Prevalence of cell phone use while driving and its impact on driving performance, focusing on near-crash risk: A survey study in Tehran

This study aims to investigate driver attitudes toward and prevalence of cell phone use while driving among Iranian drivers. An online survey was conducted in Tehran, Iran, which resulted in 824 responses. Among those, 567 respondents (63.8% male; 36.1% female) have answered all the questions. These responses formed our data set, which contains driver attitudes, consequences, and driver involvement in various reckless behaviors pertaining to the use of mobile phones while driving. Overall, 88% of respondents use cell phones while driving. They either make calls, answer calls, read text messages, or write text messages, along with other possible types of usage such as navigating and reading news. About half of the participants (51%) reported experiencing near-crashes. In addition, 13.3% reported that they experienced vehicle crashes. Statistical models are also used to investigate the safety impacts of cell phone use while driving using the occurrence of near-crash experiences as the response variable. The results demonstrate a significant association between the occurrence of near-crashes and cell phone use while driving.