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I think I would have to agree. I know when I talk on the cell phone, I almost am visualizing who I am talking to and what I am talking about more than seeing and reacting to what's in front of me.

We've always had distractions in our cars. Eating and drinking, switching stations, changing the cassette or CD all require at least a few seconds of switched focus. Studies have shown that teens have more accidents when they have more than one passenger in the car. And if we're sleepy, or we're taking the dog to the vet, or the baby's crying in the back seat, there's that much more to pay attention to other than what's right outside our windshield. It's all dangerous, because a moving car can easily hurt or kill another person. But we can't stop it all.

I like to hope that, slowly, we're going to learn to multitask even better than we do now, and that when it doesn't work, we're going to use our common sense and learn to back off. Not that long ago, we could only get phone calls at home or work. Now it's very likely that we have both a home phone and a cell phone, and that if one of them rings, we also have a television or stereo on, that we're on the computer, texting, faxing, making a grocery list and getting a snack, all back-to-back.

In some ways, it's a crazy way to live at all -- whether we're in the car or the home -- and we need to focus on being more in the moment no matter what we're doing. But in other ways, we're learning to juggle more, just because more exists in our world.

November 3, 2008 - 9:34am

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