Regev, S;
Rolison, J;
Feeney, A;
Moutari, S;
(2017)
Driver distraction is an under-reported cause of road accidents: An examination of discrepancy between police officers’ views and road accident reports.
In:
DDI2017 e-Proceedings collection.
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Abstract
Police records represent the primary source of data on the role of driver distraction in crashes. It is commonly assumed that officers attending the crash scene tend to underreport driver distraction as a contributing factor in crashes. However, this assumption has never been explicitly tested. Thus, the goal of this study was to empirically estimate the presence of underreporting bias of driver distraction in police crash reports. We also explored whether such underreporting vary with respect to the age and gender of the driver. To this end, we presented police officers with hypothetical crash scenarios involving drivers from different age and gender groups. For each scenario, officers estimated the possible factors they believed to have contributed to the collision. We assessed the under-reporting of distraction-related crashes by comparing police officers’ views with real crash reports. Our findings show that officers more often viewed distractive behaviours inside the vehicle as a cause of collisions than was evident in the crash reports. This difference was particularly pronounced with respect to mobile phone use as a cause of crashes. In contrast, officers’ views and accidents records were similar with regard to the involvement of outside-vehicle distraction in crashes. Overall, the results substantiate claims that police reports do not provide reliable information on the role of driver distraction in crashes. In particular, the dangers of mobile phone use whilst driving have been severely underestimated.
| Type: | Proceedings paper |
|---|---|
| Title: | Driver distraction is an under-reported cause of road accidents: An examination of discrepancy between police officers’ views and road accident reports |
| Event: | The Fifth International Conference on Driver Distraction and Inattention |
| Location: | Paris, France |
| Dates: | 20 March 2017 - 22 March 2017 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Publisher version: | http://www.ifsttar.fr/collections/ActesInteractifs... |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1574703 |
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