Road Safety

The purpose of the Austroads Guideline for Driver Distraction Data Collection is to provide recommendations for assessing the likelihood that driver distraction is a contributing factor in road crashes and coding this likelihood into crash reporting systems.

There is currently no commonly accepted definition of driver distraction used across Australia and New Zealand. This is problematic, as it results in inconsistencies in how driver distraction, as a causative factor, is identified, reported, and subsequently coded in crash reporting databases, with the potential for under-reporting.

Standardisation of data collection and coding for driver distraction across Australia and New Zealand will assist in reporting driver distraction as a road safety issue. This will significantly increase the ability to evaluate the success of driver distraction-related countermeasures.

Police are the primary authority tasked with investigating and reporting on vehicle crashes. Workshops with police helped identify the aims for the successful implementation of the proposed definition of driver distraction and provided guidance for developing the driver distraction data collection and coding method.

The proposed framework for Driver Distraction Data Collection, which will be explained in the webinar, uses a series of matrices to determine if distraction is a potential causative factor in a crash. The methodology assesses the severity of an outcome, the exposure to the risk, and the likelihood of a potential incident occurring.

The framework can be easily automated and included in any electronic crash report.

Appropriate training and education of police and crash investigators are imperative to the implementation of the framework. The simplicity of the proposed framework is expected to assist in developing an operational training framework in the future.

This webinar is presented by Gavin Lennon and Paul Roberts.