The New DUI: Are we really taking it seriously?
9 people die and 1,060 people are injured a day; 420,000 people will either be injured or die by the end of this year
If not for the article title above, you'd swear these were statistics taken from either a remote Third-World clinic treating a famine-stricken populace or casualties from a suicide bomber. These are but a few of the alarming statistics gathered by the Centers for Disease Control earlier this year. The cause? Distracted driving, of all things. Incidentally, the stat above translates into a death every 2.6 hours, and 44 injuries an hour. NHTSA estimated that 421,000 people were injured in motor vehicle accidents in 2012 involving a distracted driver, a 9 percent increase from the estimated 387,000 people injured in 2011; this backs our projected casualty rate. As of December 2012, according to NHTSA, an astounding 171.3 billion text messages were sent in the United States, alone.
We shared the roads with 4 million drivers daily whom are either drunk or distracted driving.
The ghost behind the wheel
So, what really constitutes distracted driving and why is it so widely ignored by the public? Actually, it's no big mystery since most of us have shaved, applied makeup, eaten, and to some bizarre extent engaged in sexual activity while driving. However, the most conspicuous and demanding of these habits are mobile phone texting/talking. After taking a survey of those whom perform the act with the readiness of tuning a car radio, we were a bit put off by the comments of subjects who "lost track of where they were going while talking on the cellphone", and those who could not hear the EMT, with sirens sounding, approaching from behind. Passive in-vehicle technologies (such as navigation systems) can also be sources of minimal distraction, and, were, not surprisingly, in line for blame by our subjects. While any of these distractions can endanger the driver and others, texting while driving is especially dangerous because it demand the driver's eyes, hands, attention, and intellect [CDC, 2013].
One may even think that a bit of distracted driving is pretty harmless most of the time. I'm almost convinced they're right. After all, I've never witnessed a distracted-driving accident in person. Mobile phones are so infused into our wireless lifestyle that we could never think of ourselves as law-breakers just for answering a call or throwing up a text or photo on Facebook or LinkedIn while on a long, boring drive, nor would we dare indict another for doing the same. So why are so many drivers and pedestrians dying in those horrific accidents we've been seeing on the news and Internet?
According to the CDC, 3,331 people were killed in crashes involving a distracted driver in 2011, compared with 3,267 in 2010. After comparing distracted driving crash reports in the United States with those in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Britain, the CDC determined that 69 percent of U.S. drivers ages 18-64 said they had used their cellphones while behind the wheel in the past 30 days. The European average ranged from 21 percent in Britain to 59 percent in Portugal. In the United States, 31 percent said they had read or sent text messages or e-mail messages while driving. The European range went from 15 percent who said they’d done that in Spain to 31 percent in Portugal [Washington Post, 2013].
Distracted/Drunk Driving Among Newly Licensed Teen Drivers--The way it stands
Research has shown that distracted-driving and minimum drinking age enforcement are very limited in many communities [Hedlund et al., 2001]. Enforcement against teen alcohol usage can take several forms, including actions directed at alcohol vendors, actions directed at youth, and actions directed at adults. Several studies document that well-publicized and vigorous compliance checks reduce alcohol sales to youth; for example, a review of eight high-quality studies found that compliance checks reduced sales to underage people by an average of 42 percent [Elder et al., 2007]. Research by the CDC found that education programs are effective in reducing riding with a drinking driver.
Teen drivers are the hardest hit sector from distracted driving, for which no ready solution exist. With teen crash rates roughly four times higher than those of adult drivers, traffic crashes remain the leading cause of death for the age group. To date there has been little concrete information or research available on distracted driving among teens specifically. Teenage drivers are believed to be at risk for distracted driving-related crashes, as they are avid users of cell phones and other technologies, are inexperienced drivers, and are still undergoing development in areas of the brain responsible for decision-making and risk management.
The American Automobile Association conducted a naturalistic three-phase study of 50 families in North Carolina, each with a novice teenage driver; two studies were collected in-vehicle video clips showing how teens progressed through the first two stages of Graduated Driver Licensing (GDL). The first study looked at how parents supervise their teens during the learner’s stage of GDL; the second examined how teen behaviors and driving conditions shift during the transition to unsupervised driving.? The third study re-analyzed clips from the first six months of unsupervised driving to determine the nature and prevalence of distracted driving behaviors among teenagers and their relation to various aspects of driving performance.
The Findings: Which distracted driver behaviors are most common among teenage drivers? Use of electronic devices was the leading behavior, followed by adjusting controls, personal grooming, and eating or drinking. ? Use of electronic devices was the most common distracted driving behavior and was found in 7% of the 7,858 clips that were recorded when a pre-determined g-force threshold was exceeded in the vehicle. Nearly twice as many teens were observed or suspected of operating an electronic device (e.g., texting) than were seen talking on a hand-held phone. ?Excluding electronic device use, teens were observed engaging in distracting behaviors in 15.1% of video clips: adjusting controls was the most common (6.2%), followed by personal grooming (3.8%), and eating or drinking (2.8%).
Disturbing ads such these are apparently the most effective method of discouraging distracted driving among teens. Unlike drunk driving and seatbelt-enforcement barricades, distracted driving have proven too elusive for law enforcement agencies. Currently, the fight against distracted driving is limited to ads and unenforceable laws.
Other crucial findings and answers:
·Do males and females differ in how often they engage in distracted behaviors, or the kinds of distractions they experience? Yes. Females were nearly twice as likely as males to be using an electronic device. ? Males were roughly twice as likely to turn their bodies around while driving. Excluding use of electronic devices, females were slightly more likely to be observed engaging in a distracted behavior (15.6% of clips vs. 13.9% for males), such as reaching for an object in the vehicle.
·Do distracted driver behaviors vary based on the number of passengers and the characteristics of those passengers (e.g., teens vs. adults vs. young siblings)? Yes. ? Electronic device use was most common when drivers carried no passengers, and were least common when a parent or other adult was in the vehicle. ?Drivers were 60% less likely to use an electronic device when carrying one teenage peer than when driving alone. ?Loud conversation and horseplay were more than twice as likely to occur when teens were carrying multiple teenage peers than when they were only carrying one; these behaviors were significantly less likely in the presence of a sibling or parent.
·Are distracted driver behaviors more common during certain times of day or week (e.g., weekday vs. weekend), and do these behaviors bear any relation to the amount of traffic or other characteristics of the driving environment? Not necessarily. ? No clear pattern emerged in the frequency of distracted driving behaviors on weekdays vs. weekends. ? Loud conversation and horseplay were particularly common when teens drove on weekend nights with multiple teen passengers (found in 20.2% and 11.2% of clips, respectively).? No clear relationship was found between the frequency of distracted driving and the amount of traffic present, suggesting teens were not adapting their behaviors to traffic conditions (though heavy traffic conditions were rarely observed). There was some indication that teens limited distracted driving behaviors during periods of rain, but the differences were small.
·Do drivers who engage in distracted behaviors spend more time looking away from the roadway than drivers who are not distracted? Yes. Drivers were three times as likely to look away from the road when using an electronic device, and two-and-a-half times as likely to look away when engaging in other distracted behaviors.?Drivers using an electronic device looked away from the roadway, on average, for a full second longer than drivers not using such a device ? Overall, drivers looked away from the road in 45% of clips; in 10% of these, the longest continuous glance was more than two seconds – enough to cover nearly 2/3 of a football field at 65 mph.
·Are distracted driver behaviors associated with serious incidents such as near-collisions, or events involving hard braking or swerving? Yes. ? Drivers were six times as likely to have a serious incident when there was loud conversation in the vehicle, and were more than twice as likely to have a high g-force event when there was horseplay. [AAA, 2013].
Questionable stats
Police in most countries do not systematically report the use of a particular distracting activity, such as using a mobile phone, in crash reports,and thus it is difficult to estimate the contribution distraction makes to road traffic crashes, and the consequent danger it poses on the world’s streets and highways. Where police do include distraction in crash reports, drivers are less likely to disclose their use of mobile phones as it can indicate fault,and thus data are likely to be underreported. Witness statements may also be unreliable. However, a growing body of studies are pointing to distraction is an important contributor to road traffic crashes.
Distracted/Impaired/Speeding Drivers: the new global serial threat?
Any article you've seen concerning drunk or distracted driving may come off as sensational and overreaching, and you might think the author surely has an ax to grind. Before you think this is just another one of those articles and click to another page, first think about that growing mobile subculture wherein one individual among them could wipe out innocent lives within a fraction of a second without warning. Then, think about your own acts of distracted/drunk driving. Under normal circumstances, we know these acts are voluntary and are aware of the inherent dangers. We become the serial threats to everyone sharing the streets and highways; we become the urban mass murderers and terrorists. Perhaps the only missing mental component is the vague, corrupt narcissistic or religious-oriented agenda possessed by a more focused, sociopathic element. Clearly, we have come to realize that by the start of the new century, distracted driving has grown to become an even greater nemesis than impaired and excessive-speed driving. It is indeed a caustic reminder of society's failure to solve the two century-old problems and the prevalence of mobile devices. The "global serial threat" reference is based on the sobering fact that the carnage resulting from the distracted/impaired/ excessive-speed driving nearly rival that resulting from homicide on the national scale.
How are we missing the numbers?
The UNODC estimates that deaths resulting from intentional homicide amounted to a total of 437,0001 at the global level in 2012. The FBI reported a total of 12,765 murder victims in the U.S. the same year. According to the World Health Organization more than 1.2 million people die in road crashes worldwide each year (about 3 times the global murder rate) – the equivalent of one traffic-related fatality every 30 seconds – and another 20 to 50 million people are injured. 10 percent of all fatal car accidents were reported to involve driver distraction; in the U.S., that comes out to about 3,328 fatalities; nearly a third of the U.S. homicide total.
By 2030, road traffic injuries are projected to be the fifth leading cause of death worldwide, surpassing HIV/AIDS, all forms of cancer, violence, and diabetes. The vast majority of global traffic fatalities – 91 percent – occur in low-income and middle-income countries, while they are home to only 48 percent of the world’s vehicles.
Driver behavior is responsible for 80 to 90 percent of these road crashes, meaning that preventable behaviors contribute more to fatalities and injuries than road conditions or vehicle defects. One of the most dangerous driver behaviors is the spreading epidemic of distracted driving, which has increased with the proliferation of cell phones and increasing mobilization of people across the globe.
Today, there are more than 600 million passenger cars and 4.6 billion cell phone subscriptions worldwide; 2 billion of those subscriptions sold in 2009 alone. Distracted drivers are about 4 times as likely to be involved in crashes as those who are focused on driving. Drivers who are texting can be more than 20 times more likely to crash than non-distracted drivers. Drivers who send and receive text messages take their eyes off the road for an average of 4.6 seconds out of every 6 seconds while texting [WHO, 2009]. At 55 miles per hour, this means that the driver is the length of three city blocks, traveling without looking at the road. In 2008, nearly 6,000 people in the United States were killed and more than 500,000 were injured in crashes involving distracted driving, which slowly improved to about a quarter million injuries four years later.
Many nations, desperate for solutions, have enacted laws banning cell phone use while driving; some have even banned the use of hands-free systems while driving. Some countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Belgium, Spain, New Zealand, Australia, and Russia, have also launched public education and awareness campaigns urging people to put away their mobile devices while behind the wheel. This present yet another set of problems: the expense of enforcing a new group of laws and government-based campaigns addressing the stubborn issue.
Still, we wonder: after getting past the accusatory visuals, the ominously fascinating array of statistics, and the horrendous imagery posted on so many local-news websites silently reminding us of the lingering threat that exists beyond the end of our driveways, just how many more will die before any truly effective solution is found? How soon will the public sector begin to take these problems a bit more seriously?
Acknowledgements:
Washington Post (2014). A remarkably small idea that could reduce distracted driving.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (2014). Offer a Safe and Sober Ride
Centers for Disease Control (2014)
World Health Organization (2013)
Elder, R. W., B. Lawrence, G. Janes, R. D. Brewer, T. L. Toomey (2007). Enhanced enforcement of laws prohibiting sale of alcohol to minors. Systematic review of effectiveness for reducing sales and underage drinking. Transportation Research Circular: Traffic Safety and Alcohol Regulation, Number E-C123, 181-187.
Hedlund, J. H., R. G. Ulmer, and D. F. Preusser (2001). Determine Why There Are Fewer Young Alcohol Impaired Drivers.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Publication No. DOT HS 809 348. Washington, D.C.:
Image credits:
GJEL Accident Attorneys: One of the 5 most dangerous distracted-driving technologies as listed by available video in front-seat navigation panel. [https://www.gjel.com/blog/5-most-dangerous-distracted-driving-technologies.html ]
MLive [https://www.mlive.com/]
Kids Against Distracted Driving [https://kidsagainstdistracteddriving.blogspot.com/]