According to the “Global Driving Safety Survey”, developed by insurance company Liberty Seguros in collaboration with the Portuguese Road Safety Authority (PRP), 74 percent of the Portuguese use mobile phones while driving, surpassing the Irish and North Americans (67 percent), the French (58 percent), the Spanish (55 percent) and the British (47 percent).
The study shows that 69 percent of Portuguese respondents admit to “looking at messages and calls they are receiving”, 52 percent “look at notifications”, 26 percent “read e-mails and messages and 18 percent “use social network apps”.
Only 13 percent of the Portuguese surveyed say they put their mobile phone out of reach during car journeys and, as far as ringing volume is concerned, 73 percent say they have their mobile phone ringing, 9 percent are silent and 18 percent are in vibration mode.
José Miguel Trigoso, president of the PRP, warned that the use of a mobile phone by the hands-free system, despite being legal, is as distracting as talking with the phone in hand (which is illegal), due to the cognitive distraction it causes (the type of distraction that most negatively influences driving).
For Trigoso, these data suggest that dependence on the mobile phone overrides the awareness that using the phone while driving is “increasing the risk of having a road accident”.
Aware of this serious driving problem, Liberty Seguros and PRP will launch a new awareness campaign to prevent the use of mobile phones while driving, including a pioneering alert on the use of the hands-free system.
Insurers currently have no way of ascertaining whether accidents are caused by the use of a mobile phone while driving. José Miguel Trigoso indicated that certain countries are moving, in case of accidents with serious injuries, to a judicial request for telecommunications operators to facilitate the driver’s conversations at the time of the accident.