Both in-vehicle and out of vehicle distractions now challenge drivers on a daily basis both on a cognitive and a physical level. If left unchecked, these distractions will ultimately lead drivers to cognitive overload whereby driving skills are impaired increasing the number of road collisions. Effective regulation to deal with these issues must be able to accommodate changing technologies and social behaviour. For example, mobile telephones are no longer the only telematic devices in cars, nor would we want to say that every telematic device is a distraction. Similarly we are now accustomed to send text messages in any circumstance such that we may not always consider or accurately assess the situation. This paper examines in-vehicle telematic distractions (out of vehicle distractions being beyond the scope of the paper), in terms of the type of harm that they present, assesses the current regulatory controls, and proposes a regulatory scheme to address this area of harm. (a) For the covering record of the conference, please refer to ITRD abstract no E216954.
Abstract