Kicking off National Distracted Driving Awareness Month

By Nicholas Worrell, Chief, NTSB Safety Advocacy Division

More people are dying in crashes since the pandemic began. Deaths on our roads increased from 36,096 in in 2019 to 38,824 in 2020, and to an estimated 31,720 in the first 9 months of 2021, a further 12% increase. At that rate of increase, fatalities will be well over 40,000 for the full year.

Our roads have become more dangerous, and Americans know it. A new study from Nationwide finds that, compared with 2020, more than three quarters of respondents think drivers are more aggressive, drive faster, and are more reckless. “Even more frightening,” says Nationwide, “more than a third of drivers (34%) believe it is safe to hold your phone while driving—whether that is to make a call, send a text, or use navigation.”

Additionally, the Travelers Companies recently announced the results of the 2022 Travelers Risk Index on distracted driving. The results “suggest that work-related pressure might lead to distracted driving. Most business managers (86%) expect employees to respond to work-related communications at least sometimes while outside the office during work hours. One-third expect employees to answer or participate in work calls while driving.”

Since the pandemic began, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been reporting upticks in risky driving such as speeding, impairment by alcohol and other drugs, and driving without a seatbelt—a driver’s best protection in a crash. But what about distracted driving?

Late last year, citing studies by Cambridge Mobile Telematics and Zendrive, NHTSA stated that risks associated with distracted driving rose during the pandemic too. One study suggested that, in 16% of crashes detected, a cell phone was manipulated within 5 seconds of the crash.

What is distracted driving?

Distraction occurs when drivers divert their attention away from the driving task. Personal electronic devices, such as cell phones and tablets, are among the culprits, though activities such as grooming and eating contribute as well.

Visual distraction is taking your eyes off the road—for example, to glance down at a twitter feed. Manual distraction is taking your hands away from the vehicle controls, such as when you text or search for a phone contact. Cognitive distraction degrades driving when your mind is not on the road. Even if you use your phone hands-free, you are subject to cognitive distraction—mentally focusing on something other than the driving task.

NHTSA says that 3,142 people lost their lives to distracted driving in 2019, and that is likely an undercount. Often those who have lost a loved one to such senseless road violence are driven to action, like these participants in our 2017 roundtable, “Act to End Deadly Distractions.”

What you can do

Last year, NTSB Vice Chairman Bruce Landsberg announced the launch of the National Distracted Driving Coalition to unite the many individuals and organizations that are working for change, so that member organizations can focus on their own strengths, while developing common resources to avoid duplication of efforts.

Passionate individuals and organizations, responsible companies and legislatures, the academic community, and government agencies have begun to make an impact on distracted driving behaviors and strengthening distracted driving laws across the nation.

But anybody who drives can do their part just by disconnecting for the drive. 

Be the boss of your devices, not the other way around. And be a boss in general. Plan for how and when you will take calls—not while driving—and let people know your plan. Let people know that you’ll be on the road, or you’ll be on your phone, but not both. Because no call, no text, no update is worth a human life.

Connect with us

Follow us on the Web and Twitter to learn more about this month’s advocacy engagement to eliminate distracted driving.

• Website: http://www.NTSB.gov
• Twitter: @NTSB

Upcoming Event:

• April 13, 2022, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern – National Distracted Driving Coalition #Act2EndDD Webinar

Additional Resources

NTSB Most Wanted List

• Eliminate Distracted Driving

NTSB Distracted Driving Roundtables and Forum

• Roundtable: Act to End Deadly Distractions
• Western States Teen Safe Driving Roundtable

NTSB Blogs

• Focus on Distracted Driving
• Act to End Distracted Driving: One Life at a Time
• Act to End Deadly Distractions
• Today’s Actions, Tomorrow’s Consequences
• Addressing Dangers on the Roads: This is no April Fools!
• Protect Your Business by Protecting Your Employees
• Cognitive Distraction and the Hands-Free Device Myth
• Deadly Addictions
• Eliminate Distractions
• Eliminate Distracted Driving

ACT TO END DEADLY DISTRACTIONS

By Acting Chairman Robert Sumwalt

Distracted driving kills, on average, nine people every day on our highways and injures even more. Every day, families are left to grieve the loss of a loved one killed in a highway crash, their lives suddenly in disarray. These preventable tragedies must stop. We must all do our part and take action so that families no longer lose loved ones to a preventable death.

Often, the families and friends left behind after a fatal car crash become survivor advocates, turning their tragedy into action. This week, we will be hosting some of these survivor advocates at our second distraction roundtable, Act to End Deadly Distractions. We will be teaming with Stopdistractions.org, DRIVE SMART Virginia, and the National Safety Council to host this discussion.

I’m excited to facilitate this event, which is designed to focus on survivor advocates’ experiences of what has worked and what hasn’t in their fight against distracted driving. Above all, this roundtable is designed to facilitate effective action. The survivor advocate community will be exploring ways to act in their own towns and states to “move the needle” toward zero distracted driving deaths.

Our first distraction roundtable brought together experts to dive into what we know and don’t know about the science of distraction. At that event one fact became clear: distracted driving is taking lives. According to one market research company, since 2007, the percentage of Americans ages 13 and older with smartphones went from 6% to more than 80%. Although there have always been distractions competing with our focus on driving, these devices are especially addictive and, despite what we tell ourselves, we cannot safely or effectively multitask. To turn the tide will take a change in culture, especially in attitudes about portable electronic devices.

Experience with other causes of highway deaths shows that the science alone will not be enough to stop tragedy. Nor will awareness efforts. Heightened awareness, the right laws and policies, and tough enforcement all must play a role. The NTSB often makes recommendations aimed at changing safety culture within a company or even within a whole industry. We have recommended that states pass legislation to ban drivers from nonemergency use of portable electronic devices. We can’t “recommend” a way to change the minds and behavior of a whole nation of drivers, so we’re facilitating a conversation among survivor advocates and experts in awareness campaigns and in state houses.

We hope that you’ll join us. The roundtable begins at 9:00 am, April 26, in the NTSB Board Room and Conference Center, 429 L’Enfant Plaza, SW, Washington, DC. The event is convenient to the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station. You can also watch the event live at http://ntsb.capitolconnection.org/ and comment via Twitter @NTSB using #Act2EndDD.

 

Act to End Deadly Distractions

By Robert L. Sumwalt

Every year, more than 3,000 people are killed—and 100 times more than that are injured—in accidents caused by distracted drivers. Whether the distraction is due to a driver using a hand-held personal electronic device or engaging in a wide range of other activities that take a driver’s attention off the road, the number of crashes, injuries, and fatalities resulting from distraction is on the rise. It will take a concerted effort by lawmakers, law enforcers, and transportation safety advocates to end this deadly trend.

This year marks the ninth time that the NTSB has included “eliminate distractions while driving” on its Most Wanted List (MWL) of transportation safety improvements. Although it’s not a new issue, ending deadly distractions in all modes of transportation is again on our signature priority list because it is one of the most critical issues facing the traveling public today.

More must be done to raise awareness about this issue, which has appeared on the MWL for far too long. To that end, the NTSB, in partnership with StopDistractions.org, will host a roundtable, titled “Act to End Deadly Distractions”—its second such event in 25 months aimed at shedding light on the issue of distracted driving and focusing on practical and measurable solutions to this growing problem. This upcoming roundtable will build off the momentum from our first distraction roundtable in March 2015, and will examine existing public policy and laws in several states that have reduced the number of crashes attributed to distraction. Our panel of participants will highlight ways that advocates and community influencers can work with law enforcement to continue to ensure distracted driving laws are enforced consistently. And, perhaps most importantly, victims’ families will speak about how they’ve been affected by these preventable crashes.

I have the pleasure of hosting this year’s event, which will be held on Wednesday, April 26, 2017, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the NTSB Conference Center in Washington, DC. More details can be found at the Act to End Deadly Distractions Roundtable webpage. The roundtable is open to the public and will be live streamed on the Web.

April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month and May is Global Youth Traffic Safety Month; this roundtable comes at the perfect time to raise awareness and spur action toward eliminating distraction.

One fatality due to a distracted driver is one too many. We know what it will take to eliminate these tragedies, and we are confident that the upcoming roundtable will be a step that direction.

The Black Box

Bella Dinh-Zarr, PhD, MPH, Vice Chairman

The famous “black box.”

Reporters always ask us about it during high-profile aviation and rail investigations. After the sinking of the El Faro cargo ship during Hurricane Joaquin, the news media closely followed the recovery of the voyage data recorder, which was located in about 15,000 feet of water.

The black box, which is usually orange with reflective tape to make it easier to locate in wreckage, can be critical to our investigations at the NTSB. These devices can withstand enormous impact forces, intense temperatures, and the extreme pressures of ocean depths. Recorders capture a range of useful data, from crewmembers’ actions and conversations to vehicle parameters. We use these data to help identify the cause of an accident and to make recommendations to prevent such accidents from happening in the future. Industry can also use this information to make transportation safer.

We analyze recorder information in all modes of transportation. We transcribe audio from cockpit voice recorders and extract information from flight data recorders on aircraft. We review voyage data recorders that provide ship data, bridge audio, and radar images on vessels. We assess information from event recorders and forward- and inward-facing video recorders on trains. We analyze a variety of recorders and cameras that provide performance information on highway vehicles. No matter what type of recorder we encounter, we are required by law to protect the information obtained for our investigations.

Although the NTSB uses recorders to learn from one tragedy to prevent future ones, industry and operators can install recorders and develop programs to learn lessons from normal operations.

The NTSB urges the transportation industry to install recorders in their vehicles, vessels, trains, and aircraft, and to assess the data collected from them to prevent accidents and assess operator performance. Industry can use information from data, audio, and video recorders to identify issues of operational weakness or noncompliance with procedures. Airlines use the data they gather in everyday line operations through flight operational quality assurance (FOQA) programs to prevent accidents from occurring in the first place. Although most large aircraft are already required to have flight data and cockpit voice recorders, we have also recommended that they have cockpit video recording systems, and we have recommended that certain small aircraft that are not required to have recorders be required to carry recording devices that capture data. For smaller aircraft, recorders can provide crucial accident data, and they can also be a vital part of flight data management programs.

We appreciate the special value of data from video recorders, and that’s why many of our recent recommendations to regulators and operators propose that video recorders be installed to capture operator and crew behavior. Currently, investigators have no access to the visual information from an accident sequence. Although we can piece together key events in an airplane accident from cockpit audio and flight data, with video we have access to nonverbal communications and cockpit instrument manipulation. In fact, our NTSB scientists have even written software that reads needle positions and creates valuable data tables based on cockpit images! Reconstructing the accident sequence without video evidence requires additional time and effort—possibly delaying critical safety improvements.

What can be learned when inward-facing video is available? The answer is apparent from our 2014 investigation of the mid-air breakup of SpaceShipTwo during a test flight. SpaceShipTwo was equipped with data recorders, including video recorders to document the flight test. Because of those video images, the NTSB was able to identify quickly (by the second day of the on-scene investigation) that the co-pilot moved a lever at an inappropriate time, which ultimately resulted in the crash.

It is indisputable that we can make transportation safer by using information obtained from recorders. That’s why “Expand Recorder Use to Enhance Safety” is on the NTSB’s Most Wanted List of transportation safety improvements. And that’s why we urge transportation operators to install this important safety technology as soon as possible.

When Safety Should Take the Back Seat

By Vice Chairman T. Bella Dinh-Zarr, PhD, MPH

As a public health professional, I have spent my career working in the United States and internationally to prevent injuries and deaths. At the NTSB, one of my primary roles is to advocate for the changes needed to prevent transportation accidents.

Significant advancements have been made to improve the safety of occupants in the front seats of passenger vehicles, including the development of advanced restraint and airbag systems, safer seat designs, and structural improvements to minimize injury due to intrusion. Today, 32 states have adopted legislation that requires front-seat passengers to use a seat belt, and we can celebrate that we have achieved a national daytime average seat-belt-use rate of 90 percent for front-seat passengers.

But what about rear seats? We have not seen similar technology advances in rear seats, and research shows that rear seat belt use is considerably lower, at 83 percent. How can research, engineering, and advocacy make an impact in increasing rear seat belt use?

In 2015, after decades of decline, the United States experienced the largest increase in motor vehicle crashes and resulting deaths. Another historic increase is expected for 2016.  In examining such a complex issue, we at the NTSB found ourselves asking the following: why aren’t people buckling up when they sit in the rear seat, and how can research, engineering, and advocacy increase rear seat belt use?

To answer these questions, we reached out to occupant protection experts drawn from the auto industry, the research community, safety advocates, and the government to participate in a workshop to help us find ways to strengthen occupant protection in the rear seat of passenger vehicles.

During the workshop, we discussed the current knowledge about rear seat occupants in motor vehicle crashes, and how these occupants utilize existing vehicle safety systems, such as seat belts.  We examined how the rear seat environment is different from the front, both in design and user demographics. The workshop also addressed advanced vehicle and emerging seat belt technologies, innovative seat designs, as well as areas of needed research and education.

Our workshop was designed to allow the sharing of experience and knowledge, as well as to encourage participants to collaborate on inventive strategies. As a result, in the detailed summary we are publishing today, participants identified short- and long-term goals that will require a greater amount of collaboration, engineering, design, and advocacy to achieve.

Together with researchers, automobile manufacturers, legislators, regulators, and safety advocates, we are identifying practical, real-world applications and opportunities to make rear seats safer for everyone.

For more information about the workshop, presentations and the summary document visit https://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Pages/2016_rss_WS.aspx.