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Improving Driver Cell Phone Tracking Could Help Understand Crash Risk
07.10.2023 - 21:45 / forbes.com / David Harkey
Roadside cameras and telematics data have the potential to provide more accurate and comprehensive information about drivers’ use of their cell phones than is currently available, and could lead to better understanding of distracted driving crash risk and how to address it.
Those are the highlights of two new studies released on Thursday by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit financed by the insurance industry.
“One of the challenging aspects of combating cell phone-related distraction is the absence of good information about where, when and how drivers are using their phones,” David Harkey, the Insurance Institute’s president, said in a statement. “Roadside cameras and telematics could help fill in the gaps, improving our understanding of how cellphones affect crash risk.”
The first study compared the accuracy of images from roadside cameras with human observations at specific intersection sites from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) annual roadside survey, considered the most up-to-date information about driver cell phone use, the safety group said.
The photographs taken with cameras were nearly as good as in-person monitors at identifying drivers who were using their cellphones. However, the increased amount of data that camera-based observation could provide would likely offer “a significant overall benefit in measuring distraction,” researchers said. This is due to the fact that roadside cameras can be deployed in more locations, including ones that would be too dangerous for a human observer, which would allow for better monitoring of cellphone use in fast-moving traffic. (The federal surveys only record information about drivers who are stopped in traffic.)
Both the roadside cameras and the in-person observation methods were better at recognizing that drivers were engaging in some kind of cellphone activity than identifying exactly what the drivers were doing.
“Despite some growing pains, many jurisdictions have demonstrated that safety cameras can be an effective tool to reduce speeding and red light running,” Harkey added. t“Potentially, they could save additional lives by helping to curb cell phone distraction.”
The second study was based on telematics data, which refers to the collection of information from a cell phone app or dedicated device when the user is driving. Some safe-driver apps, for example, are used by auto insurance companies to offer discounts for good driving behavior.
If applied widely, this technology could reveal whether a driver was manipulating his or her cell phone in the moments before a crash. “Researchers could match cellphone use to other telematics data, such as hard acceleration and braking,” the report noted. “They
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