Distracted driving is:
- Anything that causes evasive action while driving.
- Anything that takes your attention away from driving. ✓
- Anything that causes you to pay more attention to driving.
Answer: B. Anything that takes your attention away from driving.
Distracted driving is anything that takes your attention away from driving.
Why this is the answer
The handbook calls cell phones the main source of distracted driving and warns against driving while using a handheld phone, answering calls, or sending and reading texts and emails. Each of those behaviors is a problem because it pulls your attention off the road, which is exactly what the definition describes. The passages do not give a separate formal definition, but the examples all fit the idea of something drawing your focus away from the driving task.
Why the other answers are wrong
- A. Anything that causes evasive action while driving. — Evading a hazard is a reaction to something on the road, not the definition of distraction itself, and the passages describe distraction as attention being pulled away rather than as a need to swerve.
- C. Anything that causes you to pay more attention to driving. — Paying more attention to driving is the opposite of distraction, since the handbook's examples all involve attention being taken away from the road.
Remember it
Ask yourself one question about any activity behind the wheel: does it pull my eyes and mind off the road? If yes, it counts as distraction.
Official handbook: California Driver Handbook (DL 600), Section 8: Safe Driving, p. 70