For centuries, nuns, monks and other Christian aesthetes have practiced a custom called "custody of the eyes." It involves casting your gaze down and slightly forward, avoiding eye contact even with those to whom you speak. For example, legend has it that one 16th-century Spanish mystic, St. Peter of Alcántara, cultivated the habit so devoutly that he could recognize his fellow monks only by the sound of their voices.

For saints like Peter, custody of the eyes not only encouraged meekness and self-discipline; it also preserved virtue. The eyes are indeed the "windows of the soul," portals through which temptation enters the heart and leads us off the straight and narrow--or so the thinking goes.

Nowadays, that principle may seem quaint and medieval, except when it comes to driving. Roving eyes--what we 21st-century sophisticates call "rubbernecking"--becomes downright sinful behind the wheel. A recent study conducted by the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center and funded by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that distractions outside the car prove more dangerously alluring than distractions inside the car. For all the public hullabaloo about talking on cell phones, eating and reading behind the wheel, researchers found that rubbernecking poses the greatest danger of all. Gawking at other drivers, pedestrians, animals, crashes and road construction accounts for about 29 percent of all distracted-driving crashes.

Just last year, a separate study from the Transportation Safety Training Center at Virginia Commonwealth University came to similar conclusions. Analyzing more than 2,700 police reports involving more than 4,500 drivers, researchers ranked rubbernecking as the No. 1 cause of collisions.

Rubbernecking doesn't just lead to crashes; it also causes traffic jams and other annoyances. Traffic engineers have long known that a crash results in slowdowns all along the artery on which it occurs, even when it doesn't block traffic flow. They have a particular term for such slowdowns--"the gawk effect."

Sympathy or Schadenfreude
Why do we rubberneck? The short answer is because we're human. "One sociologist told us that people look at crashes because they feel sorry for the unfortunate," says Robert J. Breitenbach, director of the Transportation Safety Research Center and principal investigator in VCU's rubbernecking study. "But I don't think that's necessarily so. For example, a lot of people go to NASCAR races, and at least some of them go to see crashes--or at least they're disappointed when a crash doesn't occur. We're just very inquisitive by nature."

Sometimes, the sheer spectacle of a roadside event proves irresistible. Breitenbach and his colleagues found a number of drivers distracted by out-of-the-ordinary events--roadside fires or helicopter landings, for instance. As humans, we just have to look.

And we want to share the sights, too. According to anecdotal reports from police across the country, the growing popularity of camera phones doesn't help the rubbernecking problem one bit. Apparently, when some drivers encounter a particularly spectacular crash or other sight, they pull out their cell phone, snap a digital photo, and fire it off to a friend with a "you-won't-believe-what-I-just-saw" message. The phenomenon represents the dangerous convergence of two types of driving distractions: cell phoning and rubbernecking. Think of it as high-tech tele-gawking.

Minding Your Own Business
Fighting the urge to rubberneck begins with proper scanning technique--the modern, slightly modified version of custody of the eyes. Experts suggest the following:

• Get the big picture. "If you focus your eyes on the road a short distance in front of your vehicle, you're not aware of what's outside your immediate field of vision," says Al Tetta of the Club's Traffic Safety Department, an instructor in AAA's Driver Improvement Program. Safety experts recommend scanning 20 to 30 seconds ahead; that translates to a block and a half or two in the city, and a half-mile on the open highway.
• Keep your eyes moving. Scanning implies constant movement. "You should sweep your vision from left to right ahead, to your mirrors briefly, and back to the area ahead of you," says Tetta. Rely on your peripheral vision to detect possible hazards moving in from the side. Concentrate on the area ahead, in and around your path of travel.
• Avoid staring at a particular object or scene. "It's a fact. You tend to drive where you're looking," says VCU's Breitenbach. "Stare at an object long enough, and you'll usually steer right into it." When you're behind the wheel, your hands always follow your eyes. If your natural curiosity overcomes you and you must look at a roadside collision, keep your glances brief.
• Recognize signs of fatigue. "Sleepiness, alcohol and certain medications can make drivers more distractible," notes Breitenbach. Learn the signs of fatigue and distractibility in yourself. They include heavy eyelids, yawning, difficulty staying in your lane and generally feeling disengaged from your surroundings. Stimulants like caffeine alleviate fatigue only temporarily and can't substitute for real rest.

Using proper scanning techniques and controlling your eye movements won't save you from slowdowns caused by gawkers, but they may save you from a fate far worse.

"They say curiosity killed the cat," concludes Tetta. "In the case of rubbernecking, curiosity may kill you. Ultimately, it comes down to having enough discipline to resist the temptation to take a look."

As any monk or nun would tell you, resisting temptation gets easier with practice.