People often believe that they can multitask, and they may even brag about their abilities. This could happen in an office setting where they talk about efficiently doing multiple parts of their job at the same time. But there are also a lot of people who believe they can multitask while doing difficult things like driving a motor vehicle.
The reality is that multitasking is fake. It’s a myth. People feel that they are doing multiple tasks at once, but the reality is that they are just forcing their brains to jump back and forth from one task to the next. The brain can do this very rapidly, but the person is still only mentally focusing on one thing at a time.
Why does this cause problems?
This can cause a lot of problems for drivers specifically. They think that they’re paying attention to the road and talking to a passenger at the same time. But they’re not. They’re splitting their attention between the road — where they have trouble comprehending what the passenger is saying, and the conversation — where they have trouble paying attention to the traffic around them.
A driver may not notice this until an accident happens. But that crash will feel very sudden. They may say that another car just “came out of nowhere” or the stop sign “suddenly appeared.” It feels this way to them, but it is just their perception of the event that makes it seem so sudden. They didn’t realize how focused they were on the other task and how this affected their driving.
Mental mistakes like this lead to accidents all the time. Those who have been injured by the negligent actions of other drivers need to know what legal options they have.
