I feel that I can confidently assume we have all, at some point, gotten distracted while driving. Whether we were jamming to the radio, taking a call, or checking our phone just for a second, taking your eyes off the road is an ubiquitous part of driving. And Lexus designed a car to show you just how dangerous it can be.
The Lexus NX 4.6 is kind of like beer goggles for distracted drivers. Lexus adapted its NX SUV to feature a screen that could suddenly go blank, obscuring your vision for a brief period of time before returning. You can watch the clip of these unsuspecting drivers discovering this little bug for the first time below:
Basically, Lexus asked a few folks to head out for a test drive on a little obstacle course, then would suddenly obscure the windshield to see what would happen. As you can probably guess, these drivers demolished cones, bumped into the obstacles, and took the lives of some styrofoam pedestrians during that brief period where their vision was obscured.
It’s part of Lexus’ effort to bring attention to National Distracted Driving Awareness Month. The clip notes that, despite the fact most people think their eyes are only off the road for a second or two at a time, people are checking their phones or playing with their infotainment system for an average of 4.6 seconds. to put that into context, traveling between 55 to 60 mph, you’d cover the length of a football field in the time it took you to check your phone. As you can guess, the windows of the Lexus NX 4.6 stayed blank for those crucial 4.6 seconds.
Because this is a PSA clip, all the drivers swear off using their phones behind the wheel at the end of the video—which I’m sure is exactly the same thing you heard from the kids tripping over themselves during the beer goggle exercise in your D.A.R.E. program. But it’s a fascinating look at just how much can go wrong in under five seconds, even at slower speeds.