Distracted driving causes 25 percent of Canada's road fatalities: report

distracted driving

As depressing as it is unreal, 25 percent of road fatalities in Canada are the consequence of distracted driving, writes Trillium Car Dealers Clan president Cliff Lafreniere in a Toronto Star op-ed.

Worse, despite the efforts of police enforcement and campaigns aimed to inform the public on the risks of distracted driving, the fatality percent remained consequent over the past few years.

While some may see distracted driving every bit texting-and-driving, the term goes far beyond typing or scrolling on a smartphone. In fact, any activity that causes a driver to shift their eyes from the road constitutes distracted driving, according to police. This includes grabbing a slice of gum from the centre console or selecting a vocal from the infotainment screen.

Some may dismiss the danger through wishful thinking but according to the CAA, "checking a text for five seconds means that at 90 km/h yous've travelled the length of a football field blindfolded." That'south a sizable distance travelled without whatsoever guidance.

Lafreniere also emphasized the penalties for distracted driving. An offender tin can receive up to $1,000 fine along with three-day suspension and iii demerit points. Repeat offenders confront harsher consequences. On a national scale, road crashes in Canada bring an estimated $25 billion loss per year, says The Traffic Injury Research Foundation.

Some car companies also offer their solution to foreclose distracted driving through a heads-up display (HUD). Getting its name from the fighter jets, a HUD is a transparent brandish mounted on the driver side dashboard that allows the person to maintain a line of sight on the route while safely receiving navigation, speed and miscellaneous data. Some latest HUD implementations on sports cars such as a 2019 Mercedes-AMG E63 S sedan include an engine revolution counter with selected manual gear ratio and taking the guesswork out of the equation when driving around a runway.

However, many car makers exercise not treat a HUD as a safety feature nearly as much as a luxury/novelty add-on, thus producing many cars without it. To make matters more than complicated, the world of automobiles sees an ongoing trend that swaps the tried-and-truthful analog controls for screens that provide petty to no haptic feedback.

The 2020 Audi A8, for example, ditched the rotary knobs and dials for two center-mounted impact screens that are prone to causing distracted driving. Fifty-fifty though drivers could however use the function keys on the steering wheel to engage different parts of the infotainment system, it is a far less intuitive alternative than physical knobs and switches that get well with muscle memory.

If y'all don't have a fancy bear on screen or a HUD, established voice aid services such as Google Assistant and Siri tin can still serve as a great alternative since they are gratuitous and rely on voice recognition over visual feedback. If you hate using voice command, just set the navigation and music beforehand and pay close attention to the road ahead. It's that unproblematic to exist a responsible driver.

Source: The Toronto Star