In 2015 the topic of driver distraction has been in the media as never before. As the ‘connected car’ becomes a reality it is vital to ensure that the plethora of new features on our cars make a positive contribution to the reduction in death and injury. Human error remains the biggest cause of crashes and technology has to work with the grain of people’s lives and abilities if it is to truly enhance our safety performance. The completely driverless car is still some way off and in the meantime new technology continues to run well ahead of any attempts by regulators to catch up. This report from the experts at TRL summarises what we know about distraction and concludes by posing some key questions for safety experts.
