With the increasing popularity of cellular phones and public concern about the safety of using phones while driving, there has been increased interest in tracking the incidence of driver cell phone use. This report provides a detailed look at the 2002 data on this topic from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), data which come from NHTSA’s National Occupant Protection Use Survey (NOPUS). The survey estimated that during daylight hours, drivers of cars, trucks, vans, and sport utility vehicles used hand-held phones during 4% of their driving time in 2002, up from 3% in 2000. These results were obtained by observing actual traffic. In fact the NOPUS is currently the only source of probability-based observed national data on driver cell phone use. While the NOPUS percentages are small, they indicate a substantial and growing phenomenon, translating into approximately 600,000 drivers on the road at any given time between 8 AM and 6 PM using hand-held phones in 2002, up from 400,000 in 2000. When combined with data from other surveys on hands-free use, NOPUS that nearly finds that 900,000 drivers on the road at any given daylight time are using cellular phones in some manner, whether by holding the phone or using a hands-free device. However, while NOPUS finds an increase in hand-held use behind the wheel, the survey data indicate a shift toward the use of hands-free devices. The growth in hands-free use while driving that occurred between 2000 and 2002 outpaced the growth in hand-held phones (a 33% growth for hand-held phones, compared to 100% for hands-free). NOPUS first observed cell phone use in 2000, and so the data in this report represent some of the first direct measurements of this form of driver distraction on the road. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting