Gartzonikas Christos, “Impact of texting on young drivers’ traffic and safety on motorways by the use of a driving simulator”, NTUA, School of Civil Engineering, Athens, July 2012.

This Diploma Thesis aims to investigate the impact of text messaging to the driver behavior and safety in motorways. In order to achieve this objective an experimental process on a driving simulator was carried out, in which all the participants drove in different driving scenarios. Lognormal regression methods were used to investigate the influence of text messaging as well as various other parameters on the mean speed and the mean distance from the front vehicle. Binary logistic methods were used to investigate the influence of text messaging as well as various other parameters in the probability of an accident. From the models application it appears that text messaging leads to statistically significant decrease of the mean speed and to increase of the headway in normal and in specific conditions in motorways and simultaneously leads to an increase of accident’s probability, probably due to increased reaction time of the driver in case of an incident. It appeared that drivers who had mobile phones with touch screen, present different driving behavior as a mean speed decrease and a headways increase, and they presented also a higher probability of being involved in an accident.