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NHTSA seeking comment on distracted/drowsy driving guidelines
WASHINGTON — The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is seeking comment on an amendment to national highway safety program guidelines on distracted and drowsy driving.
Federal law requires NHTSA to develop uniform guidelines for state highway safety programs.
NHTSA said in a Federal Register notice that is believes the guideline will provide more accurate, current and effective guidance to states regarding distracted and drowsy driving.
"Distracted and drowsy driving have many issues in common: both are difficult to measure and observe; it is challenging to establish data collection to provide actual numbers of fatalities and injuries," the agency said in its notice, adding that moreover, enforcement of these unsafe driving behaviors is challenging for law enforcement, further contributing to the difficulty in assessing the magnitude of the problem. Additionally, both behaviors result from lifestyle choices, which take them beyond driving and transportation issues."
The guidelines are broken into eight categories: program management; multidisciplinary involvement; legislation regulation and policy; law enforcement; highway and traffic engineering; communication program; driver education and licensing; and evaluation.
NHTSA said that in 2014, 10 percent of fatal crashes, 18 percent of injury crashes and 16 percent of all police-reported motor vehicle traffic crashes were reported as distraction-affected crashes.
"These proportions have remained stable over the past five years of reported data, the agency said.
In 2014, there were 3,179 people killed and an estimated additional 431,000 injured in motor vehicle crashes involving distraction-affected drivers. Ten percent of all drivers 15 to 19 years old involved in fatal crashes were reported as distracted at the time of the crashes.
This age group has the largest proportion of drivers killed in the age range who were distracted at the time of the crashes.
Lastly, in 2014, there were 520 non-occupants, such as pedestrians and bicyclists, killed in distraction-affected crashes.
Current estimates range from 2 percent to 20 percent of annual traffic deaths attributable to driver drowsiness.
According to NHTSA, annually on average from 2009 to 2013, there were over 72,000 police-reported crashes involving drowsy drivers, injuring more than an estimated 41,000 people, and killing more than 8003. By using a multiple imputation methodology, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety estimated that 7 percent of all crashes and 16.5 percent of fatal crashes involved a drowsy driver.
NHSA said this estimate suggests that more than 5,000 people died in drowsy-driving-related motor vehicle crashes across the United States last year.
Research conducted in 2012 by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety showed drivers ages 16-24 were the most likely to report having fallen asleep while driving within the past year.
Finally, the AAA Foundation's 2015 Traffic Safety Index reported that nearly all drivers (97.0 percent) view drowsy driving as a serious threat to their safety and a completely unacceptable behavior; however, nearly one in three (31.5 percent) admitted to driving when they were so tired that they had a hard time keeping their eyes open at some point in the past month.
"It is important that States begin to address the problems of distracted and drowsy driving," NHTSA said in the Federal Register notice. "This guideline is designed to help policymakers with decisions about how best to address these growing issues."
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