Oikonomou M., Pavlou D., Yannis G., “The traffic and safety effect of smartphone texting and web surfing during driving in cities: A driving simulator study”, Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Driver Distraction and Inattention (18-20 October 2021).

Over the last years, in addition to the increasing use of smartphones, new vehicles are equipped with technologies that make it even easier to use a smartphone while driving [1]. For that reason, driver distraction by using a mobile phone is a cause of road traffic accidents [2-3]. International research has indicated that accident probability is increasing when a driver is being distracted [4-5] and especially for the young, distracted drivers this increase is reaching 8% [6]. Moreover, reading text messages while driving reduces the driving speed by 30% [7]. The objective of this study is to quantify the traffic and safety effect of texting and web surfing by a smartphone during driving in urban areas, through a driving simulator experiment.