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.
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.
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
