Quote:
Originally Posted by EowynCarter
I sometimes wonder why hands free are allowed while driving. I once tried to play Warcraft while phoning with the hand free, total disaster. So hand-free certainly distracted me.
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I don't think your experience is typical. Admittedly our raid leader who watched TV was a bit much, but there are plenty of people who play games while doing something else. At one point, for example, I was doing WoW raids (dps) while eating a full dinner and talking to another person. I'm pretty sure other people were doing worse. Mind you, we're talking about playing a computer game here -- nobody's life was on the line (though from the screaming when a group wiped, you might think it was). I sure as hell wouldn't eat, chat, and drive at the same time!
I suspect it's related to experience. The more experience you have, the better you are at prioritizing. When I was first learning to drive, for example, an experience I've remembered forever, I was surrounded by insane numbers of complicated things. Too many things to do with my feet, too many things to do with my hands (opening the window was right out!), and all these cars whizzing at me head-on, trying to kill me. Wait, what was I supposed to do with the clutch? Now, on the other hand, everything from the neck down takes care of itself. I want to be in a different lane? Send the "change lane" signal to the body, and all matters of signaling, shifting, speed changing, and so on, are all taken care of. I know it happens, and I can bring it to conscious awareness if I really want to, but in general, the mechanics of driving stay out of the way so my mind can focus on that guy who is in fact trying to kill me. I think that's a big reason why experienced drivers are safer than beginners: the beginner hasn't learned to automate and prioritize yet. When they're thinking about the mechanics of turning right, and that's occupying their awareness, a more experienced driver has automated that part and isn't even thinking of how to turn right; he's thinking about that fool on a bicycle who just shot out from between parked cars and is trying to commit suicide ... something that, for the beginner, would get all tangled up in everything else, if they even had a particle of awareness free in the first place.
Driving does, in a sense, become like walking, in that you go from concentrating on the mechanics of it to the outcome of it. This is a good thing; it keeps people from crashing into each other while they're trying to figure out what to do with the brake. So, just because one person can talk on a handsfree (or adjust the radio, open the windows, talk to the guy in the other seat, or figure out where the heck he really is) doesn't mean that another can. It's all about how much you as an individual need to pay direct attention to.