Has a new driver appeared in your family these days? If it is your daughter, you can do it wisely and remind her that using her cell phone in the car is not the best idea. This advice works well for everyone in your family, but the latest study shows that all teenage girls use mobile phones or other electronic devices almost twice as often as teenagers when driving – and that could mean a car accident.
The driver protection group called AAA Foundation installed video cams in the cars of 52 teenagers after they received their driving rights. AAA Foundation returned when these teenagers had their driver’s license and drove their cars for about six months. Cams recorded endlessly, but only stored information for 10 seconds just before and after the vehicle blew roughly or rough braking was used. The study delivered a total of around 8,000 video clips.
Only 15% of all incidents involved some form of distraction, which shows that teenagers already have many problems driving.
“Cell phone texting and speaking, personal hygiene, accomplishing various things in the vehicle were the most common distracting acts,” said AAA Foundation CEO Peter Kissinger in his statement. He believes that distracted driving helps to make car accidents the main cause of death for teenagers.
The biggest distraction for all teenagers was the use of electronic devices, which was seen in up to 7% of all video clips or about half of all incidents.
But girls were surprisingly much more distracted from driving than boys. Girls use their cell phones twice as often as boys. They were also 50% more likely to grab something in the car and took food and drink with them more often.
Still good news for all parents is that these distracted behaviors have decreased significantly when mother or father were in the vehicle. However, if they are not there and the teenage driver has the group of friends in the vehicle, the risks increase. But don’t blame the cellphone – while teenagers were twice as likely to suddenly drive off the road while playing in the car, they were indeed less likely to use their cellphones with buddies in the vehicle.
The video cams also measured subtle behaviors like teenagers taking their eyes off the street, which happened much more commonly when their cell phone was in the vehicle. Usually, teenage drivers looked off the road a second longer than similar drivers without any distractions of the cell phone behind the wheel.
“A second doesn’t seem like much to you,” said Kissinger. “At 65 miles an hour, the vehicle exceeds the length of the basketball court in a second.”
As a parent who takes care of your teen child, you cannot prevent all of his or her distractions while driving. Still, using auto signal jammer can help your child avoid at least half of the dangerous situations on the road by blocking cell phone use in the car, resulting in more focused driving behavior for your daughter or son.