Driven from distraction

HUMAN beings are a distractible bunch, and their propensity to be elsewhere, mentally speaking, is particularly dangerous when they are motoring. Attempts to deal with this go back a long way. In 1953, for example, the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey was fitted with the first rumble strips, which are bits of corrugated concrete that alert an inattentive driver with a rattle and a hum if his vehicle starts to drift off the carriageway while he is, say, paying too much attention to the radio.

These days, though, there is more than just his favourite DJ to distract a driver. In surveys of American motorists, more than two-thirds admit to using mobile phones while driving. Bans on doing so have had mixed success.