Papers on "Driving with ADD" and similar term paper topics

Paper #057034 :: Driving with ADD
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An examination of whether youngsters with ADD have more car accidents than their 'normal' peers.

Written in 2005; 1,983 words; 4 sources; MLA; $ 63.95

Paper Summary:

This paper examines literature on both sides of the argument that youngsters with ADD/ADHD are more prone to driving accidents. One argument explains that driving while multi-tasking, or listening to the radio, eating, or speaking on the cell-phone, for example, is too much for an ADD/ADHD person to handle. Another argument states that these actions help one concentrate.

From the Paper:

"According to Marlene Snyder?s book, ADHD & Driving: A Guide for Parents of Teens with AD/HD, teenagers with attention deficit disorder are in more accidents and receive more moving traffic violations than unaffected teens. Considering that the symptoms of AD/HD are relatively consistent from the late teens up into the early to mid- adult years, one would assume that adults experience the same sort of disparity. (Research on adult AD/HD lags well behind that dealing with children and teens) Obviously, having the ability to pay attention to the road is very important to good driving. Yet AD/HD is not the only thing that can distract from the road. According to AAA?s traveling companion, the top causes of accidents and poor driving (other than alcohol) are generally related to distractibility and lack of attention. (Goepal, 2003) Eating or listening to the radio are mentioned as examples of activities that may distract from driving, and of course a great deal of attention has been paid recently to cellphone usage while driving. If minor activities while driving can distract even the non-affected driver, it is possible they have a more severe affect on AD/HD drivers. However, some individuals with AD/HD have also been known to use multitasking as a kind of therapeutical activity in order to allow them to concentrate more fully on the work actually at hand. (Living with ADD, 2004) AD/HD appears to sometimes function in such a way that the mind affected is not sufficiently interested in a single topic, and when trying to concentrate on a single thing it will quickly skip off to something else. Some people cope with AD/HD by selective use of minor distractions, such as listening to music or chewing gum (or other oral/physical experiences like smoking cigarettes, eating, playing with a tongue ring, etc.); they report that having a consistent but manageable distraction helps them keep their mind sufficiently entertained that they can focus on the primary task at hand without being continually distracted by their own thoughts or other outside occurrences.
The question, then, is whether or not individuals with AD/HD who engage in ?distracting? activities such as listening to the radio, eating, or talking while driving will be more or less likely to drive unsafely than are individuals with AD/HD who do not engage in such activities while driving. As part of this question, the performance of AD/HD drivers while multi-tasking and single-tasking should be compared to the performance of unaffected drivers in both categories, to determine if the difference between multi-tasking and single-tasking drivers is affected by the AD/HD status of those drivers or is a constant.
The most generic hypothesis which would be addressed by this study would be that having AD/HD does have a unique affect on the ability of drivers to safely multi-task, whether for better or worse. A more specific hypothesis might be that those with AD/HD are especially likely to perform better when performing small secondary tasks than when trying to concentrate only on their driving, because if they do not allow minor distractions they will become more seriously distracted from their primary tasks -- moreover, this hypothesis would suggest this distraction was not likewise beneficial for those who did not have ADHD. However, this could be entirely wrong. An alternate hypothesis would suggest that because their attention is already so fragmented, AD/HD drivers attempting to multi-task are more at risk of driving poorly than are other multi-tasking drivers or AD/HD drivers who are not multi-tasking."

Tags: car vehicle concentration

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