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How Do Drivers Hold Their Phone? Age, Prevalence, & Handedness
Abstract
Objective
Research shows frequent mobile phone use in vehicles but says little regarding how drivers hold their phone. This knowledge would inform countermeasures and benefit law enforcement in detecting phone use.
Methods
934 participants were surveyed over phone-use prevalence, handedness, traffic-direction, and where they held their device.
Results
The majority (66%) reported using their phone while driving. Younger drivers were more likely to use their device. Of device-users, 67% preferred their passenger-side hand, 25% driver-side, and 8% both. Height- wise: 22% held in-lap, 52% even with the wheel, and 22% at wheel-top. Older drivers were more likely to hold the phone in the highest position The three most popular combinations were passenger-middle (35%), passenger-low (19%), and passenger-high (13.9%). There was insufficient evidence of differences based on handedness, prevalence, or traffic-direction.
Conclusion
Driver-preferred attention regions often require substantial neck flexion and eye-movement, which facilitates distraction detection. However, behavior may change in response to future interventions.
... Camera placement within the current study limited the visibility of some potential phone-use locations as the steering mounted camera limits frame view to the driver's face and shoulders. A driver's lap is the primary location for driver's to hold their phone when using a handheld phone while driving (Faulks, 2020;Oviedo-Trespalacios et al., 2020;Roady et al., 2020) and is used as a proxy for phone use in this study. The driver's lap glance region includes approximately half of the NCAP basic phone locations, as phones held in driver lap or on either driver knee would be captured with this glance region. ...
... System capability to monitor lizard versus owl glances may also have real safety impacts, with high-risk behaviours such as phone use favouring lizard glance strategies (Yang et al., 2021). These findings are supported by our current results, with all LGA events to the driver's lap, the most common location for handheld phone use, utilising lizard glances (Faulks, 2020;Oviedo-Trespalacios et al., 2020;Roady et al., 2020). While lizard-owl glances represent the extremes of glance behaviour strategies (primarily eyes vs. primarily head movement), 20% of driving unrelated glances were mixed glances, containing both head movement and gaze movement. ...
... The placement of the DSM camera in the current study prevented the examination of all of the phone use regions proposed by Euro NCAP; however, the driver's lap (one of 9 nominated phone use regions in the Euro NCAP protocol) was able to be used as a proxy for phone use regions. The driver's lap is one of the most common positions for handheld phone use (Oviedo-Trespalacios et al., 2020;Roady et al., 2020). Nine potential phone use cases were detected, with drivers glancing between their lap and the road and phones visible in 2 cases, demonstrating that the Euro NCAP multi glance protocol is a valid approach for detecting at least some phone use while driving. ...
Objective:
examine the prevalence of driver distraction in naturalistic driving when implementing European New Car Assessment Program (Euro NCAP)-defined distraction behaviours.
Background:
The 2023 introduction of Occupant Status monitoring (OSM) into Euro NCAP will accelerate uptake of Driver State Monitoring (DSM). Euro NCAP outlines distraction behaviours that DSM must detect to earn maximum safety points. Distraction behaviour prevalence and driver alerting and intervention frequency have yet to be examined in naturalistic driving.
Method:
Twenty healthcare workers were provided with an instrumented vehicle for approximately two weeks. Data were continuously monitored with automotive grade DSM during daily work commutes, resulting in 168.8 hours of driver head, eye and gaze tracking.
Results:
Single long distraction events were the most prevalent, with .89 events/hour. Implementing different thresholds for driving-related and driving-unrelated glance regions impacts alerting rates. Lizard glances (primarily gaze movement) occurred more frequently than owl glances (primarily head movement). Visual time-sharing events occurred at a rate of .21 events/hour.
Conclusion:
Euro NCAP-described driver distraction occurs naturalistically. Lizard glances, requiring gaze tracking, occurred in high frequency relative to owl glances, which only require head tracking, indicating that less sophisticated DSM will miss a substantial amount of distraction events.
Application:
This work informs OEMs, DSM manufacturers and regulators of the expected alerting rate of Euro NCAP defined distraction behaviours. Alerting rates will vary with protocol implementation, technology capability, and HMI strategies adopted by the OEMs, in turn impacting safety outcomes, user experience and acceptance of DSM technology.
Faulks, I.J. (2019). Caught red-handed: Automatic cameras will spot mobile-using motorists, but at what cost? The Conversation (Online journal), published 2 November 2019. Website: https://theconversation.com/caught-red-handed-automatic-cameras-will-spot-mobile-using-motorists-but-at-what-cost-125638
The Australian State of New South Wales is about to introduce a world-first camera-based enforcement technology to detect drivers who are using a hand-held mobile phone. While described as a driver distraction intervention, the technology, and the legislation supporting it, is about the use of a mobile phone specifically, rather than an attempt to address any unsafe actions that divert attention from driving. This article describes the new technology, outlines the results of a trial conducted in early 2019, and discusses aspects of the legislation developed to support this novel approach to dealing with drivers who use a mobile phone illegally while driving.
The number of smartphone users is growing dramatically. Using the smartphone frequently forces the users to adopt an awkward posture leading to an increased risk of musculoskeletal disorders and pain. The objective of this study is to conduct a systematic review of studies that assess the effect of smartphone use on musculoskeletal disorders and pain. A systematic literature search of AMED, CINAHL, PubMed, Proquest, ScienceDirect using specific keywords relating to smartphone, musculoskeletal disorders and pain was conducted. Reference lists of related papers were searched for additional studies. Methodological quality was assessed by two independent reviewers using the modified Downs and Black checklist. From 639 reports identified from electronic databases, 11 were eligible to include in the review. One paper was found from the list of references and added to the review. The quality scores were rated as moderate. The results show that muscle activity of upper trapezius, erector spinae and the neck extensor muscles are increased as well as head flexion angle, head tilt angle and forward head shifting which increased during the smartphone use. Also, smartphone use in a sitting position seems to cause more shift in head–neck angle than in a standing position. Smartphone usage may contribute to musculoskeletal disorders. The findings of the included papers should be interpreted carefully in light of the issues highlighted by the moderate-quality assessment scores.
Forty-eight drivers answered a set of written questions about their driving style and drove a pre-defined, mixed urban and motorway route under observation. For 20 drivers there was a second observer in the car to check on inter-observer reliability. Relationships were examined between self-reports of driver behaviour and observers' reports, and between both of these and the number of accidents in which the drivers had been involved in the past three years. The results indicated that there was good inter-observer agreement on a number of important variables including speed, calmness, and attentiveness. Inter-observer reliability for other variables was less good; among these were preferred distance to car in front, use of indicators, and aggressiveness. Observers also showed good agreement on overall ratings of driver skill and safety. Observed speed on the motorway correlated well with drivers' self reports of normal driving speed. Observer ratings of calmness correlated significantly with self-reports of calmness. Also observer ratings of attentiveness and carefulness correlated significantly with self-reports of deviant driving behaviour. Observed speed on the motorway showed a clear positive correlation with self-reported accident involvement. The results indicate that self-reports of certain aspects of driver behaviour can be used as surrogates for observational measures, thus providing a convenient extension to the researcher's methodological armoury. One such aspect is speed which appears to play an important role in accident involvement.
A guide to using S environments to perform statistical analyses providing both an introduction to the use of S and a course in modern statistical methods. The emphasis is on presenting practical problems and full analyses of real data sets.
Twenty-seven subjects completed 2-min typing tasks using four typing styles: right-hand holding/typing (S-thumb) and two-hand typing at three heights (B-low, B-mid and B-high). The styles had significant effects on typing performance, neck and elbow flexion and muscle activities of the right trapezius and several muscles of the right upper limb (p < 0.0001 by repeated-measure analysis of variance). The subjects typed the fewest words (error-adjusted characters per minute: 78) with the S-thumb style. S-thumb style resulted in similar flexion angles of the neck, elbow and wrist, but significantly increased muscle activities in all tested muscles compared with the B-mid style. Holding the phone high or low reduced the flexion angles of the neck and right elbow compared with the B-mid style, but the former styles increased the muscle activity of the right trapezius. Right-hand holding/typing was not a preferable posture due to high muscle activities and slow typing speed.
Practitioner Summary: Right-hand holding/typing was not favoured, due to increased muscle activities and slower typing speed. Holding the phone high or low reduced the flexion angles of the neck and right elbow, but the former styles increased the muscle activity of the right trapezius compared with holding the phone at chest level.
We examine the trade-offs associated with using Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) interface for subject recruitment. We first describe MTurk and its promise as a vehicle for performing low-cost and easy-to-field experiments. We then assess the internal and external validity of experiments performed using MTurk, employing a framework that can be used to evaluate other subject pools. We first investigate the characteristics of samples drawn from the MTurk population. We show that respondents recruited in this manner are often more representative of the U.S. population than in-person convenience samples-the modal sample in published experimental political science-but less representative than subjects in Internet-based panels or national probability samples. Finally, we replicate important published experimental work using MTurk samples. © The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology. All rights reserved.
One hundred eight drivers participated in a naturalistic field operational test. Each participant drove an instrumented passenger car for 6 weeks. Video data from the first week of driving for each participant were visually scored for all instances of cell phone use. These instances were divided into cell phone calls (conversations) and cell phone interactions that were not calls (visual or manual tasks involving the cell phone). Researchers examined 1,382 conversations and 2,149 visual or manual tasks. Participants were engaged in cell phone conversations 6.7% of all driving time and in visual or manual tasks involving a cell phone 2.3% of all driving time. Overall, conversations had a mean duration of 2.6 min, and participants engaged in conversations at a rate of 1.5 conversations per hour. Younger drivers were significantly more likely to be engaged in either type of cell phone task than older drivers and significantly more likely to be engaged in visual or manual tasks than middle-aged drivers. Drivers were more likely to initiate conversations and visual or manual tasks when stopped than at higher speeds; this finding may suggest a level of self-regulation. Furthermore, the finding suggests that estimates of crash risk that are based on assumptions that behavior observed in stopped vehicles translates to behavior in moving vehicles is incorrect and will result in overestimates of driver engagement in cell phone use.
This project used an internet survey of 287 Victorian drivers to quantify the extent to which drivers reportedly engage in a range of potentially distracting activities; the factors that influence their willingness to engage; and the strategies they use, if any, to manage distraction. Almost 60% of drivers use a mobile phone while driving and over one third use the phone in hand-held mode. A high proportion of drivers use audio entertainment systems, but relatively few use in-vehicle visual displays such as DVD players. Driver engagement in non-technology-based activities, such as eating, drinking, smoking and reading is also prevalent. Young drivers (18–25 yrs) were significantly more likely to report engaging in certain distracting activities, such as using a mobile phone, CD player and eating and drinking, than their middle-age (26–54 yrs) and older (55+ yrs) counterparts. Most drivers (84%) believe that their driving is less safe when engaged in distracting tasks and take steps to avoid distraction. The survey results provide valuable data to help target distraction policy and countermeasures that build upon the self-regulatory strategies already used by some drivers.
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