In the mid-2000s, changing the radio station in a typical mid-range family car took two steps and a glance of two to three seconds. In a comparable model today, the same task takes four steps and can hold a driver's eyes for five to ten seconds. At 50km/h (about 31mph), three seconds of that means travelling 42 metres without watching the road.
Whether distraction contributed to a crash can be difficult to establish afterwards. Research by the Allianz Center for Technology (AZT), presented at the 14th Allianz Motor Day, examined more than 34,000 injury crashes in the German In-Depth Accident Study (GIDAS) database with Traffic Accident Research at TU Dresden. Distraction was recorded as a cause in about 1.4% of them. A case-by-case review found clear evidence of it in around 5%, rising to about 13% once indicators such as the absence of any braking or evasive action were included. Drawing on that analysis, its wider research programme and the scientific literature, the AZT estimates distraction may contribute to around one in three crashes.
A cause missing from the record is hard to price, and harder to apportion when liability is disputed. The distraction cases the AZT could identify followed a clear pattern. Drivers aged 18 to 25 and over 65 were over-represented, crashes happened more often outside towns at higher speeds, and rear-end and single-vehicle loss-of-control collisions dominated. In distraction cases, the driver more often did not brake or swerve at all.
Drivers' own accounts point the same way. Across the nine markets surveyed, a median of 18% of respondents said they had caused or partly caused a crash in the past three years, ranging from 12% in France to 26% in Brazil. Of those, 73% said distraction definitely or possibly played a part, with about a third saying it definitely did. UK respondents had the second-lowest crash rate, at 15%, though 75% of those cited distraction.
Matt Cox, chief claims officer at Allianz UK, said the views of UK drivers aligned with those in the other countries surveyed. "Whether the distraction comes from inside or outside the vehicle, the result can be catastrophic, and measuring the impact and causes is something that should be implemented and monitored," he said.
Part of the problem is built into the car. In a real-vehicle study, 20 drivers per car completed identical tasks, such as entering a destination or choosing a song, in two current electric compacts. Across those tasks, total off-road glance time was up to 25% lower with the more efficient interface, a difference of roughly three seconds. Across the nine markets, a median of 37% of drivers said touchscreen use had led to at least one critical situation in the past three years, from 29% in Australia and the UK to 48% in Brazil.
Dr Klaus-Peter Röhler, member of the board of management of Allianz SE, said the findings showed that "distraction is not just a question of driver behavior. It is also a question of design."
The AZT used gaze data from the vehicle study to calibrate a cognitive driver model, built with modelling firm cogniBIT, and ran four critical scenarios. When the car ahead braked hard on a motorway, the share of simulated runs ending in a collision rose from 18.2% for attentive drivers to 54.3% for distracted ones. On a rural road, distracted drivers drifted into oncoming traffic in 5.4% of simulated runs, compared with none for attentive drivers or those modelled at 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood, the drink-drive limit in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Across all four scenarios, the distracted driver model performed worse than the model at that alcohol level.
Yet unlike alcohol, a glance at a screen leaves no test result. The literature links individual glances of more than around two seconds to elevated crash risk. Allianz argues that the driver-distraction warning systems required on new cars in the EU since July, a requirement that does not yet apply in Great Britain, may not alert a driver until their eyes have been off the road for up to 3.5 seconds above 50km/h, or up to six seconds at lower speeds.
The AZT expects road accidents in Europe to fall by around 20% by 2035, and by more than half from 2060, as automated systems take on more of the driving. But roads will carry a mix of conventional and automated vehicles for decades, and automation brings distractions of its own, from over-trust to drivers struggling to re-engage when a system hands back control. Crashes may become less frequent but harder to explain.
Matthias Trüstedt, head of global property and casualty at Allianz SE, said: "As vehicles become increasingly automated, reliable vehicle data will also play a growing role in understanding how accidents occur and determining responsibility."
If distraction is as under-recorded as the research suggests, the question of who or what caused a crash is unlikely to be settled by driver accounts or police reports alone. Access to reliable vehicle data is likely to matter more in establishing what happened before impact, and in how motor claims are settled.
