United States Department of Transportation
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National Survey of Distracted and Drowsy Driving Attitudes and Behavior: 2002: Volume 3: Methods
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2003-03-01
By Royal, Dawn
[PDF-1.07 MB]
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Alternative Title:NHTSA unsafe and distracted driving 2002
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Edition:Final report
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Abstract:This report represents the findings on distracted driving (including cell phone use) and drowsy driving. The data come from a pair of studies undertaken by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to better understand drivers’ behaviors and attitudes regarding speeding, unsafe driving, distracted and drowsy driving. This report, Volume III: Methods Report describes the methods used to conduct the interviews and analyze the data, and also contains the questionnaires. Volume I: Findings National Survey of Distracted and Drowsy Driving reports respondent’s behaviors and attitudes on various topics related to distracted and drowsy driving. Volume II: Findings Speeding and Unsafe Driving presents the data on those topics. The data will be used to help identify the extent to which potentially distracting behaviors are undertaken by drivers and to understand the characteristics of those engaging in these behaviors so that programs can be developed to reduce these behaviors where they have been shown to be dangerous. The data come from two surveys each conducted among nationally representative samples of drivers during the Spring of 2002. Interviews were conducted with a total of 4,010 drivers in the U.S. The survey findings show that most drivers at least occasionally engage in behaviors that draw some of their attention away from their driving task. The most common of these behaviors include general activities of talking with other passengers (81%), changing radio stations or CDs (66%), and eating or drinking while driving (49%). While it is estimated that more than a billion driving trips are made weekly by drivers engaging in each of these behaviors, fewer than one in four drivers perceive these particular activities as distracting or as making driving much more dangerous. About one in four drivers uses a cell phone while driving for either inbound (26%) or outbound calls (25%), while a similar proportion deals with children in a back seat (24%). It is estimated that almost 800 million one-way vehicle trips are made each week while drivers engage in each of these behaviors (nearly 20% of all driving trips). Close to one-half of drivers perceive these behaviors to make driving much more dangerous, although drivers who use cell phones are only half as less likely as non-users to feel cell phone use is dangerous (about four in ten users do as compared to about eight in ten non-cell phone users). About one quarter (26%) of drivers have been involved in a crash in the past five years. About 3.5% of drivers attribute a crash they’ve had in the past 5 years to their being distracted (including 0.8% looking for something outside of their vehicle and 0.7% dealing with children), seven-tenths of 1 percent (0.7%) attribute a crash they’ve had to drowsy driving, while one-tenth of 1 percent (0.1%) of drivers attribute a crash they’ve had to their cell phone use. Projected nationally, these figures amount to an estimated 7.17 million drivers involved in a crash they attribute to distracted driving, about 1.35 million drivers in a crash attributed to drowsy driving and about 292,000 drivers in a crash attributed to cell phone use over the past 5 years.
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