Road safety and distraction, results from a responsibility case-control study among a sample of road users interviewed at the emergency room

Road lighting and distraction whilst driving: Establishing the significant types of distraction

“…Née et al . 25 reported that the most prevalent distraction was listening to music, with a higher percentage (50.53%) than for conversing with passengers in their study (7.14%) and in other studies (19.63% to 28.57%). Listening to music, however, did not appear as a distraction type in any of the other studies.…”

“…Née et al . 25 distinguished between hand-held and hands-free mobile phone use (this distinction was not made in the other studies of Table 1). The percentage of reported RTCs associated with the use of a hands-free kit (0.59%) was slightly higher than hand-held mobile phone use (0.47%); however, the self-report of mobile phone use at the time of an RTC was low in both cases.…”

“…It is possible that Table 1 under-reports the frequency of mobile-phone related distractions. Three of the studies 23–25 in Table 1 used self-reported distraction – the subjects being interviewed whilst attending hospital following an RTC. One possible reason why mobile phone use was not more frequently reported as the distraction taking place at the time of an RTC is that mobile phone use may be illegal whilst driving.…”

“…Although Née et al . 25 also presented respondents with a pre-defined list of distracting events and asked them to recall whether they were engaged in any of these activities before the crash, this list was more extensive, with 31 activities (including listening to music), and drivers could comment on as many as they wanted from the list.…”

“…One approach to identifying critical distractions is to identify the distraction (if any) occurring at the moment of a collision. This has been established using three methods in past studies: self-report, where drivers were interviewed when attending hospital after an RTC 23–25 ; naturalistic driving data as recorded by in-vehicle video cameras 26,27 ; and secondary data such as police roadside reports of RTCs. 28 The top three most prevalent driving distractions in each of six studies are shown in Table 1.…”