Is the pandemic creating 'Zoom Zombies' on the roads?

NEW YORK - So-called "Zoom fatigue" could be spilling over into someone's ability to drive safely.

"The problem is a growing one," says Robert Sinclair with AAA Northeast.  "You've got the cognitive overload from all those zoom calls and trying to then operate a vehicle."

Experts say the phenomenon is real. It's similar to the experience most of us have had driving on autopilot for an hour or two and not remembering most of the drive.

Get breaking news alerts in the free FOX5NY News app!

Technology apparently adds to the distraction.  Back-to-back zoom meetings and Facetime calls can create an overload in your brain.

Sinclair says, "Even from something as simple as a telephone call made by the side of the road that afterward you're still involved in the mental process of that call and you suffer from inattention blindness where you might look right at something but you don't see it."

Sign up for FOX 5 email newsletters

Stanford University just completed a study on why people feel fatigued after Zoom meetings.

Professor Jeff Hancock says, "They haven't been able to move around at all. They've been kinda like tight and stuck so they feel physically tired."

As a result, some drivers are struggling to maintain their concentration behind the wheel.

"It's a problem that's big and growing over the past year according to the data that we've been looking at," Sinclair says.