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Road Safety
Dangers of Driving with a Cell Phone
The use of cell phones and other wireless information devices that allow communication by voice, email or text messaging is growing in Québec. Use of these devices while driving is also on the rise. Recent studies show that use of a cell phone at the wheel is a major course of visual and mental distraction that increases the risk of being involved in a road accident.
Most of the studies conclude that use of a cell phone while driving adversely affects a driver's performance, subsequently increasing the risk of collision.
A Québec study conducted by Laberge-Nadeau et al. (2001) concluded that an individual who uses a cell phone at the wheel has a 38% higher risk of becoming involved in an accident, compared to drivers who do not use a device. The same study revealed that risk increases with the amount of use: individuals who use them often have a higher risk of collision (twice as high) compared to occasional users.
In addition to increasing the accident risk, driving while making a telephone call increases the chance of committing offences under the Highway Safety Code (running a red light, failure to obey a stop sign, failure to yield the right of way to other road users, etc.).
Research has shown that cell phone use at the wheel affects your driving ability and performance in several ways:
- Your braking reaction time, in a critical situation, even from the moment of a visual cue, increases.
- Your adaptation time that allows you to maintain a safe distance between vehicles increases.
- Tasks that appear simple, such as driving in a straight line and keeping the vehicle in the centre of the lane become more difficult.
- Your ability to detect stimuli inside and outside of the vehicle decreases.
- Your ability to avoid obstacles is reduced.
- Your visual perception is reduced.
A cell phone therefore negatively impacts visual, cognitive and coordination tasks. It more negatively affects tasks related to a driver's vision, and therefore his or her awareness of events and objects that arise in the environment, than tasks associated with the driver's actions. The greatest danger lies in the conversation itself not simply in the act of handling the cell phone device.
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