Cell Phone Use While Driving



Cell Phone Use While Driving

Introduction

Driving while on the phone compromises driver safety and diminishes driver attention. Unless used with a hands-free kit, for using a cell phone while driving, out of 194, there are only 50 countries that have laws against, in spite of all the facts of the harmful consequence of cell phone use on safety. In terms of traffic safety, even more impaired than intoxicated drivers are cell-phone drivers, although driving profiles are different for intoxicated and cell-phone drivers, Strayer used a driver simulator to show that (Strayer, 2006). Drivers who drive without cell phone interference are 1.3 times less likely to be involved in a near-crash or crash than drivers talking on a cell phone. To be involved in an incident by 2.8 times more times are drivers who are trying to answer or reach a phone or dialing a phone. The overall costs of cell phone use while driving will be given by the sum of all these costs.

Policy

Due to decreased driving ability by the distraction of phone conversing, driving while on the phone compromises driver safety and diminishes driver attention. There is also a rise in percentage of drivers who are engaged in a conversation on phone, along with the rise in the figure of cell phone subscribers (Glassbrenner, 2007). Approximately ten percent of drivers were using wireless phones in some manner, as during a typical daylight moment in 2005, the National Occupant Protection Use Survey found out. At any moment on US roads, by the use of a cell phone, for about 1.6 million drivers distracted, is what this rate translates into. Unless used with a hands-free kit, for using a cell phone while driving, out of 194, there are only 50 countries that have laws against, in spite of all the facts of the harmful consequence of cell phone use on safety. Even though both types of phones have the same negative impact, only a few of them have banned phones that are hand-held, moreover. While driving, prohibiting only hand-held phones are four states in the US having the laws. A similar law is being considered for instigating by twenty-three other states (Lesch, 2004). With cell phone influence on traffic safety, it is possible to calculate costs associated, as every injury and fatality has its monetary cost. Proven that this change is dangerous, making cell phone conversations while driving changes driver behavior fundamentally and literature shows that. But, how the change in driver behavior affects other traffic is unknown. On traffic efficiency and flow, what the overall effect of cell phone use is, is also unknown. As road users in the loss of efficiency of the traffic stream, what this impairment costs us all is also unknown. Well known is the fact that on the safety of drivers in traffic, cell phones have a negative effect. However, unanswered remains the relationship between traffic flow and cell phone use as the literature shows that. On a higher rate of traffic ...