Distracted Driver Essay

When you hear that there has been an accident caused by a distracted driver, what comes to mind? There are many distractions when someone is driving whether that is a cell phone, a pet, passengers, or even people outside of the car. These are only some of the distractions that people admit to facing. Distracted driving is one of the biggest problems we face and when someone is distracted it means they are not paying attention to the road. If they are not focused on the road, then they can get into an accident which could cause serious injuries or even death to themselves or others.

Nevertheless, cell phone use in a car is one of the top-rated distractions because in a 2009 study on cell phones, there were 995 fatalities and 24,000 injury reports due to this distraction (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2014). Although cell phone use can be described as calling or texting it may also include using social media like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. Another distraction may include pets and they seem to be more distracting to ages 70 years and older. However, in a recent survey of drivers the interaction with pets was one of the top three

The taxonomy of driving distractions is talking on cell phones, eating, tuning the radio, etc. (Koppel, Charlton, Kopinathan & Taranto, 2011). As a result, driving error has long been a focus of road safety research and a range of methods have been developed to specifically measure this concept (Young, Salmon & Cornelissen, 2012). Estimates suggested the driving error is a causal factor in 75% to 95% of road crashes and, thus, is a significant contributor to road trauma (Hankey et al., 1999; Rumar, 1990). It has recently become a major safety concern on roadways (Chan & Donmez,