Business
Erie Insurance cautions against vlogging while driving
Erie Insurance discourages taking videos while driving in conjunction with National Distracted Driving Awareness Month ERIE, Pa., March 30, 2022 /PRNewswire/
About this update from Erie Indemnity Company
[{"type":"text","content":"Erie Insurance discourages taking videos while driving in conjunction with National Distracted Driving Awareness Month\nERIE, Pa., March 30, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Everyone knows the dangers of texting while driving, but Erie Insurance is raising awareness of a more recent but equally dangerous trend – vlogging while driving. The trend involves popular social media influencers talking to a camera mounted on their dashboards to create videos for their followers. While the behavior may seem safe because it's hands-free, an internationally recognized expert on distracted driving says it's anything but.\n\n \n \n\n \n\"The research is absolutely clear. Hands-free is not safe,\" said Paul Atchley, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of South Florida, who has been studying distracted driving for more than 20 years. \"It's your brain that's the problem, not touching a phone. And we know when your brain is engaged by a phone call – even a hands-free one – the risk for a car crash increases.\"\nErie Insurance showed Atchley several videos gaining buzz online showing influencers looking back and forth between their camera and the road, fiddling with the camera on their dashboard, and in one case, almost swerving off the road.\n\"As a car insurer that wants everyone on the roads to be safe, Erie Insurance keeps on top of the latest driving trends. This one is particularly troubling because the people doing it probably think it's safe since it's hands-free,\" said Jon Bloom, vice president of personal auto, Erie Insurance. \"We reached out to Dr. Atchley to shed light on what's going on in the brain that makes this behavior actually much more dangerous than people realize.\"\nThe answer, says Atchley, is that multi-tasking is a myth. People can switch back and forth between tasks but can truly only do one thing at a time. \nDifferent Types of Distractions\nTo see how vlogging while driving, even with a mounted camera, is distracting, it's important to understand the meaning of the term. A distraction is something that's not related to the primary task. If the primary task is driving, then creating a social media video is a distraction. There are three categories of distractions: manual, visual and cognitive. In the case of videotaping oneself while driving, the manual distraction is taking hands off the wheel, the visual is loo...