Fantstic Flash: Can You Text And Drive?
Taking this text-while-driving game at the New York Times proved to be considerably more frustrating than I'd hoped - while also putting the player squarely beneath the yoke of that gotta-finish-this-word panic that chronic texters experience behind the wheel, on the sidewalk, in the subway, at dinner, at the movies, at weddings, funerals and the occasional bris.
But unless your mohel tries to text his galpal about that "OMG" new episode of Project Runway mid-circumcision, many of us take the modern danger of texting multitaskers for granted, even on speedy highways where texting while driving has been deemed worse than driving drunk. Unless you live in Honolulu, however, or one of several other cities, states or Senates that have passed or proposed laws banning texting while driving.
The NYT text-and-drive game has you changing between six lanes using the 1-6 keys on your keyboard (not the number pad) while clicking on the keyboard of a virtual smartphone to respond to simple text questions. The game then rates and compares your performance and sobers you up with the facts, and while the game hardly reproduces the actual experience of texting while driving - it makes its point.
After just one dry run, I discovered my reaction times were over half a second slower while texting, and I missed 8% more lane switches. That makes me twice as slow as the average user who's merely .24 seconds slower while oh-em-geeing, but both myself and the average Joe missed the same percentage of lane switches.
Think You Can Text & Drive? Play This Game... [GamePolitics]
tiny dancer
Posted to Miscellany, Video Games on 28 August 2009
· Comments (6)
Other stuff like this: danger, driving, fantastic flash, new york times, text messages, texting
Am I a horrible person to suggest that people who text while driving should go crash their car? Well... am I worse than what I am for suggesting that?
Nope, that's perfectly reasonable Snipzor. Irresponsible idiots shouldn't be on the road.
I'll say this much: thank god for flip phones with auto-entry. After a week, its easy enough to type in what you want, then check the screen at a red light and 9/10 times it's exactly what you want without taking your eyes off the road.
I don't see how people with touch based phones like the iPhone or even the Blackberry can text while driving. It's insane to think they can touch those teeny tiny little buttons while paying attention to their surroundings.
I did have one crashed gate while driving though =P
You know, texting or using a mobile in any way while driving has always been banned in the UK and Western Europe.
I always assumed it was kind of common sense.....
My boyfriend has nearly crashed our car with me in it twice while texting. I told him to stop because I was sick of almost dying. :P
Heheh, sucks to be a full keyboard phone user and driving. T9 makes it so much easier to txt. Not that I would condone txt'n and driving but it's so much easier to txt and walk. Being an iPwn user from having only bar style phones it was so much easier to txt with T9.
Seriously people txt'n while driving? It's bad enough drivers don't use hands free devices while they are on the phone. Maybe looking into a voice dictation option should be in order?