73% of crash drivers in Qatar use mobiles in car (15/10/2005)

73% of crash drivers in Qatar use mobiles in car

By Bonnie James A NEW study featuring 822 Qataris, who were involved in motor vehicle collisions resulting in personal injury and substantial property damage, has revealed that 73.2% (602) of them were using a mobile phone while driving, and 87% of those had hand-held phones. The finding assumes special significance given that the new traffic regulations, which include a QR200 fine for using a hand-held mobile phone while driving, are expected to be enforced shortly. The study by a four-member international team was led by Hamad Medical Corporation’s Medical Statistics and Epidemiology Department head Prof Abdulbari Bener, and based on data collected between December 2004 and June 2005. Another finding was that 222 (36.9%) of drivers who came under the mobile phone user category, admitted to never using the seatbelt. While 80 subjects (13.3%) used the seatbelt for less than half of their journeys, 275 (45.7%) put on their belt for more than half of their trips and only 25 (4.2%) always used the seatbelt. “The majority of the drivers, 71.8% (590), were men. The rate of mobile phone use was higher in the morning (31.6%) than in the evening (28.6%), and most had head injuries (33.2%), followed by injuries of upper limbs (16.6%) and face (12.1%),” the report said. The participants in the study were selected from among patients registered and attending 12 Primary Health Care centres, including three from semi-urban areas, which represent over 75% of total visits per year. Data compilation was done by qualified nurses and health educators through interviews with the 822 subjects, aged between 18 and 65 years, of whom the under 24 years category constituted the single largest group (53.2%). Though a total of 1,139 Qatari drivers, involved in road traffic accidents, were approached, 317 had to be excluded from the study on account of being under 18 years and not holding a driving licence, refusal to participate or for unstable medical or social problems. Queried about the reasons for the accidents, 48.2% of the mobile users cited speeding, 45.3% admitted jumping a red traffic signal, 20.7% named smoking and 17.3% stated the cause as keeping a child in the front seat. On an average, these individuals received or made 4.28 calls per trip. “Drivers also sent and received text messages while on the road, and generally this was often a subject from the younger age group,” it was explained in the report. While 30.2% of those who admitted to using mobile phone while driving came under sedentary/professional category, 28.6% were manual workers and army and police officers (17.9%). “A worrying demographic statistic is the number of people who use mobile phones while driving four-wheel drive vehicles,” it was observed in the report which pointed out that it was possible that the raised driving position and the robustness of these vehicles might increase a driver’s sense of safety and make them less concerned over the implications of their action. Alternatively, the four-wheel drive vehicle may represent a style choice that may correlate with risk-taking behaviour. There was also a greater propensity for mobile telephone use among drivers who were less likely to wear seatbelts. Several international studies have indicated that the use of mobile phones while driving is associated with a quadrupling of the risk of a collision during the brief period of a call. It has been reported that using a mobile phone was associated with a risk of having a crash that was about four times as high as that among the same drivers when they were not using a mobile phone. Some studies indicate that the risk of collision while driving using a mobile phone increases five-fold, though a nine-fold increase was noted in one case-control study. Experimental research has identified several specific driving behaviours that are degraded by the use of the mobile phone while driving, such as gap judgement and headway maintenance. "The greatest concern is reserved however for studies which have demonstrated that conversations over a mobile phone can lead participants to completely fail to respond to certain events that might occur when driving," the report said. At the very least it has been proved that using a mobile phone while driving results in considerably delayed response times such as making an appropriate response to the onset of a lead car’s brake lights or responding to a traffic light that turns red. "While the risks of contributing to collisions is more apparent for cases involving hand-held phones, there is also evidence that hands-free mobile phones can interfere with driving tasks," it was pointed out. In the present study, older drivers (45 years and above) constituted the minimum number of 28 (4.7%) to be involved in accidents, with those in the 35-44 age group accounted for 90 (15%) and those in the 25-34 years category amounted to 164 (27.2%). If 504 (83.7%) of mobile users said they never put a child in the front seat, as many as 91 subjects (41.4%) coming under the mobile non-user category admitted they often did this. The other members of the study team were David Crundall (Accident Research Unit, School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, UK), Turker Ozkan (Department of Psychology, Traffic Research Unit, University of Helsinki, Finland) and Timo Lajunen (Safety Research Unit, Department of Psychology, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey). Prof Bener, an adviser to the World Health Organisation, is also a faculty member at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar.