Congratulations to Dr. Vishal Kummetha and Dr. Sisinnio Concas on the publication of the article “Survivability of distracted driving: An analysis of in-vehicle phone handling resulting in safety critical events” in the Journal of Transportation Safety & Security! As an Assistant Research Professor and member of CUTR’s Autonomous-Connected Mobility Evaluation (ACME) program, Dr. Kummetha and the ACME team—led by Dr. Sisinnio Concas—delve into the real-world risks of distracted driving.
Kudos to the ACME team for advancing our understanding of driver behavior and helping shape safer mobility solutions!
Abstract
Research shows that in-vehicle distractions lead to suboptimal driving performance. With mobile phone use being the top cause of distractions, many studies rely on decade-old, low-sample, and geospatially limited datasets to infer holistic behavior. Advances in crowd-sourced data and refinements in automobile safety technologies warrant updated research to accurately model current phone use behaviors and associated safety risks. This study categorizes anonymized trajectory and phone handling data into those involving safety critical events (SCEs) and those that do not, to determine if all phone handling events equally affect driving stability or if specific factors significantly influence the likelihood of an SCE. We explore the survivability of SCEs in various phone handling scenarios by incorporating previously unexamined trip-level heterogeneity into hazard models. Mixed-effects logistic regression and shared frailty models are employed to examine the above relationships. The results show that phone handling resulting in SCEs is associated with higher driving volatility, longer handling durations, and lower speed limits, while large share of older populations, weekdays, and daylight conditions are linked to a reduced likelihood of SCEs. The shared frailty model reveals that weekdays and low light conditions accelerate the occurrence of SCEs, with additional differences observed across speed limits.
