Cellphone-distracted crashes of novice teen drivers: Understanding associations of contributing factors for crash severity levels and cellphone usage types

Abstract

Objective

As novice teen drivers are uniquely susceptible to the harmful effects of secondary activities on cellphones, 38 states and Washington D.C. have banned all types of cellphone usage for drivers younger than 18 years or in the learner/intermediate phase of driving. Despite the prevalence of such cellphone prohibitions, several surveillance studies have highlighted the persistent engagement of teenagers in cellphone-distracted driving, which increases the related crash risk. Most of the prior studies broadly consider cellphone usage as a general distraction instead of investigating different distraction-related tasks associated with cellphone use. This study analyzed the cellphone crashes of novice teenagers (aged 15–17 years) to discover the grouping of contributing factors by crash severity levels and cellphone usage types.

Methods

The current study collected five years (2015–2019) of related crash data from the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development. A manual effort was carried out to recognize the type of cellphone tasks before collision by reading the narratives of police-investigated crash reports. Association rule mining was applied to explore the associations between numerous crash attributes in multiple circumstances without relying on any predetermined hypotheses.

Results

The cumulative effect of cellphone distraction and no seatbelt usage is frequently visible in confirmed injury crash scenarios. Cellphone crashes of novice teenagers at intersections are strongly associated with talking/listening rather than texting/browsing/dialing and reaching for/answering/locating. The associations among environmental factors and modes of cellphone usage significantly influence the manner of collisions. Single-vehicle crashes are associated with cellphone manipulation while driving on weekends in cloudy weather, whereas sideswipe collisions are frequent in evening hours during reaching for/answering/locating the cellphones. In relation to texting/browsing/dialing, novice teenagers operating vans/SUVs are strongly associated with traffic control violations.

Conclusions

The findings are expected to be beneficial for policymakers and other safety officials to develop strategic planning and implementable countermeasures when dealing with cellphone-distracted novice teenagers. The association of factors identified from the analysis exhibits real-world crash scenarios critical to strengthening driver education programs to mitigate teen driver crashes. Moreover, cellphone crashes and related casualties can be reduced by eliminating or improving one of the attributes involved in the crash patterns.

Keywords:

• Teen driver
• distracted driving
• association rule mining
• crash data analysis
• cellphone use

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions and feedback.

Author contributions

The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows: study conception and design: Md Mahmud Hossain, data preparation: Md Mahmud Hossain, M. Ashifur Rahman, Xiaoduan Sun; analysis and interpretation of results: Md Mahmud Hossain; draft manuscript preparation: Md Mahmud Hossain, Huaguo Zhou, M. Ashifur Rahman, Subasish Das, Xiaoduan Sun. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.