KU-EHS November Safety Tip: Sad or Mad? Stay Out of the Car!
New research finds that driver-related factors such as fatigue, error, impairment and distraction – including getting behind the wheel while angry or sad – were present in nearly 90 percent of motor vehicle crashes.
We've all heard "Don't Drink and Drive." But did you know that "Don't Sad and Drive" might be nearly as important?
A new study from researchers at Virginia Tech Transportation Institute finds that drivers increase their crash risk nearly tenfold when they get behind the wheel while observably angry, sad, crying or emotionally agitated.
The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute researchers, writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also reported that drivers more than double their crash risk when they choose to engage in distracting activities that require them to take their eyes off the road, such as using a handheld cell phone, reading or writing, or using touchscreen menus on a vehicle instrument panel. And, according to the institute’s research, drivers engage in some type of distracting activity more than 50 percent of the time they are driving.
Virginia Tech Transportation Institute researchers used results from the Second Strategic Highway Research Program Naturalistic Driving Study, the largest light-vehicle naturalistic driving study ever conducted with more than 3,500 participants across six data collection sites in the United States.
The study represents the largest naturalistic crash database available to date, with more than 1,600 verified crash events ranging in severity from low, such as tire and curb strikes, to severe, including police-reportable crashes.
Researchers Examined 905 Serious Crashes
For the current research, transportation institute researchers considered 905 higher severity crashes involving injury or property damage in the data set and found that, overall, driver-related factors that include fatigue, error, impairment and distraction were present in nearly 90 percent of the crashes.
Traveling well above the speed limit creates about 13 times the risk, and driver performance errors such as sudden or improper braking or being unfamiliar with a vehicle or roadway have an impact on individual risk.
Researchers found several factors previously thought to increase driver risk, including applying makeup or following a vehicle too closely, actually had a lower prevalence in the naturalistic driving study, meaning they were minimally present or were not present at all in the crashes analyzed.
Factors such as interacting with a child in the rear seat of a vehicle were found to have a protective effect, or had a risk lower than the base risk value.
All factors analyzed in the article were compared to episodes of model driving, or episodes in which the drivers were verified to be alert, attentive and sober, marking the first known time such a comparative analysis has been made.
Source: EHS Today