You Mustn't Use Your Mobile Phone While Driving The Car

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), distracted driving is defined as any activities that channels attention from safety driving such as texting or talking on the phone, eating and drinking, talking with the passengers on your vehicle, listening hard to the radio, or anything that takes away the attention of the driver to safety driving. In accordance to this statement, Texting is the most alarming distraction. “You cannot drive safely unless the task of driving has your full attention” as noted by this article. NHTSA also noted that in 2015, A total of 3,477 individuals were killed and 391, 000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes which involves distracted drivers. During the daylight hours, about 660,000 drivers are using mobile phones while driving. And this creates massive probabilities of death and injuries on United States roads. (NHTSA, 2017)

According to WHO in relation to NHTSA, studies from several countries reported that the percentage of drivers with the usage of mobile phones while driving has increased over the past 5-10 years, ranging from 1% up to 11%. This study states that usage of mobile phones by drivers can decrease the attention while driving such as, taking their eyes off the road, their hand off the steering wheel, and their minds off the road and other surrounding situations. This type of distraction is commonly known as cognitive distraction, which become visible to have the biggest impact on driving behavior. There’s a lot of causes reported when a driver is under the usage of mobile phones and these includes, reaction to traffic signals, impaired ability to keep in the correct lane, shorter following distances, and an overall reduction awareness in the driving situation. Studies also suggest that the usage of mobile phones while driving would be more likely to engage four times involving in a severe accidents or injuries. Mobile phone use by drivers is more driven by the technology itself, their focus transfers in reaction on a ringing phone, regardless of the traffic or driving safely. Being cognitively distracted, mobile phone use divides the attention between the conversation they are involved in than to drive safely. Overall study reported that the use of mobile phones, whether hand-held or hands-free while driving was increasingly leads to serious accidents or injuries (WHO & NHTSA, 2011).

Mobile phone use while driving lessens performance or safety driving. According to this study, young adult drivers were more likely to engage in using mobile phones while driving and lead to higher risk of severe injuries (Bates, et al., 2014). Using mobile phones while driving is one of the most serious driving distractions and its negative influences were already supported by recent researches and studies. In 2014, among 656.3 ten thousand of all road accidents in China, 47.2% reported caused by mobile phone use while driving. According to this study, there are four usual distracting activities of mobile phone use while driving which includes answering calls, making calls, reading messages and texting and sending messages which is the top most of it is texting and sending messages while driving. This study identified that the four most frequent usages of mobile phones while driving and several self-regulatory acts for indemnify for driving impairments (Zhou, Yu, & Wang, 2016).

One study states that at least one of every two motor vehicle drivers reported in engaging in distracted driving. Turning down the driving speed and increasing the distance from another vehicle in front were the most prominent task-management strategies for texting or talking while driving. As a result, drivers who are consciously use strategy to avoid police detection were reported to be more likely to engage in distracted driving (Trespalacios, et al., 2017).