Cell Phone Use & Driving
Impact on Employee Safety,
Productivity and Employer Liability
Janet Froetscher
President & CEO
National Safety Council
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© 2012 National Safety Council
The National Safety Council
The National Safety Council saves lives by preventing injuries
and deaths at work, in homes and communities, and on the
roads, through leadership, research, education and advocacy.
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© 2012 National Safety Council
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Preventing injuries and saving lives since 1913
Partnering with businesses, government agencies, elected officials
and the public
15+ years serving more than 100 countries
51,000 member company locations reaching 8.5 million employees
Celebrating 100 Years of Safety
• Since 1912, the death rate has been cut in half
• Nearly 6 million lives have been saved through collective
efforts of the safety movement
• Today, safety is a humanitarian and economic necessity
© 2012 National Safety Council
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We’ve come a long way
• Imbed video of San Francisco street
here….
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Preventable Injuries and Deaths
© 2012 National Safety Council
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At Work
Deaths
Medically consulted injuries
3,909
5 million
On the Roads
Deaths
Medically consulted injuries
34,600
3.7 million
At Home
Deaths
Medically consulted injuries
60,600
18.8 million
Why Workplaces are Safer
Than Our Roadways
• Businesses have been leading the culture of
safety in our country for decades
– Example, seatbelts
• Businesses willing to prioritize safety
• Comfortable making decisions with limited data
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Today’s Sobering Facts on
Motor vehicle crashes
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1 million people have died in motor vehicle crashes in last 25 yrs
35,000 deaths each year in the U.S.
#1 cause of workplace fatalities
Leading cause of on and off-the-job unintentional deaths in U.S.
Leading cause of death for people 5- to 24-years-old
Cost to society = $100 billion per year
Society appears to have grown complacent, accepting these
deaths and injuries
• All are preventable
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Understanding Crash Causation
Vehicle maintenance factors
– Definite cause 10% of the time
– Probable cause 13% of the time
Environmental factors
– Definite cause 20% of the time
– Probable cause 33% of the time
Human error
– Definite cause 70% of the time
– Probable cause 93% of the time
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Source: Auto Alliance
Crashes and Cell Phones
Risk – how risky is the distraction
Reading
3.4x
Reaching for a moving object 8.8x
Turning around in a seat
8.8x
Talking on a cell phone
4x
Texting
8-23x
Prevalence – how often is it happening
Manipulating a wireless device 0.9%
Talking on a cell phone
9%
Lower risk behaviors include eating while driving and listening to the radio
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Crashes and Cell Phones
• 21% of all crashes involve cell phone conversations, that’s 1.1
million crashes per year
• 4% of all crashes involve texting, that’s 213,000 crashes
25% of all crashes
involve cell phone use
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Cell Phone Use and Driving
• Likelihood of crashing increases by 4x
• Cell phone distracted drivers have slower reaction times and
were more likely to crash than drivers with a .08 BAC
• Risk was raised irrespective of whether or not a hands-free
device was used
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Prevention Challenges
• Nearly everyone recognizes risks of texting
• Fewer realize that cell phone conversation distracts
the brain
• When drivers do recognize danger, they see it in
other drivers, not themselves
• False sense of security because nothing bad
happens during most trips
• Hands-free seen as solution, believed safer than
handheld
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Three Types of Distractions
• There are three types of distraction:
Visual:
eyes on road
Mechanical:
hands on wheel
Cognitive:
mind on driving
• Much more than “eyes on the road, hands on the wheel”
• Visual and mechanical distractions are short lived – cognitive
distractions last much longer
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Multitasking is a Myth
• When brains are overloaded by two cognitive tasks, people switch
attention without realizing it
• Driving becomes impaired when it becomes a secondary task
• “Switching” causes slower reaction times
– Fractions of seconds are lost but they add up
– Vehicle traveling 55 mph travels length of football field before
stopping
– About 21 car lengths
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Hands-free and Crash Risk
• Hands free devices do not reduce crash risk:
– National Safety Council
– National Transportation Safety Board
– World Health Organization
– Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
– Governors Highway Safety Association
• 30+ studies reported substantial negative effects of cell phone
use on driving for hands-free and handheld phones
• Hands-free and hand-held have similar effects in reaction time
and speed
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Inattention Blindness
• “Looking” but not “seeing”
• We think we see everything in our surroundings but our
brains actually analyze very little information
• Drivers talking on cell phones less likely to see:
– Exits, red lights and stop signs
– Navigational signage
– Content of objects
• How much info can we miss seeing? 50%
© 2012 National Safety Council
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“Tunnel Vision” of a Driver
Using Hands-free
Where drivers not using a
hands-free cell phone looked
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Where drivers using a
hands-free cell phone looked
A Personal Account
Thursday (2-2-2012) evening I was in my car, stopped at a traffic light.
After the light turned green, but before the car in front of me had time
to start through the intersection, I was hit from behind. In talking with
the woman who hit me, I found out that she was on her phone – but
she assured me that she was driving safely because she was using
her built-in, hands-free system in her Lincoln SUV. She said that she
saw the light was green, but guessed that she didn’t notice that the
cars weren’t moving yet. Fortunately, nobody was hurt seriously.
When the police got there, she showed them all the “safety features”
of her in-dash phone system, and they seemed impressed - she didn’t
get a ticket!
Debby Young, NSC Staff
®
© 2012 National Safety Council
A Decrease in Brain Activation
• Regions of the brain pull from shared, limited resource
• Seemingly unrelated tasks – like conversation and vision – can
pull from same area
• Listening to sentences on cell phones decreased activity by 37%
in the brain’s parietal lobe
Driving only
Driving with sentence listening
Source: Carnegie Mellon University
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Passenger Conversations
• Adult drivers with passengers have lower crash rates
• Adult passengers share awareness of driving situation, a
safety benefit
– Co-pilot
– Can adjust conversation
• Cell phone talking is different
– Social expectations – silence is weird
– Envisioning person on other end of phone
• Passenger conversation can be distracting
© 2012 National Safety Council
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A Common Misperception
If talking on a cell phone is so dangerous, and cell phone
use has exploded in the last 10 years, why haven’t we seen
a spike in crashes and fatalities?
Crashes have actually decreased 9% since 2000 and
fatalities have also trended downward.
How can this be?
© 2012 National Safety Council
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© 2012 National Safety Council
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10%
cell phone use
2%
cell phone use
© 2012 National Safety Council
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© 2012 National Safety Council
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How do we solve this problem
of 1.3 million crashes per year
involving cell phone use and texting?
© 2012 National Safety Council
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NSC Strategies
Education: Educate the public about the risks and crash
involvement of cell phone use and the special risks of
texting/email/internet use
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Business Policies: Work with employers to enact cell phone
bans for all employee use
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Build public awareness about the special risks of
texting/email/internet use
Legislation: Work with legislators to enact texting bans. Seek the
first state to enact a total cell phone ban
Technology: Seek engineering and technology solutions
© 2012 National Safety Council
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What we learned from seatbelts
0%
14%
Public Education
1966-1981
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60%
State Laws
1982-1996
80% 86%
Current Usage
Enforcement
1997-2007
The NSC Cell Phone Policy Kit
Employee education
• Myth busters
• Top 10 reasons
• FAQs
• Tips to drive cell-free
• Voice mail greetings
• Parking lot signs
• Posters
• Family stories
• Much more!
© 2012 National Safety Council
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http://cellphonekit.nsc.org
Companies with Policies
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Exxon/Mobil
DuPont
Halliburton
Shell
Chevron
BP
Enbridge
AstraZeneca
Spectra Energy
CA Office of Traffic Safety
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Abbott
EnCana
Cargill
CSX Intermodal
Schneider National
Sysco Corporation
Time Warner Cable
Potash
Owens Corning
NTSB
What about productivity?
Survey of AMEC employees one year after corporate
cell phone driving ban
• 97% agreed talking on a cell phone impacts a person’s ability
to drive safely
• 96% felt responsible companies should discourage use of
wireless communications while driving
• 95% did not experience a decrease in productivity as a result
of the ban during work hours
• 83% reduced or quit using wireless devices while driving
outside of work hours
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Case Study: GPIC Implements
Corporate Cell Phone Ban
• President Jawahery launches GPIC Mobile Phone Ban Campaign
being the first to sign the policy
• NSC materials and car stickers distributed to employees reminding
them to switch off their phones before driving
• President Jawahery sent letters to public officials, trade associations,
other leading companies and vendors urging them to implement bans
in their organizations
• Brought campaign into shopping malls and local universities to bring
message to the public
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Case Study: GPIC
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Employer Liability
Small sample of employers who were held liable for their
employees involved in cell phone distracted driving crashes:
$21 million - A soft drink beverage truck driver was using a hands-free headset, in
compliance with a handheld ban, when she struck another vehicle and injured the
driver. A jury awarded $21 million in damages to the injured driver
$18 million: A transport company in Alabama was ordered to pay damages to the
plaintiff who was left unable to walk or talk after a crash caused by one of their drivers
distracted by a cell phone
$2.5 million: State of Hawaii agreed to pay as its share of liability in a crash involving a
state employee who was talking on her cell phone when she hit a tourist
$1.5 million: City of Palo Alto has agreed to pay the victim of a vehicle crash involving a
city worker who was using his cell phone while driving
© 2012 National Safety Council
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NSC Leading the Way
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Recognize Distracted Driving
Month this April
www.nsc.org/ddmonth
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© 2012 National Safety Council
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Video series
Posters
Fact sheets
Social media posts
White papers
Current Legislative Landscape
Handheld cell phone bans for all drivers
10 U.S. states the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands prohibit
all drivers from talking on handheld cell phones while driving.
Source: www.iihs.org/l
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Updated: June 2012
Text Messaging Bans
39 states and the District of Columbia have a text messaging
ban for all drivers.
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Source: www.iihs.org/
Updated: June 2012
Novice Driver Bans
In 32 states and the District of Columbia ban all cell use by novice drivers.
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Source: www.iihs.org/laws/maptextingbans.aspx
Updated: November 2011
Technology as a Solution
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© 2012 National Safety Council
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Signal jamming
– Jamming device in vehicle
– Limited geographic reach
– Currently illegal
Smartphone app without vehicle integration
– Uses phone’s GPS to trigger “driving condition”
– Sends calls to VM, stores texts and emails
Smartphone app with vehicle integration
– Sensor plugs in to vehicle OBD port
– Communicates “driving” to phone via Bluetooth
Wireless network solution
– “Thin client” on smart phone signals network of “driving condition”
– Network applies call management tools
Public Support
2012 NHTSA Survey on Distracted Driving Attitudes and Behaviors
• Nearly three-fourths of respondents supported bans on handheld cell phone use
• 94% supported texting or email bans
2012 AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety Study
• 66.4% of drivers support laws banning handheld cell phones for all drivers.
2010 Quinnipiac University
• 63% American voters support ban on cell phone use while driving, even while
using a "hands-free" device
2009 Nationwide Insurance “On Your Side Survey”
• 57% drivers support a ban on all cell phone use while driving
© 2012 National Safety Council
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What You Can Do
• Personal example – stop using cell phone when
driving (change no answer greeting)
• Don’t talk with people who call you while they are
driving
• Educate employees, drivers, parents, friends and
family
• Implement cell phone driving bans
• Support legislation and enforcement
• Hold offenders accountable
© 2012 National Safety Council
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Erica Forney – Nine year old killed by a cell
phone driver while riding her bicycle home
from school. (November 2008, CO)
“My name is Michelle. I am 36 years old. On Nov. 25,
2008, I accidentally struck Erica Forney. Although I do
not have a clear memory of the accident, the police tell
me I recently finished a cell phone call and may have
been distracted...
Jay & Jean Good – Killed when hit
by a tractor-trailer that swerved to
avoid a minivan that ran a light, 18year-old minivan driver talking on a
cell phone. (May 2008, PA)
© 2012 National Safety Council
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12 year old killed by cell phone
distracted driver
Joe Teater 4/12/91 – 1/20/04
© 2012 National Safety Council
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© 2012 National Safety Council
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Questions?
© 2012 National Safety Council
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