In the fall of 2009, the U.S. Department of Transportation amplified a conversation that had been taking place on a much smaller scale in recent years. With that, the Distracted Driving Summit 2009 began a coordinated, national effort to curtail crashes and the resulting injuries and fatalities associated with distracted driving. During the summit, the Department released data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showing that in 2008 almost 6,000 people died in crashes involving reports of distracted driving, and an estimated 20 percent of all crashes on U.S. roadways involved distracted driving (Ascone, 2009). Despite the relatively large portion of crashes with reports of distracted driving, NHTSA believes the involvement of distraction in crashes is underreported. As a follow-up activity to the summit, NHTSA began an initiative as part of the Distracted Driving Plan to improve data collection for distracted driving involvement in crashes. One effort of that initiative was to survey the international crash data collection community to identify methods that others are undertaking to collect and report on crashes involving distracted driving. (Author/publisher)
Abstract