Phones track everything except their role in car wrecks

Mobile phones can track what we say and write, where we go, what we buy and what we search on the Internet. But they're still not being used to detect one of the biggest threats to public health: accidents caused by drivers distracted by the phones.

More than a decade after federal and state governments As we recognized the dangers posed by cell phone use while driving and began passing laws to stop it, there is still no definitive database of the number of accidents or fatalities caused by cell phone distraction. Safety experts say current estimates likely underestimate a worsening problem.

The lack of clear data comes as the number of collisions increases. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), police-recorded car crashes increased 16 percent from 14,400 per day to 16,700 per day from 2020 to 2021. In 2021 almost 43,000 Americans died in crashes, a 16-year record.

According to the traffic department, only 377 fatal wrecks in 2021 – just under 1 percent – ​​involved a driver distracted by their mobile phone. About 8 percent of the 2.5 million non-fatal crashes that year involved a cell phone, according to highway department data.

But these numbers don't include all cell phone distractions; This only includes accidents where the police report specifically mentions such distraction. Safety experts say cell phone use is often not mentioned in such reports because it typically relies on a driver to admit distraction, on a witness to identify it or, in even rarer cases, on the use of cell phone data or other telephone forensics that definitively demonstrates distraction.

“That analysis is expensive, and unless the police really think there is a criminal case, they don't do it,” said Dr. David Strayer, a cognitive scientist at the University of Utah and an expert in the science of driver distraction. He added that “unless someone claims to be using the phone, police do not consider this to be a factor.”

Safety experts said the current data was in fact unscientific and inaccurate.

“It's almost certainly an underestimate, because people don't like to admit things like that,” said Jake Nelson, director of Traffic Safety Advocacy & Research for AAA. “It's very frustrating to me that we don't have access to better data, especially now that we're at a 16-year high,” he added, referring to traffic fatalities.

The NHTSA admitted that there was significant underreporting of distraction when it came to accidents. In a statement to The New York Times, the agency said it was “actively involved in studies to explore the possibility of measuring the prevalence of roadway distraction.”

Drivers may not admit to distraction to police, but they do admit to the behavior in anonymous surveys. A 2022 nationally representative survey found that about 20 percent of drivers said they regularly scrolled social media, read email, played games, watched videos, or recorded and posted them while driving.

The data, published in the Journal of Safety ResearchResearch found that 50 percent of drivers admitted to experiencing device-related distractions in the past 30 days. Research also shows that drivers performing such tasks are at greater risk of an accident by taking their hands off the wheel and their eyes and attention off the road; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that “at 55 miles per hour, sending or reading a text message is like driving across a football field with your eyes closed.”

“People who use their devices regularly downplay the risks,” said Aimee Cox, research scientist for the Highway Safety Institute and co-author of the paper in the Journal of Safety Research. She added that the public might find it relatively easy to downplay the risks if there is no clear database or source of information clarifying how many accidents and fatalities the behavior causes.

“I wonder if that fuels the downplaying of the risks,” she said.

Technologically, phones are able to link the time of a car accident to how the driver was using the phone at the time, said Dr. Strayer. That's because phones are equipped with sensors and other tracking and monitoring technology typically used for marketing, step measuring, and other functions.

“Your phone leaves a lot of breadcrumbs, but no one looks at it,” he said.

Dr. Strayer, who advises on criminal and civil cases involving distracted driving, said that in the past two months he has advised on two cases involving fatalities where police did not conduct mobile forensics “but I was able to use the existing use phone records to show definitive usage.”

Privacy laws limit what cellphone data can be collected in crashes, while the phones collect a variety of other information about their users, AAA's Mr. Nelson said.

Several ideas are being put forward that could help curb distracted driving without infringing on civil liberties. One idea, Mr. Nelson said, would be to use roadside cameras that identify drivers who are looking at their phones or are otherwise distracted and automatically alert police officers further down the road. Roadside and highway cameras are already being used to identify drivers who are speeding.

A study published in October by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that cameras are “reasonably accurate approaches to measuring the prevalence of cell phone distraction while on the road.”