Cell Phones + Cars = Death!!

From the "Like I Need Another Reason to Hide Away from Civilization" file...

I spent some of today catching up on some of my favourite podcasts and last week, the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe reported on a Stanford University study which found that not only are people incapable of multitasking, people who think they're good at multitasking and try to do it often are particularly bad at it. (More details at the Neurologica Blog.)

It seemed an interesting coincidence that this information was coming out now considering the provincial government is considering a ban on cellphone use by drivers.

Now, apparently science has known for a long time that a person can only have one thing going on in their brain at one time -- you can switch between things pretty quick, but as long as you're doing thing one (like, say, talking on a cellphone) you're not paying any attention to thing two (like, say, driving a car) -- no matter how evolved you think your brain is.

In other words, according to science, our brains are wired such that we can't multitask. It's not that some people are born with the multitasking gene while others are not so blessed. And it's not a skill you can develop with practice. We can't do two things at the same time. End of story. And, the irony unearthed by the Stanford study is that if you think you can multitask then you're someone who's particularly inept at switching between trains of thought.

So, all the people you know who say, "Oh, I can drive and talk on a cellphone at the same time," or "I'm really good at texting and driving," or "Don't worry about it, I've done this plenty," those are the people you've really got to watch out for because they're the ones who're going to get someone killed.