Free Essay On Attention And The Dangers Of Texting And Driving

Driving and texting is one of the most dangerous things that a person can do behind the wheel of a vehicle, this dangerous action can end lives; in fact it has. Now, driving and texting is dangerous as everyone is well aware but there are some people who do not take this seriously. Based on the attention types selective attention, divided attention and controlled vs. automated processing when it comes to driving and texting, one of the aforementioned attention types describes this dangerous action perfectly. For example, the controlled vs. automated processing attention type means that the person has to have mindful control over both activities because it requires energy to be able to do both; texting and driving ranks in the category of controlled processing because it is an action that requires control in order to do. However, because driving a car takes little to no effort at all then that leaves the person free to do other things such as texting while driving. Selective attention can describe a person who choosing to just text and drive and ignore the road ahead. Driving and texting is clearly an example of divided attention because the person doing it has to alternate their attention to and fro between the two activities. Case in point, a person is driving and because their attention is not on the road, they swerve off the road. Shortly after swerving, they hit something like a gravestone or they hit an actual human being and this could have been avoided if they chose not to divide their attention by texting while they were driving. This is the most dangerous attention type of all because it makes a person forget what is on the road ahead of them which is very dangerous.

Works Cited

"Because Texting and Driving Kills." Don't text and drive. Onlineschools.com, n.d. Web. 15 Feb 2014.
Codey, Richard. "The Fatal Dangers of Texting and Driving."NJ Spotlight. N.p., 27 Dec 2013. Web. 14 Feb 2014.