Your phone buzzes with a message while you are driving in steady traffic. What is the safest response?

Why B is correct

The arithmetic settles it: at fifty miles per hour you travel roughly seventy-five feet every second, so a two-second look means guiding a car blind for a hundred and fifty feet — further than a basketball court — and reading even a short message reliably takes longer than two seconds. Lowering the phone changes who sees you, not what you see, which is nothing. Red lights are not safe either; your attention belongs to the intersection you are about to enter and to the pedestrian who steps off the kerb late. The only honest answer is wheels stopped somewhere out of the traffic stream, whether that is a lot, a pullout, or a kerb. Voice systems help but do not remove the distraction of composing a reply.

Why the other options are wrong

A. Take a quick look, since one glance is enough to read a short message

There is no such thing as a glance that is safe at highway speed, because the cost is measured in distance travelled blind rather than in intentions. The road does not wait politely for you to finish reading.

C. Hold it low against the wheel where nobody can see it

Concealment solves a visibility problem, not a cognitive one. Your eyes are off the road for exactly as long, and the hand holding the phone low is doing its steering one-handed.

D. Read it at the next red light

A red light still demands attention: cross traffic, turning cars, cyclists filtering up the inside, pedestrians crossing late. Being stationary stops you going somewhere, but it does not make reading the screen safe.

On the road

Traffic slows suddenly three cars ahead and everyone brakes hard. Nearly every crash like this involves someone whose eyes were elsewhere for two seconds. The driver who replies safely is the one who pulled into the supermarket lot and lost forty seconds.

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