On the Philosophical Foundations of the Distracted Driver and Driving Distraction

Abstract

The philosophical and scientifi c lenses through which we view safety act to constrain the ways by which we seek to understand and improve it. The differentiation among identifi able causal factors and the parsing of collision events into their various physical confi gurations have led to conceptually contingent approaches to the possible solutions we have explored and adopted. Thus, rear-end collisions beget rearend collision warning technologies, and alcohol-related fatalities give rise to social, technical, and legal initiatives to curb drunk-driving. This chapter addresses the conceptual and philosophical underpinnings of a commonly identifi ed and progressively more evident safety hazard-driver distraction and the corollary in the distracted driver. As is a logical extension of this proposition, we argue that there are two fundamental forms of this hazard. “Driver distraction” occurs when circumstances act to displace the primacy of the social role “driver” in the person’s on-road behavior. Thus, a woman turning around to reseat her unrestrained infant is now “attentive” to her role as mother but “distracted” from her role as driver. The second form of distraction is “distracted driving,” in which the individual retains the primary role as the “driver” but circumstances act to divert attention from the appropriate course of action to other momentarily inappropriate components of the driving task or the external environment. We argue that the very nature of driving as a “satisfi cing” task encourages and reinforces the fi rst form of distraction, while the specifi c nature of vehicle control in dynamic environments means that, on occasion, this second form is virtually unavoidable. Adverse consequences, in the form of collisions, result from a sequence of interdependent events of which this momentary lapse in attention is certainly one. Blame for such collisions is a viscerally satisfying but scientifi cally stultifying correlate of these adverse outcomes. We offer the beginnings of an alternative interpretation of distraction effects, which suggest potential progress beyond the unhelpful propensity to attribute monocausal blame.

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