Hands Free Devicies Do Not Prevent Car Accidents

Having represented thousands of seriously injured victims of car accidents in Miami and Fort Lauderdale over the past 20 years, personal injury attorney Joseph Lipsky is always concerned when he notices that devices which are characterized as making driving safer, actually cause more harm. This is precisely what is occurring with so-called voice activated car devices.

While these hands free activities are purportedly designed to allow drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel, thereby helping prevented distracted driving accidents, a new study confirmed that these “upgrades” also cause driver distraction, leading to deadly car accidents.

The recent study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety confirmed that driver’s brains are adversely affected, and greatly distracted, by using vehicle installed and cellphone voice activated systems. Most drivers are now familiar with various in vehicle applications which allow drivers to do things such as making calls or changing radio stations with voice commands rather than having to physically touch a button. Most drivers also know that due to the increasing sophistication of new vehicles and phones, often times the driver actually becomes more distracted trying to use a buggy device. The study confirmed that driver’s reaction times slow down when those drivers are thinking about something other than safe operation of their vehicle.

Sadly, anyone whose used a cellphone knows too well that the virtual assistant usually gets the voice command wrong, leading to continuing corrective actions, which lead to a distracted driver. Considering the thousands of wrongful deaths and life altering injuries caused by car accidents, auto manufactures and cellphone companies need to take care in making sure their new technologies do not continue to cause distracted driving crashes.