Gig-Workers And Parents Are Biggest Distracted Drivers

Ride share drivers and other gig-economy workers are among the worst distracted driving offenders. They are more than twice as likely as other drivers to engage in some distracting activity, and nearly four times as likely to use smartphone apps regularly while driving, doing a lot more than communicating with customers and navigating pickups and deliveries.

And parents of children 18 and younger are more likely than other drivers to engage in tasks, on and off devices, while behind the wheel, including things like making video calls, checking weather reports and other types of smartphone-enabled distractions.

Those are the highlights of a new survey released on Thursday by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit financed by the insurance industry. The survey focused on the scope of distractions that can divert the driver’s attention and increase the risk of a crash, particularly those associated with smartphone apps, which have proliferated in recent years.

“The explosion of smartphone features and services has not only created new forms of driver distraction, but also a new group of ride share and delivery drivers whose jobs require them to interact with their phones while they’re on the road,” David Harkey, president of the Insurance Institute, said in a statement.

In response to the survey’s findings, the Insurance Institute recommends that ride sharing and delivery companies put in place or strengthen policies that mandate safe practices and restrict device-based behaviors that are not an essential part of the job.

For the analysis, researchers surveyed more than 2,000 drivers across the country about what secondary tasks they perform while driving. Subcategories included: ordinary activities and those that involved a mobile phone or another electronic device, and specific actions on devices, like talking, texting, programming a navigation app or checking a social media feed. Drivers were also asked whether they performed tasks hands-free for some device-based activities.

Overall, nearly two-thirds of the respondents reported performing one or more distracting activities most or every time they drove over the past 30 days. Half said they performed at least one device-based task during most drives, like making phone calls, streaming music and reading texts, but the most common was programming a navigation app. And 8 % said they played games regularly on a mobile device while driving.

Drivers said they typically used the hands-free feature when it was available. About 8 out of 10 who said they regularly programmed their navigation app, and 7 out of 10 who said they regularly read and sent texts while driving, reported that they used voice commands to do so.

Hands-free operation is generally considered to be less dangerous, as drivers can more easily keep their eyes on the road, but it doesn’t eliminate the distraction risk, the study noted.

“Previous research has shown, for instance, that hands-free systems that require drivers to perform some operations manually, such as scrolling through a contact list, are less safe than those that can be managed completely with voice commands,” researchers said. “Hands-free capabilities are irrelevant or impractical for some smartphone-based activities,” like scrolling social media or playing games.

“These results show that nobody is immune to distraction and suggest that hands-free capabilities may be making us a little too comfortable using our phones and other devices behind the wheel,” Harkey added.

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