Insurance company warns of the dangers of the daydreaming driver

Listening to the radio while on the road can help drivers focus, says Paul Atchley, a professor of psychology. Photo / AP

The biggest distraction in your car might not be the smartphone in your hand. It could be the biochemical circuitry between your ears.

The brain's habit of drifting off into daydreams is still the biggest cause of distracted driving crashes, according to an insurance company's recent analysis of federal traffic safety data.

Yet one of the best ways to keep the mind on task is to find it something else to do that offers some stimulation — but just not too much, said Paul Atchley, a professor of psychology at the University of South Florida, Tampa.

Simple word games can help, and tuning into a radio programme or a podcast is better than nothing — but both are much less distracting than a telephone conversation, even with a hands-free device, he said.

Atchley said these forms of passive stimulation engage the mind but, unlike a conversation on a mobile phone, require very little of us.

"If you think about the social demands of a radio, it's nonexistent," Atchley said.

The analysis of daydreaming's role in fatal crashes comes as researchers focus increasing attention on the impact of smartphones on distracted driving and traffic safety.

Quintin Elliott, Virginia's deputy transportation secretary, told a meeting of the Commonwealth Transportation Board last month that distracted driving is a "serious epidemic" that is also underreported.

Other state officials say the phenomenon might have a bearing on the sharp increase in motorcycle fatalities, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Some researchers say the phone itself — all that entertainment and connectedness in a single tool in one's fist — is to blame.

Others wonder whether the ubiquitous cellphone and the web have even shaped the way we think, making a whole generation intolerant of boredom and ever in search of distraction.

But whether the phone is truly the culprit is still not clear to traffic safety researchers studying the hard data.

Erie Insurance, citing its analysis of data compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, says that one in every 10 fatal crashes involves some form of driver distraction, and of those, 61 per cent involved a driver who was daydreaming. That compares to about only 14 per cent who were using a mobile phone.

The insurance company — which said it consulted with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in its analysis — acknowledges that daydreaming is broadly defined and difficult to verify in a fatal crash.

The company also notes that phone-related distracted driving is almost certainly underreported. Drivers who are involved in crashes are unlikely to admit that they were using mobile phones, for obvious reasons.

But in examining data between 2012 and 2016, the company found that in fatal crashes involving at least one distracted driver, the person was said to be "generally distracted" — which means inattentive or careless for an unknown reason — or "lost in thought", ie daydreaming.

It's the brain's attempt to be creative, Atchley said. Instead of staying on task, the mind wanders on its own journey, sometimes finding new associations between ideas.

But the shift in attention also means a shift between active regions of the brain, and the brain has difficulty managing both.

"There are regions of the brain that we would call task-oriented. So when you're focusing and concentrating, these regions are active. When you start to daydream or space out, other regions of the brain come online," Atchley said.

"The problem is that those task-oriented brain networks and those spacing-out networks aren't really compatible. You can't really have both active at the same time."