The Role of Mobile Phone Distraction in Road Traffic Accidents

Abstract

Studies have indicated that death as a result of road traffic accidents will rise to fifth position globally by 2030. This has generated much concern among road safety professionals, traffic engineers and policy makers. Several factors such as over speeding, drink-drive, distraction, fatigue, overloading, brake failure, pot holes, poor geometric design, poor visibility, and so on are some of the causes of road traffic accident. Currently, the use of mobile phone while driving has been shown to be one of the leading causes of driver’s distraction. Therefore, this paper presents a review on the audio and visual activities involving mobile phone while driving and their contributions to road traffic accident. Based on the articles consulted during this work, it has been shown that both the audio and visual activities involving mobile phone usage during driving have significant influence on driver’s performance by increasing reaction time, shortening headway, changing lane position and so on. However, these negative driving behaviours were shown to be riskier during visual activities like texting and accessing social media application such as Facebook, Telegram, WhatsApp, and so on.