Smartphone Apps Drive Gig Workers, Parents To Distraction
Wednesday, December 28th, 2022 AutoGig-economy workers are 4 times as likely as other drivers to use smartphone apps regularly while driving, a new survey from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows.
‘The explosion of smartphone features and services has not only created new forms of driver distraction, but also a new group of rideshare and delivery drivers whose jobs require them to interact with their phones while they’re on the road,’ IIHS President David Harkey said.
Parents are also nearly 50 percent more prone to routinely making video calls, checking weather reports and other types of smartphone-enabled distractions than drivers without children 18 or younger, the survey found.
Statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicate that more than 3,000 people died in distraction-related crashes in 2020, accounting for 8 percent of all traffic-related fatalities. Because it’s difficult to determine if distraction contributed to a crash, that number is almost certainly an underestimate.
