Excellent article by journalist Marin Cogan reports that In the last few years, the data on distracted driving has shown disturbing trends. During the pandemic, American drivers got even more distracted by their phones while driving. The amount of distracted driving hasn’t receded, even as life has mostly stabilized.
THE NUMBERS
Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT) Found that both phone motion and screen interaction while driving went up roughly 20 percent between 2020-2022. “By almost every metric CMT measures, distracted driving is more present than ever on US roadways. Drivers are spending more time using their phones while driving and doing it on more trips. Drivers interacted with their phones on nearly 58% of trips in 2022,” a recent report by the company concludes. Additionally, ore than a third of that phone motion distraction happens at over 50 mph.
We’re also spending nearly three times more time distracted by our phones than drivers in the United Kingdom and several other European countries. US drivers spent an average of 2 minutes 11 seconds on their phones per hour while driving, compared to 44 seconds per hour for UK drivers, CMT found.
The company compared the driving behaviors of US and European drivers because road fatalities in the United States surged during the pandemic and European fatalities did not. In 2020, 38,824 people died on US roads. In 2021, that number rose to 42,915 people, and the highest number of pedestrians were killed in 40 years. In 2022, the overall deaths stayed high, around 42,795, among them 7,508 pedestrians. The report also notes how the rise of smartphone use roughly corresponds to the rise in pedestrian fatalities: About 4,600 people were killed while walking in 2007, the year the iPhone was introduced. By 2021, with 85 percent of Americans owning smartphones, the number rose to 7,485.
The United States is increasingly an outlier when it comes to traffic fatalities, with rates 50 percent higher than its peers. The CMT findings suggest that the way Americans use their phones while driving could be one important reason why, along with road and vehicle design and a lack of consistent traffic safety enforcement.
“The way individuals are driving their vehicles in the US is distinct from the way they’re driving in Europe,” says Ryan McMahon, senior vice president of strategy for Cambridge Mobile Telematics. That extra time Americans are spending on their phones while driving increases risk: In more than a third of crashes the company analyzed, McMahon says, the driver had their phone in their hand a minute prior to collision.
WHY DID THE INCREASE HAPPEN DURING THE PANDEMIC?
The large increase in risky driving behaviors in the US started basically as soon as the pandemic began. “We saw this incredible increase in distracted driving. You could almost track it by the day schools started to shut down,” McMahon says. “When mobility changed, risk increased dramatically.”
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