News | Distracted Driving

These 8 Cities Have the Most Distracted Drivers

Engineering360 - IEEE GlobalSpec
April 3, 2018

Pop quiz: On an average trip, on a typical trip, how many seconds per mile is a driver distracted: 0.36 seconds, 2.67 seconds, or 5.83 seconds? Read on, the answer is below.

Data collected from more than 65 million trips over a period of six months revealed that distracted driving occurred during 36.1 percent of trips nationwide, up 5 percent from a year earlier. That’s according to Cambridge Mobile Telematics, founded in 2010 by two MIT professors.

The firm’s smartphone app collects data and provides tips for drivers to improve their on-the-road performance by measuring five driving behaviors: phone use while driving, at-risk speeding, hard braking, harsh acceleration, and cornering. The most recent data collected showed several patterns of distracted behavior, including:

  • The evening commute has the greatest amount of distraction, with 38 percent of trips exhibiting distracted driving behavior between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.
  • Most distractions occur at speeds of 30 – 40 miles per hour.
  • Drivers spend more time distracted on local roads (57 percent of the time) than on highways (43 percent of time).

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