A new report from the Medical Journal of Australia has found that some 57% of Australians have driven their motor vehicle, while still using a mobile phone, and some 12% admit to sending SMSs while driving. Men, younger drivers and metropolitan residents were more likely to use a phone while driving and to report a higher frequency of use. Some respondents volunteered that they were unsure about whether text messaging is included in the current ban.
Enforcement of hand-held phone restrictions was perceived to be low and an estimated 39% of people who phone while driving use a hand-held phone.
Half of all drivers did not agree with extending the ban to include hands-free phones. Among drivers aged 18-65 years in NSW and WA, an estimated 45,800 have ever had a crash while using a mobile phone and, in the past year, 146,762 have had to take evasive action to avoid a crash because of their phone use.
Since the introduction of mobile phones into Australia in 1987, there has been concern about the effect on road safety of mobile phone use while driving. Today, the number of mobile phone connections exceeds the number of landlines, and more than 80% of Australians own or use a mobile phone. Throughout Australia, hand-held mobile phone use while driving is illegal, but drivers who wish to use a mobile phone may do so with a hands-free device.
Nevertheless, an observational survey conducted in Melbourne in 2002 found that, at any given time, about 2% of drivers were using a hand-held phone while driving. Moreover, the purported safety benefit conferred by hands-free devices remains questionable. Experimental research has shown that both hand-held and hands-free phone use can impair driving performance, as measured by reaction time and situational awareness.
In young drivers, using a mobile phone to send text messages has been shown to degrade driving performance in a simulator. Epidemiological research has found that mobile phone use while driving is associated with a fourfold increase in crash risk, irrespective of whether a hands-free device is used.
The Medical Journal of Australia concludes that their findings highlight the potential dangers of mobile phone use while driving in relation to near misses and crashes. About 1% of all drivers have crashed while using a mobile phone. By way of comparison, in a survey of predominantly male, heavy vehicle drivers in Denmark,14 five drivers (0.5%) had crashed as a result of phone use and 6% had experienced dangerous situations on account of their phone use in the previous year. Two-thirds had been in dangerous situations in the previous year because of phone use by other road users. In Finland, 50% of surveyed drivers had experienced dangerous situations arising from their phone use."
Posted to the site on 12th December 2006
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