There are certain driver and task characteristics that appear to moderate the effect of mobile phone use on driving performance and safety the amount of time the driver engages in phone-related activity; the complexity of phone design and the phone task itself; current driving demands; driver experience and skill; and driver willingness to engage in phone-related activity. Countermeasures to mitigate the effects of distraction should take these into account. The Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association provides the following specific advice to mobile phone users to minimise the potentially adverse effects of distraction: use a hands-free phone; plan trips and make calls when stationary; avoid making calls in heavy traffic or poor weather conditions; avoid complex or emotional conversations; use message services to answer calls; pull over safely when stopping to make calls; use phone features to reduce the effort involved; never take notes, look up phone numbers, or read or send text messages while driving; tell callers you are driving when on the phone; and use the phone to call for help in emergencies. At a broader level, there is scope for further countermeasure development, and policymakers have many strategies at their disposal. These include: • Data collection to better quantify mobile phone use as a contributing factor in crashes: enhanced police report forms to record mobile phone use as a potential source of distraction; regular mobile phone distraction exposure surveys; use of “black boxes” to record phone use in crashes; • Education: publicity campaigns to raise awareness of risks, especially for hands-free phone use and text messaging; highlight factors that increase vulnerability to risks, especially driver inexperience; promote strategies for minimising distraction, especially the purchase of the most ergonomic hands-free phone types; and raise awareness of penalties for using hand-held phones; • Training to address when, optimally, to expose learner drivers to hands-free mobile phone use; the least distracting methods of interacting with hands-free phones; self-awareness of the effects of phone distraction on driving; the training of passengers as copilots to manage phone use; • Legislation and enforcement: prohibit learner and probationary drivers from using all mobile phones while driving; review exemptions and anomalies in existing legislation; improve effectiveness of police enforcement of current legislation; develop technologies to prevent phone use in vehicles moving at high speed; increase penalties; • Phone design: improve ergonomic design of in-built and portable hands-free phones to reduce distraction — although it is possible that improved design and ease of use could promote increased phone use while driving, and as a consequence paradoxically undermine safety; • Vehicle design: use intelligent on-board “workload manager” technologies to temporarily suppress calls and prevent access to phone functions and controls when distraction potential is estimated to be high; • Fleet safety: as a duty of care, develop, implement and enforce company policies on mobile phone use while driving; • Licensing: provide information on risks of mobile phone use while driving in licensing handbooks; test knowledge of these risks; design practical driving tests to identify, and prevent from being licensed, learner drivers who are incapable of compensating for the effects on driving of hands-free mobile phones; and • Research: to further understand the theory, effects and mitigation of mobile phone distraction. Many of these have been adopted as recommendations in the recently released report of the Parliament of Victoria Road Safety Committee Inquiry into Driver Distraction. The use of mobile phones while driving will continue to contribute unnecessarily to road trauma in this country unless countermeasures such as these are developed, implemented and properly evaluated.
Samenvatting