This blog is the last in the greenslips.com.au series Road safety: Much more than the safety of roads. One of the big five killers is distraction. It’s also one of the hardest to track, measure and prevent. Here are the latest ideas on driver distraction.
What is driver distraction?
A good place to start is to define what we mean by driver distraction. To paraphrase the academic version, it’s when your attention is diverted from safe driving to another activity that could reduce your control of the vehicle. In fact, the average driver does some kind of non-driving activity every 96 seconds.
What happens when you’re distracted? You’re less likely to:
- Control your speed (whether faster or slower)
- Notice things in your peripheral vision
- Stay in your lane
- Respond well to unexpected hazards.
Driver distraction is one of the hardest problems to solve. It’s partly because there has been no reliable way to collect distraction data. How can you tell which particular distraction at which time caused someone to have a crash? Currently, Transport for NSW does not even collect data on deaths and injuries caused by using a mobile phone while driving. (When questioned about this, the spokesperson directed greenslips.com.au to very old research, not current NSW figures.)
Another problem is the driver is not the only one responsible for distraction. There is a whole ecosystem of influences contributing to distraction. For example, manufacturers of mobile phones, carmakers who build in-vehicle infotainment and GPS, the physical environment around a road (eg, flashing ads, road work, pedestrians), behaviour of other drivers, passengers in the back seat, and so on.
Just as driver behaviour is difficult to change, it’s equally difficult to change all the factors that contribute to driver distraction.
Many kinds of driver distraction
Mobile phones are the obvious culprit. Using a mobile while driving is linked to an 83% increase in crash risk. In fact, using a phone makes up a surprisingly low 7% of non-driving tasks.
Many tasks that involve looking and touching (visual-manual) are more dangerous while driving. Here are the odds of having a crash for a few visual-manual tasks:
- Dialling 12.2%
- Reading or writing 9.9%
- Extended glance to external object 7.1%
- Texting 6.1%
- Reaching for phone 4.8%
- Interaction with device. 4.6%
Today, there’s a vital distinction between tech functions likely to distract from the driving task and tech functions supposed to aid driving. Sometimes the same technology may be used to support or distract drivers.
In new vehicles, there are multi-functional buttons on the steering wheel and dashboard, voice commands, touch screens, head-up displays on windscreens and computer-generated images. It’s hard to know where to look and listen.
Most carmakers allow drivers to pair their phones to the vehicle system. This lets drivers access information from the phone through the vehicle’s controls. This can be distracting. GPS-assisted driving, especially when visual, is also distracting.
There are also many well-known, non-tech distractions to driving (not covered by the Road Rules). Many are involuntary, for example, the baby in the back suddenly starts to scream. But what about the voluntary, non-tech distractions while driving, such as eating a messy sandwich? Here are some other common ones:
- Reading newspapers
- Dancing in the driver’s seat to music
- Inserting or retrieving a CD
- Swatting an insect
- Turning round to look at a child in the back seat.
The list of distractions is endless. Yet the one most likely to be addressed today is mobile phone use while driving.
Why do you use a phone in the car?
According to the National Roadmap on Driver Distraction (Roadmap), campaigns to reduce mobile phone use have not been very successful. It claims this is partly because mobile phone technology keeps advancing and people expect to be able to use their phones. The Roadmap also claims it’s difficult to enforce sanctions. Even so, mobile phone detection cameras are now in use in NSW.
One reason why we keep using our phones in the car is because we are more influenced by rewards than risks. Here are some rewards:
- Staying in contact
- Responding quickly
- Familiar habit
- Stops boredom
- Prevents FOMO.
Here are some (less likely) risks:
- Being caught
- Having an accident
- Getting hurt or dying.
Many drivers believe that diverting their attention to something else doesn’t affect their own driving. However, they admit it’s a problem for other drivers. Research shows 97.5% of drivers (nearly all) suffer a drop in driving performance when they do a secondary task. This is even more likely for inexperienced drivers or old drivers, who may have less spare brain capacity to give to another task.
Unfortunately, many workers feel pressured while driving to maximise their income. Gig workers on motorbikes or bicycles often need to use their phones; Uber drivers are supposed to pull over and stop to take a job.
Did you know drivers with a smartwatch glance more frequently at their smartwatch than their phone?
How do we combat distraction?
According to the Roadmap, there are five main ways to start reducing distraction:
- Design – Design vehicle and phone standards so drivers can use them safely.
- In-vehicle technology – Work with carmakers and ANCAP to encourage technology that reduces distraction from in-car systems.
- Recognise the vehicle as a workplace – Treat work-related road incidents as workplace incidents and develop distraction guidelines with insurers and employers.
- Encourage compliance – Update Road Rules, share crash and infringement data, use more automatic enforcement.
- Change driver behaviour – Collect data and educate drivers about the dangers of distraction.
Part of the problem today is that drivers don’t know what is OK while driving and what is not.
In 2017, greenslips.com.au wrote a blog about the need for new Road Rules to address the use of new technologies in vehicles. National Transport Commission (NTC) declared the Road Rules needed to be updated and made ‘technology neutral’.
New technology-neutral Road Rules
Technology-neutral Road Rules focus on interactions between driver and technology, rather than on the technology itself.
For example, Washington State passed the Driving Under the Influence of Electronics Act. It outlaws all use of handheld devices. It also makes smoking, eating, drinking, or other secondary distracting task, a secondary offence.
NTC has proposed a change to the Road Rules, with two parts:
- A list of permitted and prohibited interactions with four categories of technology:
- Inbuilt and mounted devices, such as infotainment
- Portable devices, such as mobiles
- Wearables, such as smartwatches
- Motorcycle helmets.
- Any sources of distraction that could impair a driver’s control of the vehicle and clear view of the road.
There are features in many vehicles that startle or distract drivers from focusing on the road. For example, drivers can be irritated simply by things that go beep in their cars. Worse, owners of Teslas have to work their way through a menu just to change the speed of the windscreen wipers.
Who should be responsible for distracting technologies?
The Roadmap claims decisions made by overseas carmakers do affect road safety in Australia. It describes a new distraction safety rating that will be applied to any new vehicles entering Australia. It The process of creating distraction ratings with ANCAP has already begun and the next stage will apply these ratings to three new Australian vehicles.
A valuable part of the process is to collect more data related directly to distraction. National Road Safety Data Hub was set up in October 2020 to collect this and other kinds of data to help prevent fatal and serious injuries on Australian roads.
After all, it’s only by having a clear picture of what can distract, how and where, that we can do something about it.
This is the last in our 3-part series on Road Safety.
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