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Texting and driving isn’t a good combo, and using apps on your smartphone while driving is even more distracting. Something that many of us take for granted comes in the guise of hands-free operation, which is falsely believed to be less dangerous. “It doesn’t eliminate the distraction altogether,” said Aimee Cox, research associate at the U.S. nonprofit organization Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
“The explosion of smartphone features and services has not only created new forms of driver distraction, but a new group of rideshare and delivery drivers whose jobs require them to interact with their phones while they’re on the road,” highlighted David Harkey, the big kahuna at the IIHS.
More than 3,000 people died in distraction-related crashes in 2020 according to statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal watchdog established by the U.S. Congress with the Highway Safety Act that was signed by Richard M. Nixon.
The IIHS surveyed more than 2,000 drivers to discover what secondary tasks they perform while driving, with the majority acknowledging the use of a phone or a different device. Two-thirds of the respondents admitted to performing at least one distracting activity in the past 30 days. Half said they performed at least one device-based task during most of their drives. Rather than making a phone call or skipping to the next song, the most common device-based activity was programming a navigation app.
More worryingly, 8 percent of respondents play games regularly while they’re behind the wheel. On the upside, hands-free operation is preferred by most of the 2,000 drivers that took part in the survey. On the other hand, gig workers don’t use hand-free commands as often as regular drivers because of the nature of their work, which puts them at a much higher risk.
Gig-economy workers are more than twice as likely as other drivers to engage in any distracting activity, and the IIHS found out that gig workers are nearly four times as likely to regularly use apps while driving.
“These results show that nobody is immune to distraction and suggest that hands-free capabilities may be making us a little too comfortable using our phones and other devices behind the wheel,” concluded Harkey.
More than 3,000 people died in distraction-related crashes in 2020 according to statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal watchdog established by the U.S. Congress with the Highway Safety Act that was signed by Richard M. Nixon.
The IIHS surveyed more than 2,000 drivers to discover what secondary tasks they perform while driving, with the majority acknowledging the use of a phone or a different device. Two-thirds of the respondents admitted to performing at least one distracting activity in the past 30 days. Half said they performed at least one device-based task during most of their drives. Rather than making a phone call or skipping to the next song, the most common device-based activity was programming a navigation app.
More worryingly, 8 percent of respondents play games regularly while they’re behind the wheel. On the upside, hands-free operation is preferred by most of the 2,000 drivers that took part in the survey. On the other hand, gig workers don’t use hand-free commands as often as regular drivers because of the nature of their work, which puts them at a much higher risk.
Gig-economy workers are more than twice as likely as other drivers to engage in any distracting activity, and the IIHS found out that gig workers are nearly four times as likely to regularly use apps while driving.
“These results show that nobody is immune to distraction and suggest that hands-free capabilities may be making us a little too comfortable using our phones and other devices behind the wheel,” concluded Harkey.
???? | Gig-economy workers are 4 times as likely as other drivers to use smartphone apps regularly while driving, a new survey from IIHS shows, and those activities go beyond their employer's app.
— IIHS (@IIHS_autosafety) November 3, 2022
Read more: https://t.co/lngZsjoy8P#distracteddriving #uber #lyft #rideshare pic.twitter.com/4A8rduVI13
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