During the pandemic, distracted driving increased, and it hasn’t gone down since.
Until relatively recently, good data on the problem of distracted driving has been hard to find. The government estimates that 3,522 people died because of it in 2021, but experts say the official number probably majorly undercounts the number of deaths, in part because police are rarely able to definitively prove that a driver was distracted right before a crash.
In the last few years, though, the data on distracted driving has gotten better. Cambridge Mobile Telematics is a company that partners with major insurance companies to offer downloadable apps that drivers can use to save money on their rates. Via the apps, Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT) uses mobile phone sensors to measure driving behavior, including whether a person is speeding, holding their phone, or interacting with an unlocked screen while driving (the company says it doesn’t collect information on what the drivers are doing on their phones). Its work gives the company insight into the driving behaviors of more than 10 million people.
CMT recently analyzed driver behavior during millions of car trips. What it found should be troubling to anyone who uses a road in the US: 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.
There's literally nothing in your social life, family life, social media life, etc that's more important than driving while you're driving. Put the fucking phone down. You will eventually one day crash or kill someone.
It always irks me when someone is tailgating me with one hand at 12 o'clock and one holding their phone. Sorry for driving 5 over the speed limit in front of your truck. And why are you having a phone conversation while holding your phone when I know damn well your truck has Bluetooth?
Invariably, when I'm on Lincoln Drive in Philly and someone is swerving between both lanes, they are on their cell phone either holding it in their hand to talk or reading and responding to texts.
If you're not familiar with Lincoln Drive, it's a winding, twisting road with two lanes in each direction, with a drop to a stream on one side and a rise up a hill on the other.
There's no shoulder at all for most of the way, so nowhere to go if you're tailgating and something happens. People are always tailgating. The speed limit is 25mph, but you almost never see traffic going less than 35mph.
I live in a small town and I run through the side streets around me. Have been for years.
This winter season of running (when my evening runs are during dusk/dark) I wear multiple lights and have typically considered myself more visible than during daytime running. However that has not been the case this year. I've had to get out of the way of oncoming traffic a few times which has only happened one time previously.
It is ridiculous how little people are paying attention while moving around in 4-6k lb metal cages.
Whether it's messing with their phone, or their touch screen infotainment systems it's quite the time be along a roadway trying to exercise.
So I know this is slightly off topic of phone distraction but I've been thinking that if phone use ever got regulated there should be something in the rules about built in screens in cars. They are becoming really common and present many of the same problems that phones do, especially when badly designed with key functions like AC built in to them. It feels like the problem isn't about using a phone specifically bit being distracted by screen use.
So they say the sense of users are using the phone functions while driving.. that doesn’t mean people are sitting there staring at their phone while driving though. I participate in teams calls while driving to work, from work, and between sites when doing projects at other sites all the time. Does that count as distracted from being on a phone call playing across my car infotainment system? If so how is that different from listening to music, does playing music via pandora or spotify on my infotainment with phone plugged in count as distracted? If so how is that different from standard fm/am radio? Are we expecting people to sit in silence while driving? They’re still just going to zone out from boredom at that point
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