the issues we have been talking about, there was some denial. maybe as we all have had about this issue. tell me a little bit about his first reaction, just briefly, and how the scene was set for what came to be a trial. or a judicial event. >> guest: just briefly. he pulls over to the side of the road. tells the police he doesn't know what happened. maybe hi hydroplaned, and this tenacious state trooper takes him to the hospital to get a blood test, and notices that he is texting, and the trooper tells me -- it ends the first chapter -- this guy is a one-hander, and he spends the next 18 months in this hot pursuit, trying to get the phone records, and reggie, apropos of what you said, one of the big issues, he says he didn't do it, gets a lawyer and a standoff is set for the first-ever -- this historic trial, and then i'll

tell you more as we parse it out. >> we have a couple more minutes. so, what happened, happened over many months, as you said, and i think doesn't this initial reaction perhaps speak to what we'll go into later, but the idea that it can't happen to us? >> guest: yeah. it's all -- all the things you're bringing up. in fact i thought it very initially when we started talking, talking about all the things it represents, one thing it representses denial. and he is a metaphor for our collective denial, it can't happen to us, and the denial we do when we don't want to admit to the other driver, oh, yeah, dinged into you because i was doing a status update. and adding to the drama in this case, reggie had let his community down once before. he was living with a lie in his past. and he had come clean about it,

and he was feeling a sense of humiliation and couldn't stand the idea that in this small community of northern utah, might let his family down again. >> host: i think one thing the story represents is that it could happen to any of us. again, after the break, maybe we'll get -- return to some of the statistics on the scope of the problem, but the research i've seen shows that particularfully younger ages, but 40%, i think in your book, of people said they had read texts. 30% had sent texts. the statistics are astonishing. we're not talking bat mine -- about a minority of the population. >> guest: you brought up, we can deny it, because we have a bad control group in science. if you have done it's hundred times and not gotten in a wreck you say, 100% of the time if

haven't gotten in a wreck, therefore i won't get in a wreck. but it's a terrible control group because 101, or in in reggie's case, 31, two guys are dead. >> host: we're dealing with a one-ton slot machine on a rainy highway. and we'll pause right there and be back in a minute for more talk on attention and driving and distraction with matt richtel.

>> host: we have been talking about the deadly wandering, fantastic new book, and i'd like to return to the science of attention, because as many scientists have told me, attention is really the human faculty. it decides -- where we pay attention determines our life. and this miniseries of decision wes make and don't make about our attention, weaves the fabric of our lives. so, tell me more about some of the latest multitasking research? for instance, some of the viewers may have heard of this -- the fact there are super taskers. how many are there? can you really juggle and maybe

we don't need to be as conservative as the scientists tell us. ... to improve our visual acuity. there is some hope of that. i go back to something you mentioned earlier about

attention and the building block of reseda the world. as a gusty limitation, you put it so beautifully a second ago, and i don't remember exactly what you just said, but it may actually not just go to what we intend to, but our choices and even further it is a big concept, but even free will in no way. even -- i will give u.s. study to back this up and it goes to how much there is control and the moment. their is a study i am going to get some of your audience has heard of. i will oversimplify. it is a chocolate cake steady. remember this one? maybe you can help me remember exactly been, but it goes like this. study subjects in a very dramatic get extra risk exposed to elect to undertake an effort to math

and some of our last before going into remember a string of numbers. by a statistically significant part in the opposite had hidden and i brought to is the chocolate cake. the ones who didn't choose the fruit. and they factor for these, you know, the causes and what they are coming up with is that when your brain is not even overloaded with information, but taking into account significant information that they have to remember, it affects your decision making. so now bring it back to the telephone and the car. it really sort of thinking about what is going on, anticipating the phone, talking on the phone, you are beginning to end pain a little bit of your decision if economists, cover zepa and brought strength, that is a potentially. ♪ , but it actually capital of the late to the restaurant.

she's got to be a quarter of iraq's fifth with your spouse with dinner. clearly getting a snack food elements to the stock. >> host: but something has routine as driving a car, the 16-year-old district because they don't have to good judgment. they are not as developed. but, you know, people our age, people of all ages are doing it in part because they are assuming that they can handle this. driving is so habitual that it should not be -- should not take the frontal lobe. isn't that one kind of assumption? >> guest: yes,. >> host: and you are saying that when we are tired or we face the situation where we must slam on the brakes the brain is not able to react as quickly as we want. >> guest: well, make no mistake, driving deaths are an epidemic that we have not solved. this is not a situation

where people are doing some overly negligent behavior, you know, drinking themselves into a, you know, taking a gun into a square, this is good people driving to destinations that they want to reach with good hearts not hoping to hurt anybody and 30-40000 people per year dying. i would bring something appears statistically. one of the issues that for a while the wireless industry brought up, they do not anymore. driving fatalities have come down in the u.s. you know, that is true, but to other things are also true. they have come down far less than other countries, and they have come down at a time when we have spent billions on wider roads, air bags, lots of safety measures. so the public safety advocates would say that you would be seeing much better safety improvements.

to bring this full circle, don't take it for granted that you can drive. tens of thousands of people per year are dying. what to a ticket back to something else you mentioned, the young brain. can we touch on that for a second? >> host: i think it is important because statistics show there are the ones texting 19 at the time. >> guest: 19, again, he is so emblematic. we go back to that initial image of the sort of civil war, the tension in the brain between this and this. and if this is not fully developed, the free from the cortex, the frontal of which , is not until much later, certainly not at 19, it is much, much worse at fending off the signals from down below. so, you know, you have no chance. but you might, might --

maybe you can know if you are a little bit older and a little bit more adept. it is ringing, in front of me. i have a fully formed, prefrontal cortex. i should be driving in the snow, and the dark, and the date. if your prefrontal cortex is not fully formed, it lacks the defenses to be able to fend off that reptilian single vote -- signal even more. the group doing it the most are at the most risk in susceptibility sp one which is a very powerful, very, very powerful problem in society right now. talk a little bit about the wider social sociological trans. you mentioned the messages we are getting, multitasking is great, successful, this is the picture of success. but let's talk more about those messages. cities and to do with how we

even see technology, with technology gives us. >> guest: what it brings us and how it defines us, there is in much seasonal associated with it. on a practical level, a study in the book that shows that, you know, especially young people, that the value of eight text falls sharply literally with each minute that passes. now, it makes common sense. let's say that you are an employee and a text comes in and it is, party at jane's house in 15 minutes, and you do not look. you miss the party, you miss critical social information. your boss saying, last-minute deal. can you call blank. so there is the practical element, although there are a myriad ways of around that, like pulling over in your car if you are so inclined.

but there is also something about the fact that things are just generally speeding up. a lot to talk a little bit about that. culture or end neurological. and it is hard to disentangle them. their is a statistic in the sport, another one that kind of blew me away when i saw it. people are using more and more and more apps each day. and i thought, i started to look at this. that is interesting. they might be abandoning the old maps. no. they are opening more apps for shorter amounts of time. so they are spending less time on every given thing, or to put it another way, in the context of attention, they are attending to things for that much less time. that may be cultural or neurological, but if you will permit our would like to throw a neurological, made the assumption or more than assumption, hypothesis.

so the feeling when you touch your telephone or hear the phone rang or move it around, you get any little jolt of adrenalin. >> host: it makes you feel good. >> guest: it actually does, yes. i should not be -- i almost sounded facetious there, but i am not. it makes you feel good. mineral science shows that's through brain imaging and neurochemical study we discover that when you and if @booktv interact with your device, particularly during certain activities like video games in the internet you get this couple meanspirited we alluded to earlier. with several scientists show me, and this is one of the most interactive five important parts of this phenomenon is that that dopamine interaction, that sport to the pleasure center of your brain does not have to do with the information, the substance.

it merely has to do with the stimulus response. so you, on this really primitive level, do something and something happens, and you get rewarded for it. i see this with my kids all the time. it is ingrained in us. you do something to get a response. so now you have this device were you do something, you get a response. you get accustomed. you kill an angry birds or ms. and angry birds, you get a response. in its absence, you start to feel bored. >> host: right. >> guest: and what do you do? >> host: basically we are talking about getting behind the wheel and putting our chimpanzee self there. you know, we are not -- [laughter] >> host: we are not opening their car door and put in our higher orders human cells behind the wheel let's talk resolutions because these are tricky and difficult, disheartening,

personally and i think professionally and societally how little effect let's start with law enforcement and public health. and do you see any signs of hope? you talk to one study in sarah crews were they put a truly impressive amount of effort and to enforcement, but would it have lasting results? what are some of the good and bad points to education and law enforcement? >> guest: around the margins we're seeing some stuff. it is to lay the groundwork, let me give the kind of law enforcement landscape and start with what law enforcement tell me. forty-five states outlaw texting and driving. and it is ten, if memory serves to require hands- hands-free. but still, go back to a statistic we said earlier, a huge disconnect between attitudes and behaviors.

right now 96%, let's say, aaa foundation for highway safety know that it is or say that it is very dangerous. and 30 some, 40 some still send and receive with texting. clearly we have got an issue. the first thing that i think we need to acknowledge in this conversation is that it is not an issue of attitudes. that is what i think we thought. when i say we, let me say, public safety advocates thought that this would be an issue of attitude. let's get attitude to change . attitude, forgive the vernacular, are not the problem. >> host: can you clarify what you mean by attitude? >> guest: we need to know that this is an issue, problem. >> host: right. education won't do it? >> guest: well, it has not so far because we are fairly well educated. if you ask any of these,

they can be even more pronounced than adults and saying i know this is an issue. so there is a disconnect. let me go to law enforcement here is what zero lot of law enforcement tell me. sexting laws, while being enforced and tickets are being written, it is hard for the police to know what someone is doing. >> host: almost impossible . >> guest: i think it is tantamount to impossible. what am i doing right now? dialing, testing, pandora, the map that leads to a problem. interesting law enforcement things i've seen around the world, law-enforcement dress up like gross workers so that they can peer inside the car, but that is a lot of hard work to do. law-enforcement, the was the talk to me express frustration about that.

i think what the psychologists on may, it is confusing for the driver or consumer fueled, what a mile out to do is every? it is not easy to draw those distinctions. >> host: that raises a lot of important distinctions. do we know yet whether handsfree is as bad as being on the phone? weather texting -- sending a text is far worse than reading. however, have we done this all sorted out? is there anything you want to warn people? >> obviously anything where you look away or are manipulating your hands, those numbers go up. and so that means, even if you are a hands-free phone, you still might have to dial before i get to the hands-free question, that is it the most part of course,

in that if police acted in good faith, a bunch of research shows that because those things -- partly because those things do not work well, you are in a veritable argument with your phone. so that is a problem, but it also takes you away from the road when you interact with that. has to being, on a hands- free device, most narrow scientists believe it is a card whatever distraction. most public safety experts believe it is a card into if -- a public safety distraction. you are not fully focused to the point where you were visual cortex is somewhat superimposed by thinking about imagining the person you are talking to, the situation you're talking to. you have to make a split-second decision going fast. there are some traffic safety advocates who disagree with that, and there is not a big argument, but there is still a low

level discussion going on. i will tell you that the automotive industry, which we did not talk about earlier, advocates for hands-free being a kate. and it is also true in the same breath that they have a financial interest in it being okay because they are selling lots of gadgets for cars that rely on those systems. and one step further, right now they are trying to get people into the showroom, and that is one of the selling points. >> host: eight is a more enticing car when you have more ability to do more things in the car, obviously surgery is still a little bit out. yet scientists research three destroyers strict. >> guest: of foremost scientists the jury is not out. you will get an argument from a small and fall in the scientific community. >> host: time for just a few more points and

questions, but i think, you know, we really want said here where you see the hope lining. you cannot change at all where this incredible universe of technology with these messages, including the fact it is dangerous, but tell us three things that you think will work and that uc as hopeful. speech you your core audience knows if i am asked for three things i will give ninth. i will give you three. and one is personal. i get into this and the book theory and religions to the childhood steady. take some time away from your device. to an extent, you do not realize your audience, and i did not realize, so i speak from experience, the amount that we are on is impinging our ability to make a lot of

decisions, and the two others are tried and true from drunk driving, seat belts, loss of public -- one is public education, and one is tough loss and tough enforcement. when it comes to tough education, reggie shock of this guy who denied turns out to be a hero. what a redemption. i do not want to give the book away. >> host: it is very powerful. >> guest: it is. i mean, he deserves for whenever it -- for whatever tragedy he caused, and it was serious, and all of a terrible -- how he felt and how he deserves to feel, he has redeemed himself like no one i have ever seen. it is a story worth reading. so public education, people have speaking. the victims' families as speaking with audiences.

and they will have an impact on legislatures. on the tough laws side but from what i'm hearing unless loss are tougher and people really feel afraid that they're in jeopardy, we will not see a ruckus to reconciliation between attitude and behavior until people feel like it is more than that slap on the rest they will not come together. what that translates again, but the solutions in the book, and legislatures are starting to talk about some tougher penalties. >> host: tell us a little bit about your personal librarians camino, how did you come to write the book? and know you came out of a series, but how did it

change your behavior, you know, as a technology reporter but then what changes in your life have you made? how has it changed your thinking about attention and distraction in society? >> guest: i think about attention so broadly, to your point, about how it actually forms my world view . i have two little kids, and i've watched my behavior in the years before. i would once this device. i am a journalist. i am always thinking about what is happening. i just could not -- something was going on. part of it was feeling galore and wanting to understand it. i mentioned for much of you a quick story about my son. two years old.

watch my grandparents' house, my wife's folks. and his foot kicks this little plastic foam. and it causes it to ring. he picks it up. he puts it to his ear and i don't even know he knows all his or -- words and he says to my will call you back from a land line. and it was one of these moments when i realized i have a kid he will drive a kid who's mimicking my behavior as a negative year with devices and i want to know for myself and ally raise my kids. was a big part of it simply to vote -- coupled with having fifth then irresistible story with reggie shop. >> host: was there anything in particular that could even be a piece of their research.

if i know you are surprised all the time that the monday through their research and talk to the path, but was there anything that you say surprised you the most about this issue? especially if it, you know, change your behavior at all? and i want to push that a little bit further. did you used to text and drive? >> guest: i have been asked that before. the short answer is, the reason i am going to say i don't remember is i don't remember when i got my first phone capable of texting, but i suspect not because i don't think i could text by the time i was reporting on this subject and by then neither does like a month of pleadingly and by doing that three had i don't believe i did, but i did talk on the phone. i stopped doing that. the phone goes in the middle and goes off and does not get answered. i want to go to was surprised me the most because it was not -- i'm just picturing something in

my mind. was not the science. yeah bentsen great journalism. he was surprised me the most was the outpouring from the characters in this book, the raw candor and honesty. i want to say something in particular from the windows of the men, you know, this book on some level is built on grief. what they open up to me, what the hunters, if you go, the prosecutors and victims' advocates open up to me, stories of their own lives of abuse, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, those are not ancillary to this, not irrelevant to because they plan to the question of attention. what do you pay attention to ? what in your i