Editorial: Smartphone use and road toll both climb

The survey confirms what everybody observes - that illegal phone use is prolific. Photo / File

Editorial

No so long ago the road toll was coming down. The number of deaths and injuries on the roads had been falling as cars were better designed to absorb impacts, drink-driving warnings were at last being heeded, reinforced by random stopping and "blitz" checkpoints, some busy roads were made safer. But quite suddenly the improvement stopped. The toll turned worse in 2012 and the trend has continued. In the past five years the annual tally of serious accidents has doubled. What happened?

There may be more than one explanation but it is hard not to put a good part of the blame on the advent of the smartphone.

Those all-purpose hand-held phones are not supposed to be used while driving, and indeed it has been illegal since at least 2012, but it happens. A survey from a single bridge over a stretch of Auckland motorway, using a camera designed for the purpose, caught 671 drivers touching their phones over a seven hour period. That was about 10 times as many cellphone offences as police recorded daily across the whole country over the year to March.

The survey confirms what everybody observes - that illegal phone use is prolific. Drivers might not be putting phones to their ear as much as they did before the law was passed but today's phones are no longer primarily audio devices. They are more likely to be used for reading and texting. Of the drivers snapped from the motorway overpass that day, 35 per cent had the phone in their laps. Only 2 per cent had it mounted near the dashboard, keeping some of their vision on the road. The majority were holding the device in their hands as they drove, in off peak traffic where the speed limit was 100km/h.

It is hard to think of something more distracting than texting, or even just reading a phone screen. Pedestrians reading phones are bad enough, near-collisions are everyday experiences on footpaths these days. The same level of inattention in a car is likely to cause a crash. In America 28 per cent of accidents involve a cellphone, while only 15 per cent are attributed to speed alone. The figures are probably similar here, though speed is still officially considered the main culprit and there are moves afoot to lower the speed limit on many roads.

The Auckland survey was made by an Australian company, One Task, that hopes to supply the detection cameras to New Zealand. It is bidding in a tender by the New South Wales state government but has been unable to make its case to other states so far. The company says the NZ Transport Agency has shown interest in the camera but the agency appears to need a signal from its ministers.

Road safety was given a priority in a Government Policy Statement on land transport issued in May but its preferred solutions were speed control and safer roads. It contemplates spending money on widening road "shoulders" and even erecting side barriers. Speed no doubt remains a factor in collisions but smartphones may be equally to blame. If cameras can detect drivers' fingers on a phone with forensic accuracy, they could save lives.