- It is known that driver inattention is a major cause of traffic accidents, injuries and deaths.
- Out of all safety-critical events in traffic it has been estimated that over 30% are caused by driver inattention.
- Almost 80 percent of all crashes and 65 percent of all near-crashes involved visual inattention in a 100-car naturalistic field study on the topic.
- As a cause of visual inattention by secondary activities in these safety-critical events the use of a mobile device was by far the leading cause by at least 30%.
- Drivers engaging in visually complex tasks have a three-times higher near-crash/crash risk than drivers who pay attention to the road ahead.
- Field studies have shown that drivers are trying to keep diverging glance durations within safe limits but that often their allocation of visual attention is inefficient and unsafe – drivers take a look at a wrong place at a wrong time and/or look at a wrong place for too long given the visual demands of the traffic situation.
- Lead car scenarios with short following headways, in particular, are high-risk situations when combined with distracted driving.
- The estimated costs of distracted driving in USA alone are over 24 billion USD per year.