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Americans increasingly admit they’re worried about potentially lethal distracted driving as smartphone use continues to propel road risks. Less clear is what drivers are willing to do about the often reckless area where convenience and safety conflict.
The reality: Most of the individuals surveyed recently by Arity think the bad driver is everyone else, not them. That means many drivers are growing increasingly sensitive to the risks of distraction yet consider themselves the exception, a benevolent stretcher of the rules.
Read: GPS, smartphones and speed keep road deaths at 10-year high
Almost 1 in 4 drivers say they’ve been in an accident due to distracted driving, according to Arity, the driver-data collection spinoff from Allstate Insurance ALL, -0.38% It polled just over 2,000 smartphone-owning drivers who travel at least 5 miles on the days they drive. Beyond this survey, the company says it has spent more than 10 years collecting data directly from cars and mobile phones and has analyzed nearly 35 billion miles of driving data.
Arity/Murphy Research
| Some key Arity survey findings: |
| •Though drivers often notice other drivers typing on their phone, less admit to doing it themselves. |
| •Drivers do not believe they can type, read, or watch videos well while driving, yet admit they still do it. |
| •Two-thirds of drivers rate their ability to avoid distractions as better than other drivers. |
| •Engagement in distracted driving is primarily driven by age. Younger drivers grew up with technology before driving, so are more comfortable with it in the car. Nearly two-thirds of younger drivers are engaging in distractions while driving. |
| •Drivers believe other cognitive activities, those that allow both hands to remain on the wheel, aren’t dangerously distracting. They include talking to passengers or talking on the phone hands-free, adjusting the radio/music player, reading signs and navigating the GPS. |
There is reason to be concerned. The National Safety Council announced that for the second consecutive year motor vehicle deaths topped 40,000 last year, an increase of more than 25% from a recent low of 32,000 in 2011. Although that includes accidents from all causes, research has found that talking on a cell phone behind the wheel quadruples a driver’s risk of an accident, even more if the driver is texting.
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“April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month, an issue that has become a major challenge for every driver as well as anyone connected with the automotive and transportation industry,” said Gary Hallgren, Arity’s president.
Enforcement of distracted driving violations is mixed, with some safety advocates saying laws on the books doesn’t always translate into citations.
According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, 15 states, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands prohibit all drivers from using hand-held cell phones while driving. All are primary enforcement laws, which means that an officer may cite a driver for using a hand-held cell phone without any other traffic offense taking place. No state bans all cell phone use—including hands-free options—for all drivers, but 38 states and D.C. ban all cell phone use by novice drivers, and 20 states and D.C. prohibit it for school bus drivers.
Arity/Murphy Research
Device use is complicating what vehicle manufacturers can achieve with safety and consumers are left wondering about the promise and peril of imperfect driverless-car technology that may take human drivers out of the equation sooner versus later.
More than 20% of the 17.5 million vehicles produced for the 2017 model year were equipped with so-called Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, or ADAS, a suite of technology that includes adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping steering aides and autonomous braking that helps avoid collisions, according to WardsAuto.com. Just two years ago, fewer than 8% of vehicles were equipped with those features.
The issues around the future of driving are front of mind after some recent highly publicized, and deadly, accidents with autonomous cars at Uber and at Tesla TSLA, +0.92% Still, some research suggests that getting autonomous vehicles on the road as soon as possible will save lives — even if they’re only slightly safer than human-piloted cars.