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It’s no secret that we Saffas love scrolling on our phones, but this deep relationship with our pocket-sized devices may be the death of us.

New research from Discovery Insure shows that 60% of fatal car crashes can be attributed to the following five things: drinking and driving, excessive speeding, aggressive driving, poor vehicle care, and, you guessed it, cellphone usage.

Additional information provided by StatisticsSA has pointed out that 97.2% of South African households own at least one cellphone, a trend that suggests that our love of the mobile phone is taking over, to the detriment of our safety.

Robert Attwell, CEO of Discovery Insure, explained that the insurance company was able to glean the true impact of drivers being distracted by their phones after surveying 19 billion kilometres of driving data extracted from 500,000 daily trips.

The data speaks for itself, and although road and vehicle conditions contribute to accidents, the overwhelming evidence showed that nothing spelled ‘fatal car crash’ more than a distracted driver on their cell phone.

Attwell revealed the important data that Discovery Insure had procured at the UN Global Campaign for Road Safety, in partnership with JCDecaux, an initiative aimed at arming drivers with information and preventative road safety measures.

While drinking and driving, excessive speeding, aggressive driving, poor vehicle care, and road conditions have a large impact on drivers, the most harrowing takeaway from the global campaign was that cell phone use trumped every one of these factors.

“Combining these insights with our driving data, we can see that driving behaviour has a bigger impact on road fatalities than road conditions. The data shows that parts of the country with the best roads may have high motor vehicle fatalities because of bad driving behaviour,” Attwell explained.

According to the Discovery Insure CEO, a measly 20 seconds on your phone while driving will immediately increase the likelihood of a fatal accident by a whopping 20%.

The insurance company also found that 52% of drivers who had claimed for an accident had likely been using their phone during the incident; the crashes were way less likely to be caused by traversing the speed limit or other reasons.

Arrive Alive’s cell phone use guidelines for drivers are a good reminder that we all need to take road safety seriously, particularly when it comes to our beloved devices:

• You are not permitted to use a cell phone while driving if it is being held by any part of your body. Esentially, you need to invest in one of those nifty hands-free do-hickeys if you need to make calls on the go.
• As long as your engine is on, you’re technically driving. So that means no sneaky TikTok viewings when stationary at the robots!
• All actions associated with using a cell phone, including taking pictures and recording voice notes, count as using your phone while driving, and you can be klapped with a hefty fine if you’re spotted by law enforcement.

Even if there is no officer present to wag a finger at you, using your cell phone while driving is certainly not worth the risk of loss of life.

[source:dailymaverick]