5 Tips To Avoid Distracted Driving And Its Impact
Summary
The blog discusses the problem of distracted driving and its impact on road safety. It provides tips to avoid distracted driving, such as avoiding the use of mobile phones, taking breaks, saying no to multitasking, slowing down audio, and using driver monitoring systems like dashcams. It also highlights the risks associated with distracted driving, including accidents and fatalities, and the need for logistics and transportation organizations to prioritize driver safety.
Road safety is a constant national concern that couldn’t be resolved entirely. The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that nearly 1.3 million were killed in road accidents every year. India has the highest number of fatal accidents, about 11% share in the world.
What Is Distracted Driving?
Distracted driving is the act of involving or engaging with other distracting activities while driving and it is a problematic issue for the transportation industry to solve either. Distracting your mental focus away from driving can cause a serious risk impact to self and surrounding.
What Are All The Risk Factors Or Impacts Associated With Distracted Driving?
The risk factors associated with distracted driving are accidents and many accidents end with fatalities. There are many fatality cases revolving around the globe due to driver distraction.
When we dig deep into the accident report of India 2019, you can see distracted driving is the major cause of fatal accidents.
Distraction while driving occurs for various reasons, but most commonly, drivers are involved in this distraction driving activity for two reasons, either in some compulsion or due to their lethargic behavior.
In most distracted driving cases, drivers are involved in these common four activities: visual distraction, audio distraction, voluntary distraction (mobile usage, alcohol consumption, smoking, etc.), and cognitive distraction (dreaming, sleeping, etc).
Nowadays, mobile phones are considered as the primary source of distraction. Save life foundation released a study on mobile phone usage patterns and behavior in that the report says 47% of people receive calls on their mobile phones while driving, and 41% of people use phones for work-related purposes while driving.
Alcohol consumption and speeding are known as the second leading causes of many fatal and serious injury crashes. Distracted driving behavior does not fit only into the commercial sector also fits into the domestic sector.
For example, On Sep 07, 2021, a case came to light; a distracted woman caused a crash by injuring five people in Lancaster. Here, the woman was distracted by some compulsion by her children.
To avoid the huge cost of distracted driving, logistics and transportation organizations need to take the necessary steps to enhance the safety of drivers, vehicles, and goods.
How To Avoid The Huge Cost Of Distracted Driving?
What are all the prevention and precaution methods we can take to avoid distracted driving? There are several methods to prevent distracted driving.
Tip 1: Make Use Of Your Cell Phones In Case Of Any Emergencies
Have a robust policy for yourself to safeguard your life, that you will not use your mobile while driving a vehicle; in case of any emergencies, pull over your vehicle and use your cell phone.
As we said earlier, mobile phones play an important role in driving distraction factors, and among 1749 drivers, 41% of drivers receive work-related calls while driving.
Note: Fleet managers and owners stop calling your drivers often while driving.
Tip 2: Take Breaks In Between
If you feel sleepy or if you face any cognitive distractions, pull off the road and take breaks. Mostly sleepiness, drowsy factors are faced by commercial truck drivers due to long journeys.
A survey on average daily driving hours of truck drivers across India as of February 2020 says truck drivers drive vehicles almost 12 hours a day. For extra money in pocket, some drivers drive continuously for hours without taking a break, which leads to the most dangerous crashes.
So if you feel tired, pull off from the road and take a nap!
Tip 3: Say No To Multitasking While Driving
Truck drivers spend a lot of time in their vehicles, and they tend to do all the small stuff inside their vehicles. But, never do any multitasking while driving; settle everything before you start to drive.
Tip 4: Slow Down Your Audio
We know some are crazy about listening to music anytime. But if you decide to hear the music loud or you plan to use headphones while driving, that may turn your idea into a crazy one. Audio distraction is also a factor that leads to major accidents. So, if you put the music on a high volume or do not use headphones while driving, it may leave you without hearing the horn sounds.
Tip 5: Make Use Of Driver Monitoring System (Dashcam)
It is really tough to monitor your driver’s every move while driving. But, now it is possible to monitor your drivers in live mode using a dashcam. What is Dashcam? Dashcams are known as video telematics technology that works with small cameras, which are fixed in the vehicle’s dashboard or windshield. Dashcams are also called truck cameras, driver video recorders, or video telematics.
What Are The Uses Of Dashcams?
- Dashcam helps you record video while the driver drives the vehicle.
- It also provides you 24*7 live streaming of the vehicle.
- Dashcam comes with an external detachable camera, which you can fix for the road view, rear view, or goods monitor, etc.
- Dashcam videos act as evidence for any incidents.
- You can claim insurance with dashcam videos.
- Dashcam provides you HD quality videos.
- Dashcam videos are saved in the SD card, inserted in the dashcam device, or stored in the cloud.
- Mainly dashcam provides you (ADAS) Advanced Driver Assistance System.
- Dashcam helps you to provide automatic alerts to your drivers and fleet owners while it captures any distracted driving incident like mobile usage alert, smoking alert, closed eyes alert, etc.
- The dashcam has 2-way communication technology.
Using a driver behavior monitoring system, a dashcam, you will get complete visibility and control over your vehicle and the entire trip. Get your entire trip visibility through Vamosys Dashcams Solution.
