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Distracted driving addiction according to experts may soon turn out to be a public health issue with the growing number of incidents related to driver distraction on the road caused linked to smartphone or electronic gadget usage.
Distracted driving addiction is no joke
While people believe that talking on the phone, texting or checking on social media while driving is dangerous, many if not most people still do it.
It definitely addictive condition that results to distracted driving which many smartphone users may deny doing, but that scientists prove to be triggered by a hormone in the brain that strongly urges you to do so.
This is a result of the addictive nature of smartphones that causes the brain to instinctively react to a notification whether it is a text message or an update on Facebook or Twitter, according to David Greenfield, founder of the Center for Internet Technology and Addiction.
“The dopamine reward centers are the same centers that have to do with pleasure from eating, pleasure from sex and procreation, pleasure from drugs and alcohol,” Greenfield said. “This reward circuitry is as old as time and if we didn’t have it, we probably wouldn’t exist as a species.”
Greenfield said that smartphones affect one’s brain often without even knowing or aware of it. When someone hears a ping or a ring on the phone, dopamine is released that triggers an arousal and it expects to be rewarded.
Greenfield says that this is how the brain’s circuitry is wired to trigger that reward response and when dopamine levels are high, the brain’s reward center shuts down the prefrontal cortex of the brain which is responsible for our reasoning and judgment.
“The parts of the brain that say, ‘OK, how important is this text? Is this text worth dying for? Is this text worth killing somebody else for?’ ” says Greenfield. “The answer, of course, logically, would be ‘no,’ but if you have less access to that part of your brain when you’re in this state, which seems to be the case, then you’re not really using your judgment.”
Undeniable data
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that traffic deaths in 2015 went up by 7.7 percent in the United States, many of those cases involved were due to distracted driving.
There are approximately 660,000 drivers all over America using their cellphones or manipulating a device while driving, at any given time. This number has remained steady since 2010.
A lot of traffic accidents involving distracted driving often result from a split second glance into a smartphone or gadget display that causes one to lose focus on the road and could result to an accident.
The post Distracted Driving Addiction Can Be Deadly appeared first on NUTRITION CLUB CANADA.
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