As Secretary LaHood pointed out before that "Distracted driving is a deadly epidemic...", the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued specific guidelines which has a recommended criteria for electronic devices installed in vehicles that require drivers to take their hands off the wheel or eyes of the road to use them.

One of the recommendations is Disabling several operations unless the vehicle is stopped and in park, such as:

1. Manual text entry for the purposes of text messaging and internet browsing.
2. Video-based entertainment and communications like video phoning or video conferencing.
3. Display of certain types of text, including text messages, web pages, social media content.

A time limit of 12 seconds total was also included citing to 'take eyes off the road for only 2 seconds to perform any task at a time'. Among the longest duration of driver's taking their eyes-off-road are activities such as texting, browsing, and dialling which increases risk of a crash or near-crash.

The guidelines and research are part of Secretary LaHood's Blueprint for Ending Distracted Driving. Distraction is one of many safety topics that will be examined as part of this large-scale data collection.


Source: J.J. Keller