Mobile Phone Use Auto Accidents
According to the NHTSA, 37,262 died from auto accidents during 2008. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration reports more than we had over 100 deaths per day in 2016 auto accidents. Due to lack or reporting, most are not sure how many of those auto accident deaths are attributed to smartphone mobile use or distractions.
For many years, mobile phone use when driving were primarily phone conversations and most recently texting while driving on your smartphone. Today, we have many more mobile use distractons while driving. High mobile use of smartphones and auto accidents can be attributed to social media and the millenium mindset of "Me" "Now" or "Instant Gratification"... of texting, uploading selfies, social likes and sharing social media post...
With the recent surge of mobile video views, we are still far off from reporting auto accident attributions to social media video views or social media video sharing across all platforms. Most Social Media Apps like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat don't have any deterrants or sensors while audience engagement levels increase on these Apps.
Recent iPhone software upgrades are starting to have built in sensoring that monitors motion while driving.
Over the past two years, after decades of declining deaths on the road, U.S. traffic fatalities surged by 14.4 percent. In 2016 alone, more than 100 people died every day in or near vehicles in America, the first time the country has passed that grim toll in a decade. Regulators, meanwhile, still have no good idea why crash related deaths are spiking: People are driving longer distances but not tremendously so; total miles were up just 2.2 percent last year. Collectively, we seemed to be speeding and drinking a little more, but not much more than usual. Together, experts say these upticks don’t explain the surge in road deaths.
There are however three big clues, and they don’t rest along the highway. One, as you may have guessed, is the substantial increase in smartphone use by U.S. drivers as they drive. From 2014 to 2016, the share of Americans who owned an iPhone, Android phone, or something comparable rose from 75 percent to 81 percent.
The second is the changing way in which Americans use their phones while they drive. These days, we’re pretty much done talking. Texting, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are the order of the day—all activities that require far more attention than simply holding a gadget to your ear or responding to a disembodied voice. By 2015, almost 70 percent of Americans were using their phones to share photos and follow news events via social media. In just two additional years, that figure has jumped to 80 percent.
Finally, the increase in fatalities has been largely among bicyclists, motorcyclists, and pedestrians—all of whom are easier to miss from the driver’s seat than, say, a 4,000-pound SUV—especially if you’re glancing up from your phone rather than concentrating on the road. Last year, 5,987 pedestrians were killed by cars in the U.S., almost 1,100 more than in 2014—that’s a 22 percent increase in just two years.
Safety regulators and law enforcement officials certainly understand the danger of taking—or making—a phone call while operating a piece of heavy machinery. They still, however, have no idea just how dangerous it is, because the data just isn’t easily obtained. And as mobile phone traffic continues to shift away from simple voice calls and texts to encrypted social networks, officials increasingly have less of a clue than ever before.
There are many reasons to believe mobile phones are far deadlier than NHTSA spreadsheets suggest. Some of the biggest indicators are within the data itself. In more than half of 2015 fatal crashes, motorists were simply going straight down the road no crossing traffic, rainstorms, or blowouts. Meanwhile, drivers involved in accidents increasingly mowed down things smaller than a small cars, such as pedestrians or cyclists, many of whom occupy the side of the road or the sidewalk next to it.