Articles Posted in Motor Vehicle Accidents

Perhaps we should have seen this coming. Even as consumer groups and public awareness campaigns have worked to raise awareness of distracted driving here in Oregon and elsewhere, the distractions in our cars have evolved.

That conclusion comes from a study released today by researchers at the University of Utah and reported in the Salt Lake City Tribune. As the newspaper reports, the study concludes that “these latest ‘infotainment’ features may be more fun than safe… (and) talking to your car while driving may be more distracting than chatting on a cellphone.”

According to the Tribune, the study involved monitoring the brainwaves of volunteers as they attempted a series of tasks “ranging from listening to the radio to solving a math problem to operating a speech-to-text device while staring at a cross on a blank computer screen.” Later stages of the study involved asking the same volunteers to perform the same tasks in both an auto simulator and while driving a real car. The results challenge the idea that in-car distractions are not a big problem so long as the driver can keep his or her hands on the steering wheel.

Two new studies receiving media attention this month indicate that the problem of distracted driving in Oregon and elsewhere around the country may be even worse than many people think.

According to the Associated Press the first study, released earlier this month by the safety-advocacy group the National Safety Council found that “crash deaths in cases where drivers were on the phone were seriously underreported… The underreporting makes the problem of distracted driving appear less significant than it actually is and impedes efforts to win passage of tougher laws.” The group examined car crash data for 2009 through 2011.

Perhaps the most surprising finding of the study was that “even when drivers admitted to authorities that they were using a phone during an accident in which someone was killed, about half the cases weren’t recorded that way in the database, the council said” referring to the highway safety database maintained by the federal government’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Two articles published in recent days by the New York Times illustrate both the continuing challenge we all face in attempting to curb distracted driving and the paradox of technology – the cause of so many Oregon distracted driving problems –sometimes offering solutions to the very problems it helps create.

One Times article begins with a dramatic statistic: “at any moment during daylight hours, according to a new government study, 660,000 Americans are using cellphones or other electronic devices while driving.” The study cited by the newspaper concluded that years of anti-distracted driving campaigns have succeeded in raising public awareness but have been less successful in convincing individual Americans that their own behavior behind the wheel – as opposed to everyone else’s – is potentially part of the problem.

“Almost half of those surveyed, 48 percent, said they answered their cellphones while driving at least some of the time, and 58 percent said they continued to drive after picking up the phone. Fourteen percent said they still text or email while driving,” the Times reports. Those numbers were up significantly from last year’s NHTSA survey, in which they were 40 percent and ten percent respectively. Perhaps ironically, the survey also showed that “most drivers… support a ban on cellphone use and texting while driving, and 76 percent said they would likely say something if they were a passenger alongside a driver who was sending a text.”