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Driver distractions cause most crashes, study says

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published April 21, 2006

BLACKSBURG, Va. - Distractions for drivers are everywhere these days with the explosion of new technologies.

They talk on their cell phones. Check their e-mail or send text messages. Get directions from their GPS system. Pop a CD into the stereo. Change stations on satellite radio. Help their kids with the backseat DVD player. Along with all the other age-old distractions of eating, drinking and talking.

Turns out there can be a high cost.

A study released Thursday by the government found that nearly eight of 10 collisions or near-crashes involved a lack of attention from drivers in the moments before impact.

Researchers reviewed thousands of hours of video and data from sensor monitors linked to more than 200 drivers and pinpointed examples of what keeps drivers from paying close attention to the road.

"We see people on the roadways talking on the phone, checking their stocks, checking scores, fussing with their MP3 players, reading e-mails, all while driving 40, 50, 60, 70 miles per hour and sometimes even faster," said Jacqueline Glassman, acting administrator of the government's highway safety agency.

A driver's reaching for a moving object increased the risk of a crash or potential collision by nine times, according to researchers at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. They found the risk of a crash increases almost threefold when a driver is dialing a cell phone.

Researchers said the report showed the first links between crash risks and a driver's activities, from eating to receiving e-mail.

"All of these activities are much more dangerous than we thought before," said Dr. Charlie Klauer, a senior research associate at the institute. Data from police reports had estimated that driver inattention was a factor in about 25 percent of crashes.

For many drivers, the research offered more proof of what they see on their daily commutes.

John Simpson of Christiansburg, Va., said his "personal favorite" is once seeing a woman in traffic "with her knees up on the steering wheel, sheet music in her lap and she was playing the flute."

For more than a year, researchers studied the behavior of the drivers of 100 vehicles in metropolitan Washington, D.C. They tracked 241 drivers, who were involved in 82 crashes of various degrees of seriousness - 15 were reported to police - and 761 near-crashes. The air bag deployed in three instances.

The project analyzed nearly 2-million miles driven and more than 43,300 hours of data.

[Last modified April 21, 2006, 01:42:18]