Have you activated ‘Do Not Disturb While Driving’? It could save your life.

Last month we teamed up with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) to host a program called “Harnessing Science, Tech and Innovation to Combat Distracted Driving.” It was a fascinating look at the study of human behavior and why it’s so difficult to kick dangerous habits like driving distracted. One important and easy takeaway: Take the time to disable notifications on your phone while driving.

By blocking notifications on our phones, like activating the iPhone “Do Not Disturb While Driving” setting or comparable settings and apps on Android, we can take the decision out of our hands and avoid having to resist temptation.

Dr. Kit Delgado, an emergency physician and injury prevention researcher at Penn, recounted treating patients from serious car crashes. What’s frequently their last memory? Responding to a text from a significant other. In thinking about distracted driving prevention, it's important to understand why we might choose a text over our own safety or the safety of others on the road.

As Kit explained it, humans can be flawed decision-makers:

·        Present Bias - We tend to weigh immediate benefits more than bigger benefits in the future.

·        Social Distance –The compulsion to respond to a message is much stronger if we are emotionally connected to the messenger even if the risk of crashing is just as high.

·        Recency Bias – If we complete hundreds of trips without a collision, the risk may not seem real.

·        Overconfidence Bias – We may think we’re better drivers than everyone else on the road.

·        Social Norms – If we see other people driving distracted, we may question whether it’s really that important for us to change our behavior.

Kit shared that in a small trial with teen drivers, making notification blocking a default-setting on their phones reduced distraction by over 50 percent. That’s huge considering that by this time tomorrow at least eight people will have died in a distracted driving-related collision[1].

Changing the settings on your phone only takes a minute. On an iPhone, go to Settings > Do Not Disturb. Scroll down to Do Not Disturb While Driving, click Activate and then select Automatically. These settings can also send auto-replies back to incoming text messages and save the notifications for viewing once the driver has come to a stop. Some Android models have similar settings or you can search for an app with the same functionality.

Rafi Finegold of TrueMotion, a leading smartphone telematics firm, also talked about his company’s app, TrueMotion Family, which provides drivers with a breakdown of their distracted driving and allows families to compete to see who is the safest driver.

With more than 37,000 traffic fatalities in the U.S. in 2017[2], roadway safety is a significant issue. Disabling notifications on your phone is a simple step you can take today. It could save your life or someone else’s.

The Travelers Institute, the public policy division of Travelers, launched the Every Second Matters? education campaign in 2017 to help combat distracted driving. The initiative, which includes events on university campuses across the U.S. and Canada, recognizes that every driver, passenger, cyclist and pedestrian has a role to play in addressing distraction and enhancing roadway safety. Learn more at www.travelersinstitute.org/distracteddriving.  

Every Second Matters symposium at the University of Pennsylvania.

[1] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812603

[2] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812603