The New York Times fronts a story this morning by Matt Richtel noting that texting by drivers continues to be a problem. He  includes some survey data on how many people multitask behind the wheel and notes that this is a bad thing. But he misses an opportunity to interview researchers about why, for example, even hands-off cell phone use is risky. The problem isn’t in the hands; it’s in the brain.

Richtel almost stumbled on to some science. He quotes Stanford University’s Clifford Nass, an expert on human-machine communication. But instead of reporting something substantive from Nass, he merely allows Nass to label excessive multitaskers as “explorers.”

I figure Richtel was texting while he interviewed him.

– Paul Raeburn

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 11:37 am and is filed under Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.