But a new article by Keith Barry for Wired’s Autopia blog states that distractions might not be the worst thing since drivers are “just as likely to do a bad job driving down some lonely treeless straightaway in Kansas, as you are merging onto the New Jersey Turnpike at rush hour, lost, with a scorpion on your shoulder.” This is an exaggeration of the Yerkes-Dodson law, which predicts that drivers become complacent if they aren’t engaged behind the wheel, and also face danger if they have too many distractions.

Barry is correct that technology has created important safe guards that override the driver if he or she is close to another vehicle, or even stops the car if a pedestrian jumps into the road in front of your car. But I’m concerned that Barry mis-places the complacency concern in stating that a driver free from distractions will pay less attention the road. More realistically, drivers face the danger of becoming too reliant on technology that warns of dangerous road conditions, to a point where they might stop actively looking for that pedestrian who might run out into traffic, thinking their vehicle will take care of it.

Of course, Barry gets this and notes that the technology isn’t yet sufficient to fully protect against dangerous road situations. “Your car can’t tell if you’re tired, daydreaming or listening to a conference call on speakerphone. Therefore, it doesn’t know whether it’s appropriate to engage active safety features,” he writes. “In theory, perfectly programmed fully autonomous cars would be safer than human drivers, but that technology is still years away.”

Since distracted driving technology remains too inconsistent to rely on for auto safety, safety advocates, government officials, and even companies must pick up the slack to develop methods to reduce distractions behind the wheel. In a blog post for his Fastlane blog this week, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood applauds Volkswagen and Audi employees for signing a pledge never to text behind the wheel. In order to eliminate distracted driving for good, it is essential to get the automakers and cell phone companies on board as serious economic drivers of change.

Photo credit: mrJasonWeaver

That’s the philosophy behind Volkswagon’s new internet campaign dubbed “The Fun Theory,” which posits that “something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behavior for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.”

Under this mission, the German automaker asked internet users to submit multimedia shorts about improving driver behavior. The winning entry declared that in addition to being punished for disobeying traffic laws, good drivers should be rewareded for their actions. Here’s how it would work: every time a driver received a traffic ticket, a portion of his or her fine would go toward a prize for a citizen caught on camera driving safely. As Dennis Yang over at TechDirt writes, “a $500 ticket definitely stings, but a $500 ticket PLUS a little note that had you not been speeding, you could have won $10,000 instead? Ouch, that hurts a lot more.”

See the winning video here: