{"id":47732,"date":"2026-07-11T09:08:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T07:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/accidents\/driver-distractions-are-greater-than-you-might-think\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T09:08:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T07:08:37","slug":"driver-distractions-are-greater-than-you-might-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/accidents\/driver-distractions-are-greater-than-you-might-think\/","title":{"rendered":"Driver distractions are greater than you might think"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Most drivers believe that once they put the phone down, or stop speaking to a passenger, their attention is back on the road. Yet, research into what is known as &lsquo;attention residue&rsquo; shows a driver&rsquo;s mind can remain partly tied to a task for a noticeable stretch following that task, even when hands are on the wheel and eyes on the road.<\/p>\n<p>The CEO of MasterDrive, Eugene Hetbert, says, this is part of cognitive distraction that fleet operators often overlook. &ldquo;Conversations about distracted driving usually focus on the moment of distraction itself. Less attention is paid to the recovery period afterwards.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;When the brain is still processing the interrupted thought while simultaneously trying to re-engage with driving, full attention has not yet returned to the road. A portion of attention is still occupied by the distraction. Depending on how demanding that task was, it can take anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes for full focus to return.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.arrivealive.co.za\/news.aspx?s=1&#038;i=77924&#038;page=driver-distractions-are-greater-than-you-might-think\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on Arrive Alive <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most drivers believe that once they put the phone down, or stop speaking to a passenger, their attention is back on the road. Yet, research into what is known as &lsquo;attention residue&rsquo; shows a driver&rsquo;s mind can remain partly tied to a task for a noticeable stretch following that task, even when hands are on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47733,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.arrivealive.co.za\/\/ckfinder\/userfiles\/images\/distracted.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2149],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-accidents"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.arrivealive.co.za\/\/ckfinder\/userfiles\/images\/distracted.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}