Following the spread of COVID-19 in March 2020 , remote working has become a reality for many. With remote working often comes virtual conferencing which has consumed many remote workers’ hours over the last year.
Although virtual conferencing has its undeniable benefits, the risk is that remote workers may be tempted to take work calls or virtual conferences outside their home office.
A 2020 ZenDrive report shows an uptick in distracted driving since March 2020. This is possibly the result of some motorists witnessing less busy roads and engaging in more risk-taking behaviors including using cellphones, navigating social media, and taking conference calls while are at the wheel of their vehicles.
Distracted driving is among the top causes of road collisions and mortality. In addition to taking the drivers’ eyes away from the road (to look at a smartphone) and hands away from the wheel (to use a touchscreen), distraction also take attention away from the task of driving.
Cognitive distraction, as it is known in Human Factors research, is also responsible for other disruptive phenomena like attentional tunneling, or the tendency to disregard the visual information in the periphery of the visual field, or inattentional blindness, or the tendency to be blind toward certain information when our mind is occupied with non-driving activities.
References
Zendrive. (2020). Mobility Amidst Lockdown : Every Minute on the Road is Riskier.