Think that Siri or a handsfree set makes it safe for you to send texts and do email in the car? (While the car is moving, not a traffic lights. From what I can tell, in Silicon Valley waiting until you get to a traffic light to check your email gets you a good driver discount with your insurance company.) Well, think again.

The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety released a new report arguing that the cognitive load on using handsfree sets and interacting through voice recognition systems really isn’t much lower than using a cellphone the old-fashioned way. Both of them are distractions. As the AAA Foundation explains,

Using cutting-edge methods for measuring brain activity and assessing indicators of driving performance, this research examines the mind of the driver, and highlights the mental distractions caused by a variety of tasks that may be performed behind the wheel.

By creating a first-of-its-kind rating scale of driver distractions, this study shows that certain activities – such as talking on a hands-free cell phone or interacting with a speech-to-text email system – place a high cognitive burden on drivers, thereby reducing the available mental resources that can be dedicated to driving. By demonstrating that mentally-distracted drivers miss visual cues, have slower reaction times, and even exhibit a sort of tunnel vision, this study provides some of the strongest evidence yet that “hands-free” doesn’t mean risk free.

The report (.pdf) is also available, and goes into a lot more detail:

The goal of the current research was to establish a systematic framework for measuring and understanding cognitive distraction in the vehicle. In this report, we describe three experiments designed to systematically measure cognitive distraction.

The first experiment served as a control in which participants performed eight different tasks without the concurrent operation of a motor vehicle. In the second experiment, participants performed the same eight tasks while operating a highfidelity driving simulator. In the third experiment, participants performed the eight tasks while driving an instrumented vehicle in a residential section of a city.

In each experiment, the tasks involved 1) a baseline single-task condition (i.e., no concurrent secondary task), 2) concurrent listening to a radio, 3) concurrent listening to a book on tape, 4) concurrent conversation with a passenger seated next to the participant, 5) concurrent conversation on a hand-held cell phone, 6) concurrent conversation on a hands-free cell phone, 7) concurrent interaction with a speech-to-text interfaced e-mail system, and 8) concurrent performance with an auditory version of the Operation Span (OSPAN) task. Each task allows the driver to keep his or her eyes on the road and, with the exception of the hand-held cell phone condition, hands on the steering wheel, so any impairment to driving must stem from cognitive sources associated with the diversion of attention from the task of operating the motor vehicle.

The cognitive distraction level of each task was measured on a scale from 1 to 5. Listening to the radio and audiobooks (tasks 2 and 3) were the least distracting (scoring 1.21 and 1.75, respectively). Having a conversation, whether in person, holding a cellphone, or using a headset (tasks 4-6), scored between 2.27 and 2.45; and tasks 7 and 8 scored above 3.

Personally, I think it won’t be too long before someone (Volvo? Hyundai, in an effort to get a jump on the next big thing) offers the opposite of in-car connectivity. For decades, Volvo has been making drivers safer from the dangers lurking outside the car; now, they’re going to make them safer from the distractions awaiting them inside the car, and inside the driver’s own mind. Rather than promising to make it marginally safer for you to get your email while figuring out whether given the traffic you want to take 85 to 17 or risk staying on 101, these cars would make you super safe by protecting you from all those distractions. You might have an app on your smartphone that put it in airplane mode when it sensed you moving, but kept the GPS and audio functionality on; or there might be a holder for the phone that doubles as a Faraday cage.

But given that up distraction is a factor in 25% of auto accidents that are bad enough to involve police reports, and is a factor in more than 75% of all accidents or near accidents, it’s only a matter of time before someone makes a virtue of out disconnection in the car. And it can’t come too soon.