Originally Posted by Torhal
What blows my mind is that a great many people can drive a car while having a conversation with their passenger, but as soon as you swap the passenger for someone on the other end of a phone the driver can't seem to concentrate on the road as fully.
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I actually heard the reason for this on the radio a while back. When you "multi-task" you don't actually do multiple things in parallel. You actually just switch your attention between them and that switching takes time (the exact amount varies by person and types of activities involved).
The difference between talking to a passenger and talking on the phone is that if something happens on the road that you have to react to, your passenger will likely also see it (or see you see it) and shut up which makes it easier (faster) for you to focus your attention on dealing with the situation on the road. A person on the phone can't know what's going on around your car so when something happens that you need to respond to, he or she just keeps on talking which makes it harder (slower) for you to shut them out and focus on driving.