Impacts of cell phone use on driving safety and drivers' perception of risk

In this study, the factors influencing phone-related driving safety and drivers’ perceptions of cell phone usage were analyzed. A representative sample of more than 500 licensed drivers in Texas who own a cell phone was interviewed based on a well-design questionnaire. Logistic regression model showed that the impact of using cell phone on driving safety varies depending on the characteristics of drivers, such as gender, age, driving experience, and use intensity.Additionally, the results indicated that the strong determinants of phone-related hazard are different from that of phone-related accidents. Regarding the drivers’ perception of cell phone usage, there are two key findings. First, there is no explicit belief among the drivers about whether cell phone usage impairs driving safety regardless of the drivers’ age, gender,driving education experience etc. Second, most of drivers have not realized that cell phone use while driving would increase their perception reaction time. Based on the analysis of these results, implications of cell phone use on driving safety along with some safety countermeasures, such as selective bans and non-cell phone zones, are discussed in the paper.