Distracted driving has emerged as the most important road safety issue in recent years. As with most safety trends, it took a while for distracted driving to be accepted as a legitimate concern and regulations continue to meet resistance in some cases. Below, we have set out to examine the underlying trends, costs, and efficacy of current bans relating to distracted driving.

Cell Phones are Taking Over the Roads

The increased usage of cell phones, and the acceptance of smart phones, is contributing to the rise in distracted driving. The graph below illustrates an increase in cell phone usage on the road.

Distracted Drivers Visibily Manipulating Hand-held Devices by Age, 2005-2012

Source: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811884.pdf

Unsurprisingly, the increase in cell phone usage has translated into an increase of crashes due to cell phone use.

Distracted Driving Crashes Involving Cell Phone Use

Source: NHTSA

If you compare the usage of cell phones (in general) with distracted driving fatalities, you can see the correlation, as Fernando Wilson and Jim Stimpson did over a 10-year period.

Text Message Volume vs. Distracted Driving Fatalities

Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20864709

The Costs of Distracted Driving

According to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) study, 10% of all motor vehicle fatalities and 18% of all nonfatal crashes are due to distracted driving. In 2010, this resulted in over 3000 fatalities and 735,000 non-fatal injuries. As a consequence, economic loss totaled approximately $129.5 billion in comprehensive costs, which was roughly 15% of all societal harm from motor vehicle crashes that year.

Efficacy of Bans

12 states currently have bans on hand held cell phone use while driving and 43 states have bans on text messaging while driving (list of distracted driving bans by state). Given these bans, there is still an increasing trend of crashes and fatalities resulting from distracted driving involving cell phone use. This may suggest that current bans have limited effects on driving behavior. It is possible that an increase in fines and an increase in enforcement could decrease distracted driving (more info on current fines by state).

Unfortunately, the fear of getting caught may not be enough of a deterrent to alter peoples’ driving behavior (consider speeding or parking violations as an example). Social norms likely need to develop in such a way where drivers feel ashamed to drive distracted or where passengers look down on a driver if they catch them in the act. Perhaps future efforts to curb distracted driving should include public service campaigns that will stigmatize distracted driving the way that M.A.D.D. has helped stigmatize drunk driving. There’s clear evidence of the harms of distracted driving but it looks like society has yet to catch on.

DMV.com is conducting a survey to better understand distracted driving behavior. If you’d like to contribute, you can do so here: http://www.instant.ly/s/XWghM/nav#p/186a0 (only takes a few minutes!)