Tyler’s Take: The Spreading Plague of Phone Addicts

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zendrive smartphone road safety rear view safety fleet safety drunk driving distracted driving

It’s a brisk morning in Topeka, KS, winter 2001, and I’m
running late again. I warm up the old yellow Subaru and pull onto 10th street,
lurching towards Topeka High School. There’s a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch balanced
in my lap and a pair of headphones on my ears, Blood Brothers blaring. I’m approaching
the first green light, 10th and Gage, when there’s a loud flash of red at the
corner of my eye. I slam on the brakes. An ambulance rushes through the
intersection, missing my jalopy by inches. It was that close.

I pull into the animal hospital parking lot and sit, shaking
in my car, cereal and milk spilled all over the dash and my clothes and gather
my thoughts for a minute.

I’ve never told anyone this story, too embarrassed that I
was almost in a serious accident because of some cereal. Because of headphones.
Because of distraction. It’s been a problem in America for a long time. And
it’s only getting worse.

In its annual distracted driving study, Zendrive
defines a new category of distracted drivers, the phone addict. Phone addicts
are the new drunk drivers. But what is a phone addict?

Phone Addicts:

Spend 1.5x more time on the road than average
Drive 7.6x more miles while using their devices
every day
Pick up their devices 4.3x more than average
Spend 6x more time with their devices each time they
touch it
Have their eyes off the road for 28% of total time
spent on the road.

Phone addicts generally agree that distracted driving is a problem,
just not their problem.

From the Zendrive Study:

“When asked about their opinion on distracted driving, 85
percent of respondents identified the issue as a very important problem. When
asked to rate their overall driving safety, 90 percent claimed to be safe
drivers, but 47 percent admitted to using their device so often they fall in
the Phone Addict category. What do we do when almost half of all drivers on the
road classify themselves ‘safe drivers’ despite spending 10 percent of their
time distracted behind the wheel?”

Is distracted driving as deadly as drunk driving? It’s hard
to say.

In 2016, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) reported 10,497 deaths as a result of drunk driving and 3,450 for
distracted driving. Although drunk drivers cause more deaths, phone use
fatalities are much harder to accurately track. From Zendrive:

“NHTSA reports that during daylight hours, approximately 660,000
drivers are using their cell phones while driving. As part of our 2018
Distracted Driving Study, Zendrive found that the problem was 100 times worse
than reported by the government’s dataset. Over 69 million people use their
phones at least once while behind the wheel, meaning at least 60 percent
drivers use their phones while driving each day.”

What can you do to help? We’re at a crucial moment in the fight against
driver phone use.

Here
are some tips:

Don't Do It! -
What's the best way to avoid distracted driving? Don't do it. You know that checking your phone or eating while
driving is dangerous. Respect yourself and others on the road by not driving
distracted.
Do Not Disturb- Turn on their driving
autoresponder, be it Do Not Disturb While Driving mode for Apple or Android
Auto
Have Your Passengers Do Some
Work - As the
driver you have one job, drive! Your passengers have their hands free, so let
them run the GPS or control the radio. My wife Kelly and I don't drive very
often, but when we do, she drives and I control the route. It's a great system.
Speak Up! - If
you see someone texting while driving (or driving distracted in a different
way), let them know you are not comfortable with their behavior. People listen
to their friends!