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.
Yeah, I’ve been norticing it alovt to form rova drivres! Throiew mex eoo er…
Damn it, I hate it when I almost crash while posting on Lemmy.
As I was saying, I’ve been noticing that a lot from other drivers. They’re a bunch of-
FUCK ALMOST MISSED THAT RED LIGHT
assholes.
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.
What if I’m walking someone through how to disarm a bomb, huh?! /s
Pulling over might help
In that case, get a bigger car and drive faster.
Some people can’t leave their phones alone for five seconds.
I was at the cinema the other day and this fucker sat on the front row and proceeded to keep going on their phone.
I had to resist the strong urge to pelt a minstrel at his head.
Why did you resist the urge? I would have stood up and walked over to his rude ass and confronted him. The rest of the crowd will almost certainly be on your side, even if they all lacked the courage to act.
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?
People do the “hold the phone out on speaker to have a conversation thing” because people watched The Kardashians do it (so that the camera mics can pick up both ends of the conversation). Now people think that’s how important people talk on the phone. It’s absolutely retarded and a meta form of main character syndrome.
I’ve never watched the kardashians, but I do this when I’m having a conversation on speaker because it doesn’t work very well if you leave the phone in your pocket.
If you actually need to use your speakerphone because the handset speakers aren’t good enough or busted, or if you need to be on speakerphone for the benefit of people around you who need to listen in, those are valid reasons. Too many people don’t have a valid reason.
People have been doing this shit ever since those stupid “walkie talkie” phones came out forever ago (before smart phones).
Edit: Nextel!
I just saw a driver blocking a right turn lane, with 4 cars honking their horns behind her, while she was speaking on her phone.
what a piece of shit
My favorite is the phone mounted to the steering wheel so they can watch Netflix.
I would have to pull over if I saw that to make sure that car got about a mile away from me before I kept going.
It’s super fun heading down 95 south of DC and seeing two people pass you doing that 15 minutes apart.
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.
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.
Who needed confirmation they’re not imagining it? I can see it with my own eyes every single day.
You know, I’d never thought until now that this might have been why the dickhead who knocked me off my bike could have missed seeing me.
Food for thought.
Some countries have an automatic year or two driving ban for drunk driving. It’s time we did this for phones.
BUY A DASHCAM.
Been in and around auto insurance over a decade.
Fifty bucks for a Vava or other well known brand.
Best investment you’ll make when someone takes you out.
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
If so how is that different from listening to music
It is VASTLY different: you participate in conversation. It’s interactive, creates cognitive load (even more than casual talk, because it’s a work call) and takes a part of your attention.
Yup, they’ve done studies on this. Having a conversation while driving and having to respond to those two things at once is a strain on yo brain.
Portable, purposefully addictive services were a mistake.
Giving up a large portion of our cities and towns to large death machines that can be operated by distracted humans was a mistake.
