Harbin Institute of Technology Reports Findings in Risk Management (Temporal analysis of cellphone-use-involved crash injury severities: Calling for preventing cellphone-use-involved distracted driving): Risk Management

2022 MAR 29 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- New research on Risk Management is the subject of a report. According to news reporting originating in Harbin, People’s Republic of China, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “With the popularity of smartphones and the increasing dependence on cellphones, cellphone-use-involved distracted driving has become a global traffic safety concern. Calling, texting, or watching videos while driving could have harmful impacts on driving abilities and increase crash-injury severities.”

The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from the Harbin Institute of Technology, “To investigate the temporal stability and the heterogeneity of cellphone-involved crash injury severity determinants, a series of likelihood ratio tests and random parameters logit models with heterogeneity in means and variances are estimated. Cellphone-involved single-vehicle crash datasets of Pennsylvania from 2004 to 2019 are utilized. Marginal effects are also applied to investigate the impact of explanatory variables on injury severity outcomes. The results indicate an overall temporal instability of cellphone-involved crashes across different periods. However, driving without seatbelts and overturns are observed to produce relatively stable and positive influence on the increased injury severities of cellphone-involved crashes. Besides, it is noteworthy that a combination of cellphone usage with risky driving behaviors (aggressive driving, alcohol- or drug-related driving, speeding, or fatigue driving) significantly increase driver injury-severities. This finding highlights the necessity of identifying drivers with multiple risk-taking behaviors and enacting laws to prohibit these drivers from using cellphones while driving. Applications of smartphones provide another feasible approach to prevent using cellphones while driving.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Insights and suggestions of this study would be valuable to mitigate the negative outcomes of cellphone-involved crashes and prevent the crashes caused by cellphone-involved distracted driving in the future.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Temporal analysis of cellphone-use-involved crash injury severities: Calling for preventing cellphone-use-involved distracted driving. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 2022;169:106625. Accident Analysis & Prevention can be contacted at: Pergamon-elsevier Science Ltd, The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, England.

Our news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Peijie Wu, School of Transportation Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, 73 Huanghe Street, Nangang District, Harbin 150090, People’s Republic of China. Additional authors for this research include Li Song and Xianghai Meng.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2022.106625. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

The publisher of the journal Accident Analysis & Prevention can be contacted at: Pergamon-elsevier Science Ltd, The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, England.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)