Time to Red Light Distracted Drivers
May 8, 2009
Never before have I been so reluctant to put myself in the driver's seat of my aging, but serviceable car. And never have I been more wary of every other driver on Southern California's wild roadways.
It's one distracted, dangerous playground on wheels out there.
I've been working on a feature for an upcoming Automotive Fleet issue: reducing the rate of preventable accidents involving employees driving on company business. In addition to talking to several very helpful fleet managers regarding their company programs, I found a bounty of resources rich enough to make a research-hunting, thesis-writing Master's degree student giddy with excitement.
These resources provide an abundance of studies, facts, tips, logic, numbers, and advice concern the state of safe travel on U.S. highways.
The facts, my friends, they are sobering.
Driving's Most Dangerous Behavior
At the top of most dangerous motorway behaviors is distracted driving. Driver inattention is a leading cause of traffic crashes, responsible for about 80 percent of all collisions, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
The list of driver-distracting activities goes well beyond cell phone and texting use - although more on that later. Eating, personal grooming, tending to children, reading a map or publication, preparing for work, adjusting vehicle radio, heat/air conditioning, and mirror settings, talking to passengers - all these seemingly ordinary behaviors take attention off the tasks of driving and are apparently practiced habitually by folks behind the wheel of a few tons of metal bound by the laws of physics while in high-speed motion.
The really frightening fact is that I am culpable of most of those behaviors. Who doesn't talk to friends and family while driving them from here to there? How distracting can a simple conversation be?
I am also most likely the poster child for a recent study reported in the National Safety Council's (NSC) Journal of Safety Research that concludes drivers routinely underestimate the dangers of multitasking behind the wheel. The study concludes, "Today it is important to understand how new in-vehicle tasks affect drivers' performance as well as how they affect drivers' perceptions on their own performance."
An NSC downloadable resource, Driven to Distraction, explores the issues of wireless technology multitasking while driving, including employer liability.
Cell Phone Use Tops the List
Which brings me back to the topic of cell phones.
In January, the NSC boldly called for a national ban on all cell phone use while driving. The council cited such convincing facts as:
- The annual cost of crashes caused by cell phone use is estimated to be $43 billion.
- There is no difference in the cognitive distraction between hand-held and hands-free devices. (Scientists say something called "virtual blindness" occurs when a person multitasks while driving.)
- Drivers who use cell phones are four times more likely to be in a crash while using a cell phone.
- Cell phone use contributes to an estimated 6 percent of all crashes, which equates to 636,000 crashes, 330,000 injuries, 12,000 serious injuries and 2,600 deaths each year.
- The #1 source of driver inattention is cell phones.
What's the Cost to Fleets?
What's the impact for fleets, and more importantly, the corporate bottom line of all this distracted driving behavior? Huge.
An NSC presentation sets the employer cost (and this was a few years ago) of on-the-job crashes at $25,000 per occurrence. Traffic crashes that occur off-the-job cost employers as well, to the tune of 0.16 cents per mile driven. And those figures don't account for the multimillion-dollar lawsuit settlements common these days when a company driver is found at fault in a collision.
Just as interesting is a recent NSC survey on company policies prohibiting cell phone use while driving. Forty-five percent of respondents indicated their organizations did have such a policy. The NSC thought that was a good sign. But I can't fathom why that figure isn't 100 percent, given the proven danger of phone-distracted drivers and the enormous liability exposure such behavior presents corporations.
The resources are there for fleet managers, no matter the size of their operations, to build a soundly convincing case for addressing distracted driving behavior among company drivers. And if, at first, senior management doesn't listen, keep making that case, loudly and persistently until they do. I - and every other driver on the road - will thank you.
Resources to Build the Case
Here's a list of resources to help:
Author: Cindy Brauer | Posted @ Friday, May 8, 2009 8:28 AM