Are you a distracted driver?

Thirty-three states now have a hands-free ban. It is illegal for anyone to be driving and holding a phone. You can be pulled over for that and receive a fine for that. It also will take some points off your license. I'm Charlie Clower. I am a research scientist here at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, and I am an associate professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech. I have been working at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute for about 30 years. In that time, we've done a series of naturalistic driving studies where we instrument people's private vehicles with cameras and data acquisition systems so we not only know how fast they're going how hard they're breaking how hard they're cornering but we also know what types of traffic environments they're in and how they're responding to those traffic environments just two seconds of eyes off-road time we see and measure increases in crash risk we also see that in not just a single glance off-road but multiple glances that add up to two seconds within a six-second window. Risk is much higher with cell phones. We also see increased risk with engaging in the infotainment system and specifically when there aren't knobs and dials. So a lot of these infotainment systems in many modern vehicles have been going to full touch screens. Those are very distracting and we do see significant eyes off road time with those as well as increased risk. When there's knobs and dials, that risk drops significantly. 33 states now have a hands-free ban. We do have a hands-free law in the state of Virginia. It is illegal for anyone to be driving and holding a phone. You can be pulled over for that and receive a fine for that. It also will take some points off your license. Unfortunately, however, we still see a lot of distracted driving, even in Virginia and across the U.S. The U.S. DOT has adopted the safe system approach. One really great example of this is a T intersection versus a roundabout. It slows people down. People are now traveling in the same direction. The forces that occur at a collision are much, much less than they are in a Tivo. My tips for people are really, when you first get in the driver's seat, just kind of assess the situation and make a plan. If you need to use your map display and navigation display, enter those addresses in before you put the vehicle in drive. If you need to set your music, do so while you're sitting there. Make sure that it's ready to go and playing what you want it to play and then drive. Put your cell phone in a place where you actually can't reach it. If you have Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, set that up before you start moving. Make sure everything is in place so that you can keep your eyes on the road as much as possible while you're moving.