Talking, eating, drinking and uncontrolled steering: a South African example of distrated driving

Abstract

Paper presented at the 31st Annual Southern African Transport Conference 9-12 July 2012 "Getting Southern Africa to Work", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.

Road safety reports indicate that “the human” is the largest contributory factor in South African fatal crashes. Yet little is known about human factors in South African road safety. A better understanding of contributing behaviours such as distraction could assist in addressing road safety behaviour. Internationally a good deal of research has been dedicated to investigating the contribution that distracted driving practices play in crashes and near-crashes. This research paper provides an overview of how the Naturalistic Driving Studies (NDS) methodology was utilised in a small (non-representative) experiment to observe South African driver behaviour in an everyday setting. The findings provided insight related to a number of driver behaviour issues such as traffic conflicts, traffic violations and distracted driving. The most prominent distracted driving behaviours identified included: adjusting the radio, eating and drinking while driving (which led to uncontrolled steering behaviour) and mobile phone use. The focus of this paper is to disseminate findings related to distraction while driving in a South African setting. The paper provides an overview of the NDS methodology followed, findings from the experiment related to distractions and driving and concludes with the identification of possible research questions for future consideration.