Speaking this week on the MDOT podcast, Talking Transportation, Ryan McMahon with Cambridge Mobile Telematics said driving behaviors have gotten worse, especially since the pandemic. He believes the new law will help.
“The amount of distracted driving that we have seen overall is up, in some cases 30%,” McMahon said. “The amount of time that somebody is spending interacting with their phone while driving, in this case more than 10 miles per hour, is up 30% in some cases. So, what has that done overall? We know that we’re facing a record number of road fatalities that have occurred over that same period of time.”
Cambridge Mobile Telematics studies driver behavior and crash data. McMahon says when Ohio passed a law similar to Michigan’s new law, distracted driving may have dropped as much as 9% during the first weeks of implementation. He noted roughly a third of all the crashes his firm detects involve a driver with their phone in their hand up to a minute prior to the crash.
