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San Jose motorists increasingly using phones…

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San Jose motorists increasingly using cell phones while driving: study

San Francisco and Oakland had slightly lower rates

Ken Mayer, an engineer at Ford, in a simulator used to monitor drivers distracted by cellphones in Dearborn, Mich., in November 2009. Dede Haskins’ cellphone has been her constant companion for more than a decade. But after missing one too many exits because she was distracted by a phone call, Haskins decided it was time to get tough with herself. So she signed up for ZoomSafer, a free service that uses her phone’s GPS sensors to determine whether she’s at driving speeds, and then disables her cell phone until she stops the car. Of course, there is a simpler, no-cost solution to limiting phone use while driving: the off button. But going cold turkey is hard for many Americans who have become addicted to their gadgets. So technology companies are trying to solve the problem with more technology. (Fabrizio Costantini/The New York Times)
Ken Mayer, an engineer at Ford, in a simulator used to monitor drivers distracted by cellphones in Dearborn, Mich., in November 2009. Dede Haskins’ cellphone has been her constant companion for more than a decade. But after missing one too many exits because she was distracted by a phone call, Haskins decided it was time to get tough with herself. So she signed up for ZoomSafer, a free service that uses her phone’s GPS sensors to determine whether she’s at driving speeds, and then disables her cell phone until she stops the car. Of course, there is a simpler, no-cost solution to limiting phone use while driving: the off button. But going cold turkey is hard for many Americans who have become addicted to their gadgets. So technology companies are trying to solve the problem with more technology. (Fabrizio Costantini/The New York Times)
Ethan Baron, business reporter, San Jose Mercury News, for his Wordpress profile. (Michael Malone/Bay Area News Group)
By | ebaron@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: | UPDATED:

If you’ve been seeing a lot of motorists in San Jose using their phones while driving, your eyes have not been deceiving you. And the problem’s getting worse.

That’s according to a new study of distracted driving that includes data from a selection of major U.S. cities.

Researchers found motorists in San Jose were using their phones for about 8.2 percent of their driving time in 2019, up from 7 percent last year.

The study by San Francisco-based road-safety data-analytics firm Zendrive also looked at San Francisco and Oakland, and combined their results, showing the cities together are not far behind San Jose in the amount of time drivers spent distracted by their phones: 7.8 percent of driving time this year. It was 6.6 percent in 2018.

These three local cities fell around the middle of the pack among the 19 U.S. cities Zendrive researchers studied. Houston and Dallas took the top two spots for most-distracted drivers, with motorists spending more than 9 percent of driving time using handsets. The percentages in Seattle and Portland were the lowest, at just above 7 percent.

California drivers in general spent the 14th-lowest amount of time on phones, with Pennsylvanians spending the least time and Virginians the most, according to the study. California bans hand-held phone use while driving. Virginia has a partial ban that prohibits texting while driving but allows talking with a phone held to the ear. Pennsylvania bans only texting and wearing earphones while driving.

From last year to this year, “distracted driving increased in every single state,” Zendrive reported. “The distracted driving epidemic, aka ‘this generation’s drunk driving,’ is increasing along with the rates of collisions and pedestrian deaths. This coincides with the rise of ‘Phone Addicts’ — a new class of drivers so obsessed with their phones, they don’t notice or care that they’re driving distracted.”

For the distracted-driving study, released this month, the researchers used smartphone sensors to gather data on the driver behavior of 1.8 million motorists on more than 4.5 billion road miles from November 2018 through January, Zendrive said.

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