People driving themselves to distraction with text messages
Posted by MattE on 14 Apr 2007 at 09:28 am | Tagged as: SMS
Statistics into the amount of time that young drivers have their eyes off the road may be exaggerated if observations of non-drivers sending text messages is any indication.
Research for Australia’s National Roads and Motorists Association found that young drivers had their eyes off the road for 40% of the time when they were reading and sending text messages. This equated to drivers spending about 12 seconds of each 30 second period with their eyes off the road.
Driver research by the insurance company AAMI found almost a third (29%) of people admitted they often sent or read text messages while driving.
Most young people from my observations seem to be able to send text messages without even looking at the phone - even to the extent of selecting the recipient from the address book, such is the intimate relationship with their phones and it takes less than 12 seconds to read a text message
In Australia it is illegal to send or read text messages while driving
The research brief also suggests that drivers are continuously sending and receiving which would be required to achieve the 40% distraction rate quoted.
I am not saying that texting and driving is to be condoned - certainly all forms of distraction should be minimised - including talking to passengers, carrying noisy children, listening to the radio, using GPS devices, reading road maps, smoking, thinking about other things, reading road signs, looking other non-traffic related items…..and this is borne out by research…
An American Automobile Association study analysed more than 32,000
traffic accidents caused by various driver distractions and found
drivers were most often distracted by something outside their vehicle
(29.4 percent), followed by adjusting a radio or CD player (11.4
percent), talking with other occupants (10.9 percent), adjusting
vehicle or climate controls (2.8 percent), eating or drinking (1.7
percent), mobile phones (1.5 percent) and smoking (0.9 percent).
Tags: TEXT | SENDING | receiving | message | drivers | distraction | USA | Technology | research | Nrma | mobile | easter | driving | Australia
