View article

Distracted driving resulting from secondary task engagement is a major contributing factor to teenage drivers’ crash risk. This study aims to determine the extent to which visual inattention while engaging in distracting secondary tasks contributes to teenage drivers’ crash risk.

Real-world driving data were collected from a cohort of 82 newly licensed teenagers (average age 16.48 years, SD=0.33) recruited in Virginia. Participants’ private vehicles were equipped with data acquisition systems that documented driving kinematics and miles driven, and made video recordings of the driver and driving environment. Data were collected from 2010 to 2014 and analyzed in 2017. The analysis of secondary task engagement was based on 6-second video segments from both crash and random samples of normal driving.

Of a wide range of secondary tasks, only manual cellphone use (OR=2.7, 95 …