Voice-based devices can have hand in driver distraction

While car manufacturers continue working to provide consumers with increasingly advanced technology in their vehicles, the study states that the “lessons learned from the current research suggest that such voice-based interaction is not risk-free, and in some instances the impairments to driving may rise to the level associated with drunk driving.”
Marcel Just, a psychology professor and director of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University, said multitasking always comes with a cost. A person almost never performs a task as well when required to divide attention between activities as compared with giving the one task full attention. There is a limit to the amount of brain activity that can occur at any one time, he said.