National Expert Shares Dangers of Texting and Driving
Think you can drive and text and talk at the same time?
University of Utah researcher and national expert Dr. David Strayer has studied distracted driving for the past 10 years. He shared his research at Nebraska Wesleyan University's Clifford Fawl Psychology Lecture on November 12.
“The brain just doesn’t work the way we’d like it to work,” said Strayer. “We can’t multitask the way that a lot of people think they can.”
His talk, was titled “Multitasking In The Automobile.” His keynote lecture was part of the Nebraska Psychological Society Conference, hosted by Nebraska Wesleyan University.
Strayer is a professor of cognition and neural science at the University of Utah. For the past 10 years, he has conducted research on distracted driving at the school’s applied cognition lab. Strayer has used virtual-reality driving simulators, eye trackers, and measured brain activity to further understand neuroscience and distracted driving.
His expertise is frequently used by the New York Times, Oprah Winfrey, the National Safety Council, and NPR’s Car Talk, which has teamed with Strayer and the University of Utah in creating a joint “Drive Now, Talk Later,” website.
“We shouldn’t be sugarcoating death,” Strayer says on his University of Utah profile. “If people are dying from something like this, people should know about it.”
