Elena Papathanasiou, Evridiki Postantzi, “The impact of mobile phone use and music on the driver behaviour and safety by the use of a driving simulator”, NTUA, School of Civil Engineering, Athens, March 2011.

This Diploma Thesis aims to investigate the impact of mobile phone use and music on the driver behaviour and the probability of being involved in an accident. In order to achieve this goal, an experimental process on a driving simulator was carried out, in which all the participants drove in mountainous environment with and without mobile phone and music. On the basis of the experiment, data lognormal regression models were developed and it appeared that mobile phone use leads to a statistically significant decrease in speed, while music tends to increase it. Moreover, the difficult conversation at the mobile phone leads to an increase in reaction time when it comes to an unexpected event and mobile phone use in general leads to an increase in the distance of the vehicle from the middle of the road. From the binary logistic model it appeared that the difficult conversation at the mobile phone leads to an increased probability of being involved in an accident, in case of an unexpected event which was activated by the experiment coordinator. It appears that the lower speed and the increase of the distance from the middle of the road of the drivers who have a difficult conversation at the mobile phone while driving, cannot compensate for the much greater risk of an accident, in case of an unexpected event, due to increased reaction time.