Driver hand-held cell phone use decreased to 5 percent in 2006 compared to 6 percent in 2005. This downturn in handheld cell phone use is the first since the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began estimating driver cell phone use in 2000 through its National Occupant Protection Use Survey (NOPUS). The 2006 NOPUS also found that the incidence of drivers speaking with observable headsets on remained unchanged, while the incidence of observable hand-held device manipulation while driving increased to 0.4 percent in 2006 from 0.2 percent in the previous year. However, the lack of up-to-date data to extrapolate NOPUS observed data to total cell phone use precludes an accurate estimation of overall driver cell phone use. In the past, we had projected the total hands-free use and total cell phone Driver Cell Phone Use in 2006 — Overall Results use among all drivers based on 2003 cell phone use data from other sources. This research note will not make such a projection for the year of 2006 with the outdated data but we will do it in the future as updated data become available. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting