Continental Car Lab | Driver distraction test

Everyone is – or should be – aware of the obvious distractions when driving a car. Using your phone, for example, eating or drinking and dealing with kids are the obvious ones.

But what about the more subtle ones? Chris Thompson and Emma Notarfrancesco set up a unique experiment to quantify just how much the simple act of conversation can be when driving.

Chris set a 53sec time around a pretty standard motorkhana course and Emma scored a similar time, all without distraction.

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Then they started to ask each other some tricky questions…

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Driving around the secure confines of a large skid pan with only cones in the way doesn’t seem like much of a challenge, but it proved to be a very enlightening experiment in more ways than one.

MORE CONTINENTAL CAR LABS

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• How fast can you go in reverse?
• How much do roof racks hurt fuel economy?
• Why driving on space savers is a bad idea
• What do car seat laws actually mean for parents?
• Does air-conditioning affect engine power?
• How hot can it get inside a locked car?
• Warming up the engine - fact or fiction?

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