Dialing Riskiest Driving Behavior for Both Teens and Adults

According to a study, both novice drivers and more experienced motorists are more likely to get into trouble while driving because of one distracting activity-dialing a cell phone behind the wheel.

The study compared driving skills of novice drivers with more experienced drivers. There were a total of 42 novice drivers who had only just recently received their driving licenses, and these drivers were compared with 109 adults who had been driving for approximately 2 decades on an average.

The researchers compared driving skills for a period of between 12 to 18 months. They found that during the study period, the motorists got into 73 accidents overall, out of which 31 involved novice drivers, and 42 involved the experienced drivers. It’s important to note here that the experienced drivers belonged to a much larger group in number. Apart from these, the researchers recorded approximately 612 near- miss incidents.

Novice drivers had various ways of getting distracted behind the wheel, which increased their risk of an accident. Those activities behind the wheel included dialing a cell phone, which increased the risk of getting into an accident by 8.32 times. Other activities included reaching for something besides the cellphone, reaching for the cellphone, looking at something outside the car, and eating.

But in the case of the more experienced drivers with more than 20 years of experience on an average, it was only dialing a cell phone that seemed to increase the risk of a car accident.

The research also found that with an increase in the number of hours that the teenager novice drivers logged in behind the wheel, came an increase in confidence and a higher likelihood that they would focus on things other than the road while driving.