn’t know that people did that in the movie theater, loudly.