“Despite the threat of fines, the emergence of ad campaigns, and even the introduction of new features, it would appear that we’re having quite a bit of trouble when it comes to cutting back on phone-related distracted driving,” Lulu Chang reports for Digital Trends. “As per a new study based on data from Everdrive, an app from car insurance company Everquote, 37 percent of car trips include “at least some significant phone usage” while the car is in motion. In fact, during these trips, folks were apparently using their phones for as much as 11 percent of the time, which translates to about three minutes during a 29-minute average drive.”
“The Everdrive study, which was released on Wednesday, April 17, took into account 781 million miles of driving data collected from sensors like built-in GPS and accelerometers in your phone,” Chang reports. “And while the results are sobering, there does appear to be one potential fix — Apple recently released a ‘Do Not Disturb While Driving’ feature in iOS 11, and this can apparently reduce phone usage on the road by up to 8 percent.”
“Folks are actively using the new feature. In its study, Everquote found that 70 percent of participants have kept the DND While Driving option turned on since it was released last September,” Chang reports. “Consequently, between September 19 and October 25, those who used DND on their iPhones used their mobile devices 8 percent less than those who did not have a similar feature.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last June of Apple’s Do Not Disturb While Driving mode:
This will actually save lives.
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s next iPhone iOS might save your life – June 12, 2017
Getting people to behave properly voluntarily is always better!
Good luck implementing that. It doesn’t work for corporations, who are also people, my friend.
It works. I call it “virtual wife” 🙂
Didn’t even know about this feature. I’m just activated it on my own phone.
The only way to stop the epidemic of cell phone use while driving is for the government to mandate cell phones being blocked when your vehicle is active. Fat chance of that ever happening in this lifetime. Just have really good insurance, because sooner or later, you’ll find yourself rear ended or worse. People just don’t give a shit about cell phone laws, cutting people off, cutting into carpool lanes, single rider carpool lanes, etc. You basically have to force them, no other way. Period.
That would have a hard time flying. How does the insurance company or government know the person using the device in a moving vehicle is the driver or a passenger?