My Review of The Book a Deadly Wandering by Matt Richtel

Shaw, in his his teenage years, that’s when one rainy morning, when he crossed the line of a Utah highway, hitting a car containing two scientists, James Furfaro and Keith O’Dell, who were heading to work nearby. Both men were killed. Shaw says he was texting his girlfriend at the time. He is next seen taking part in something almost inconceivable, He enters the scene of where the accident happened and he meets one of the scientists’ daughters, where she was being interviewed, and he receives from that woman a warm, earnest, tearful, hug. Reggie Shaw had a long tough journey from being a careless killer to being one of the nation’s most powerful spokesmen on the dangers of texting and driving was first brought to attention by Matt Richtel, a reporter for The New York Times, who had a series of articles about distracted driving that even won a Pulitzer Prize.

Now, five years later, the book “A Deadly Wandering” was written, Richtel gives Shaw’s story the emotional treatment that was needed, going into detail about the science behind distracted driving. Continuously, Richtel’s densely reported book deserves a spot next to a book like “To Kill a Mockingbird” in America’s high school curriculums. Students in this generation’s high schools need this kind of book to influence them into possibly saving a live or two. What makes the people who died in this book so different and affecting is how ordinary they are. Two men get up early in the morning to go to their jobs, they get behind the wheel, a stranger loses track of his car, and they crash. The two men die. There is a possible temptation to make the accident sound more dramatic than it really was, to invest it with meaning, that’s why Richtel wonders if Reggie lied about the fact that he was texting and driving. In short, broke up the chapters of the book and Richtel relates them and ties them back to the history of cognitive neuroscience. From its origins in World War II.

Also helping pilots and radar operators to saving lives and not being overwhelmed by the technology in front of them. To later M.R.I. brain studies of multitasking. Richtel explains how researchers have found that distraction is the opponent of attention, not its opposite. It’s a very interesting way to look at it. He basically says that we get distracted because we want to be. Why else would they sell so many smartphones? As Richtel explains, “a good gadget is essentially magical, commandeering our focus with delight and surprise and ease, Not all distractions are created equal: The impairment of drunken driving, for instance, is consistently huge, while the impairment of texting is arguably more intense but shorter in duration.” The most powerful question that the book “A Deadly Wandering” asks is a very simple one: If we know texting and driving is so bad for us, why do we still do it? Richtel tests out a lot of different ways to describe that rush people usually get from a phone.

Other examples can be drugs, alcohol, video games, junk food, the fight-or-flight response to a tap on a shoulder, etc. Richtel describes our bodies as a slot machine. Our bodies get that little hit of dopamine each time we hear that phone ring and we get that excitement and urge to check it out. Even though we know how dangerous and maybe not so important it is, that still doesn’t really stop us from coming back for more dozens of times a day, during movies, out at dinner, on our way to wherever we’re going, unsafe at any speed. So we need to learn from this book and really understand not only the dangers it comes with but also the science behind this reckless behaviour.