We all know that distracted driving is a serious concern, and there are reasons to believe it’s the cause of up to 25% of car collisions.
In order to combat this problem it makes sense to try to eliminate as many sources of distraction as possible. So should we get rid of car radios?
In the 1930s a number of folks thought that banning radios in motor vehicles was a good idea—going as far as proposing legislation in several states and actually banning it in a number of municipalities.
But there’s just one problem. It turns out that car radios aren’t a significant source of distraction. In a study of fatal crashes in the U.S., adjusting in-car controls such as a radio was a factor in only 2% of incidents. Which is a good thing because the initial bans on car radios were ineffective and short-lived.
These days lawmakers have moved on to banning cellphones and 44 states now have a texting or cellphone ban for drivers.
Unfortunately, these laws are likely to be just as ineffective as the bans on car radios were.
Laws, rules and consequences are important for safety and do help, but just because a rule’s in place doesn’t mean that people will follow it all the time, and making it illegal to text or use a handheld device while driving is unlikely to significantly reduce the number of car accidents caused by distracted driving.
In fact, they may even increase risk as some people try to hide their cellphone use by keeping it in their laps—where it takes longer to look from the screen to the road.
If new laws and regulations don’t work then what can solve the problem of distracted driving? Some safety experts believe that reprogramming our habits and an increased focus on safety skills could be an answer.
A free downloadable guide from SafeStart examines driver distractions and identifies human factors that lead to road fatalities. It also shows how closely tied distracted driving and workplace safety are. Best of all, it discusses what can be done to defeat distraction on the road, at work and at home.