This week our Cars blog had a view from the front seat of the Distracted Driving Summit arranged by the Department of Transportation in Washington D.C. The lawmakers, safety advocates, entrepreneurs and victims at the summit engaged in a free-wheeling conversation about drivers doing other things while operating a moving vehicle.

While the popularity of texting or talking on a cell phone has brought this safety concern to the fore, the summit also covered eating, drinking, grooming, talking to a passenger, dealing with children and other distractions.

As Tom Mutchler, an engineer in our Auto Test division wrote, scientifically, there are different kinds of distractions.

• Visual distractions take your eyes off the road.
• Manual distractions take your hands off the wheel.
• Cognitive distractions take your mind off the road.

"Simple in-vehicle tasks like tuning a radio (assuming you’re not navigating a complex in-car multidirectional controller) have little cognitive load, a slight visual load (a quick glance), and a brief manual load. Adjusting the radio is often accepted as a baseline for comparing the amount of distraction of other controls. Various other 'old-school' distractions each register differently with respect to these demands.
 
But texting is a 'perfect storm.' It requires you to look at the keyboard, manually manipulate the keys, and think about what you’re writing. This means texting is a visual, manual, and cognitive distraction all in one."

You can read the entire series of posts on our Cars blog but please, not on a handheld device in the car.

Related reading: Over the past few months, The New York Times has been running a series called Driven to Distraction, which also highlights the dangers of doing other things while driving. The stories involve cabbies, truckers and traveling salesmen but the most compelling accounts come from accident victims and their families.