New Prime Owners: (Things discovered/Likes/Dislikes)

I think you guys are nuts. I usually ask my family not to talk too much while we're in the car because it's distracting. Music actually helps me concentrate on driving. I listened to music 16 hours a day while I was in engineering school. It helped me immensely to get my homework done.

I have never listened to an audio book so I suppose I don't know how distracting it would be, but talk in the car sure is, and talk radio (when it was useful 30 years ago) was so distracting I stopped listening except at home.

 

I can't listen to music in the car.

Rock -n - Roll makes me drive too fast. Way too fast.

 

have any studies been done on audio books? maybe i'm like the phone crazies who don't think it's a distraction.
i will happily stop if that turns out to be the case. but i think studies have shown a marked brain difference between conversations in the car, and on the phone.

 

Personally, I think conversations in the car are way more distracting than those on the phone, for two reasons. First, some people (thankfully, I'm not one of them) won't talk to you without looking at you. I hate it when a driver starts looking at me instead of the road. Second, some of those in-car conversations are my kids fighting in the back seat. I assure you that is WAY more distracting than talking with some rational person on the phone.

 

neither of those is good. 30 years ago, i asked my wife if we could put up plexiglas like a taxi. i'm just relaying the science, you can ignore it at your peril.

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20160416001525/https://www.aaafoundation.org/sites/default/files/MeasuringCognitiveDistractionFS.pdf

Book on tape (1.75) is worse than the radio (1.21) but not as bad as a hands free cell phone (2.27).

 

hands free cell phone is less distracting than a passenger? that is surprising.

 

I suspect measurement errors and person-to-person difference are larger than those small difference shown in the chart.

 

what if you have a passenger, are listening to a book, and the phone rings?

 

Then it's a race. Does the car crash first or does your head explode first?

 

i might have to drive to florida by myself.

 

I wasn't talking about BT, I was talking about mp3s on USB, which should be full-rate.

 

I would like to put a curtain up between me and the wife. She spends so much time texting it drives me crazy. And at night the light relecting off the windsheld and side windows is extremely distracting.

 

happy wife, happy life.

 

Uh, why do you think we want dynamic cruise control and lane keep assist?

Bob Wilson

 

DRC so that you can devote more of your concentration toward keeping track of other drivers, LKA so your first sign of having fallen asleep at the wheel isn't the sudden, shooting pain of another vehicle having passed through your torso.

 

What? What? We're not supposed to take a nap? <grins>

Bob Wilson

 

I wish my Prius prime advanced would have a sunroof.

I also wish the radar would work properly but it malfunctions when there's snow covering parts of the front Toyota emblem where the radar is located. Also every once in a while the auto climate it doesn't work remotely. Just make sure the climate control is not on eco-mode. I think it helps make it work more often.