I’ve been reading a fascinating book called Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt. He writes about many of the challenges that driving presents to the brain. In one section he quotes a survey of a road in Maryland where information is presented to the driver every two feet (think of traffic signs, road markings, stoplights, street names… not to mention the additional information that the car and potential passengers are creating for the driver to deal with). Doing the math, he said that at 30 miles per hour the flow of information is equivalent to reading 440 words per minute. That is a lot of information. Yet we take the task of driving almost for granted.
For more information about Tom and his research into traffic and driving can read his blog here.
We introduced Drivesharp to help drivers better handle the huge amount of information that needs to be processed by the brain. As we age the brain’s performance generally slows because we don’t challenge the brain. A relevant analogy is that our bodies get out of shape if we don’t exercise. Posit Science was able to take work done on improving speed and accuracy of the brain’s visual system and build this into games people want to play.