There has been a lot of buzz about texting while driving lately, so this week, I thought it necessary to review a game that tries to teach about the dangers of distractions while behind the wheel. What came to mind was a game that The New York Times brought to light in an article called Gauging Your Distraction.

In this game, you operate a vehicle that is passing through a series of gates that cover six numbered lanes. As you pass through them, you receive intermittent text messages on a cell phone that you must respond to by using your mouse to click on keys on the phone, simultaneously you must safely navigating to the correct lanes with the open gates by using the number keys on your keyboard. At the end of the game, you are shown a bar graph of your reaction times throughout the course of the game, and how they varied between the times when you were texting and the times when you were weren’t. You are also shown a comparison of your reaction time while texting to the average player’s reaction time, alongside some interesting facts about texting while driving.