Phone Addicts are the New Drunk Drivers - analysis from over 160 billion miles of driver data

Not only drivers, but also the pedestrian 'stare' at their mobile phones even when they are walking in the street and road. How dangerous! It is about life, so just put aside the phone or other stuff and mind the road. 

I have always thought that the concept of multitasking was nonsense, great if you want to do many things badly, if you want to do something well, do one thing at a time and concentrate on it.

Here's some interesting information from the National Safety Council.

Talking on a mobile device (hands-free) has a comparable risk to driving while intoxicated at a BAC of 0.08. Both result in a 4x crash risk.

Hands-free provides no safety benefit. It does not eliminate cognitive distraction.

Drivers are not aware of cognitive distraction (as opposed to visual or tactile), therefore it lasts longer and poses the greatest risk.

The conversation, not the device, creates the danger. We don’t multitask, we switch between two tasks rapidly. Multitasking is a myth.

Results in “look at and not see objects” inattention blindness. vision is filtered and visual cues are missed. 50% of the cues are missed.

Talking to a passenger isn’t as distracting. The phone has more of a cognitive load. Passenger aids driving. Fewer accidents.

Texting is 23x crash risk. Typically 4.5 seconds of inattention.

Modern cars are full of distractions and require very little effort to drive. Hardly surprising that driving standards are dropping. When I started driving there it was rare to have power "anything" - certainly no ABS, and usually drum brakes, wind up windows, no power steering. Everything demanded your attention. Car safety systems are there to insulate and protect the occupants and to hell with everything else.

Scary.  Well done hawkinspeter, another powerful article.

US study presuming given the number of fatalities?

I watched a couple of the Australian mobile phone driving info films, the people on there were absolutely shocking in how ignorant/blase they were. Until one wonan's friend who was on a motorbike ended up in a coma because of a distracted driver.

Why we still have a paltry couple of hundred quid fine for distracted driving I'll never know. when we know it has a worse outcome numbers wise than drink driving.

Instant driving ban of 18months, public pillory and crushed phone with all the data on it (that'll learn yah for not backing up!) and a mandatory enhanced driving test resit plus lessons at their expense.

Wow, thank you for that report and information. The sentence that really stood out for me was:

"The survey found that people know distracted driving is a problem, but aren’t concerned enough to change their behavior."

I have a problem with todays "don't care" attitude society. Immediate self gratification seems to be a lot more important than empathy these days and the insular lives that people live irritates me no end. 

The  problem surely, is that nobody in authority gives a damn to do anything about it because they are all the same self gratifying, insular bastards themselves.