DISTRACTIONS – ESPECIALLY TALKING with passengers and using mobile phones – play a far greater role in car crashes involving teen drivers than has been previously understood, according to compelling new evidence cited by safety researchers.
The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety analysed nearly 1,700 videos that capture the actions of teen drivers in the moments before a crash.
It found that distractions were a factor in nearly six of 10 moderate to severe crashes.
That’s four times the rate in many previous official estimates that were based on US police reports.
The study is unusual because researchers rarely have access to crash videos that clearly show what drivers were doing in the seconds before impact, as well as what was happening on the road.
Double view
AAA examined more than 6,842 videos from cameras mounted in vehicles, showing both the driver and the simultaneous view out the windshield, supplied by Lytx Inc.
Crashes or hard-braking events were captured in 1,691 of the videos.
How teens get distracted
The videos show driver distraction was a factor in 58 percent of crashes, especially accidents in which vehicles ran off the road or had rear-end collisions.
The most common forms of distraction were talking or otherwise engaging with passengers and using a cellphone, including talking, texting and reviewing messages.
Other forms of distraction observed in the videos included:
On the phone
In one video released by AAA, a teenage boy is seen trying to navigate a turn on a rain-slicked road with one hand on the wheel and a cellphone held to his ear in the other hand.
The car crosses a lane of traffic and runs off the road, stopping just short of railroad tracks that run parallel to the road.
In another video, a driver on a lonely two-lane road at night is shown looking down at an electronic device, apparently texting.
While his eyes are off the road, the car crosses the opposite lane, leaves the road and appears about to strike a mailbox.
One teen driver is captured braking hard at the last moment to avoid slamming into the back of an SUV stopped or slowed in traffic ahead.
Just a moment before, the girl had turned her attention to another girl in the front passenger seat in an animated conversation. The camera shows the shock on the girls’ faces as they suddenly realise a crash is imminent.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has previously estimated that distraction of all kinds is a factor in only 14 percent of all teen driver crashes.
“Teen drivers are distracted”
The videos provide “indisputable evidence that teen drivers are distracted in a much greater percentage of crashes than we previously realised,” said Peter Kissinger, the foundation’s president and CEO.
AAA and other traffic safety groups who previewed the findings said the study shows US states should review their licensing requirements to restrict the number of passengers in cars driven by teens and change their laws to prohibit cellphone use by teen drivers.
Teen drivers have the highest crash rate of any age group in the US.
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