IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/meanco/v4y2016i3p79-89.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Adolescent Cellphone Use While Driving: An Overview of the Literature and Promising Future Directions for Prevention

Author

Listed:
  • M. Kit Delgado

    (Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, USA)

  • Kathryn J. Wanner

    (Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, USA)

  • Catherine McDonald

    (School of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania, USA)

Abstract

Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death in adolescents, and drivers aged 16–19 are the most likely to die in distracted driving crashes. This paper provides an overview of the literature on adolescent cellphone use while driving, focusing on the crash risk, incidence, risk factors for engagement, and the effectiveness of current mitigation strategies. We conclude by discussing promising future approaches to prevent crashes related to cellphone use in adolescents. Handheld manipulation of the phone while driving has been shown to have a 3 to 4-fold increased risk of a near crash or crash, and eye glance duration greater than 2 seconds increases crash risk exponentially. Nearly half of U.S. high school students admit to texting while driving in the last month, but the frequency of use according to vehicle speed and high-risk situations remains unknown. Several risk factors are associated with cell phone use while driving including: parental cellphone use while driving, social norms for quick responses to text messages, and higher levels of temporal discounting. Given the limited effectiveness of current mitigation strategies such as educational campaigns and legal bans, a multi-pronged behavioral and technological approach addressing the above risk factors will be necessary to reduce this dangerous behavior in adolescents.

Suggested Citation

  • M. Kit Delgado & Kathryn J. Wanner & Catherine McDonald, 2016. "Adolescent Cellphone Use While Driving: An Overview of the Literature and Promising Future Directions for Prevention," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(3), pages 79-89.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v:4:y:2016:i:3:p:79-89
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/536
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, 1991. "Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(4), pages 1039-1061.
    2. Ferdinand, A.O. & Menachemi, N. & Blackburn, J.L. & Sen, B. & Nelson, L. & Morrisey, M., 2015. "The impact of texting bans on motor vehicle crash-related hospitalizations," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 105(5), pages 859-865.
    3. Rahi Abouk & Scott Adams, 2013. "Texting Bans and Fatal Accidents on Roadways: Do They Work? Or Do Drivers Just React to Announcements of Bans?," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 179-199, April.
    4. Ferdinand, A.O. & Menachemi, N. & Sen, B. & Blackburn, J.L. & Morrisey, M. & Nelson, L., 2014. "Impact of texting laws on motor vehicular fatalities in the united states," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 104(8), pages 1370-1377.
    5. Andrew Lepp & Jacob E. Barkley & Aryn C. Karpinski, 2015. "The Relationship Between Cell Phone Use and Academic Performance in a Sample of U.S. College Students," SAGE Open, , vol. 5(1), pages 21582440155, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Romer, 2016. "Introduction to the Issue “Adolescents in the Digital Age: Effects on Health and Development”," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(3), pages 1-3.
    2. Elizabeth A. Walshe & Flaura K. Winston & Dan Romer, 2021. "Rethinking Cell Phone Use While Driving: Isolated Risk Behavior or a Pattern of Risk-Taking Associated with Impulsivity in Young Drivers?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(11), pages 1-11, May.
    3. Yusuke Hayashi & Anne M Foreman & Jonathan E Friedel & Oliver Wirth, 2019. "Threat appeals reduce impulsive decision making associated with texting while driving: A behavioral economic approach," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(3), pages 1-19, March.
    4. Xiaoxiao Wang & Liangjie Xu, 2021. "Factors Influencing Young Drivers’ Willingness to Engage in Risky Driving Behavior: Continuous Lane-Changing," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-18, June.
    5. Elizabeth A. Walshe & Chelsea Ward McIntosh & Daniel Romer & Flaura K. Winston, 2017. "Executive Function Capacities, Negative Driving Behavior and Crashes in Young Drivers," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-16, October.
    6. Daniel Romer & Michael Rich, 2016. "Afterword to the Issue “Adolescents in the Digital Age: Effects on Health and Development”," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(3), pages 90-94.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. French, Michael T. & Gumus, Gulcin, 2018. "Watch for motorcycles! The effects of texting and handheld bans on motorcyclist fatalities," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 216(C), pages 81-87.
    2. Stijn Baert & Sunčica Vujić & Simon Amez & Matteo Claeskens & Thomas Daman & Arno Maeckelberghe & Eddy Omey & Lieven De Marez, 2020. "Smartphone Use and Academic Performance: Correlation or Causal Relationship?," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 73(1), pages 22-46, February.
    3. Fry, Jane M., 2023. "Do increased speeding fines save lives?," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 34(C).
    4. Wiebke Roß & Jens Weghake, 2018. "Wa(h)re Liebe: Was Online-Dating-Plattformen über zweiseitige Märkte lehren," TUC Working Papers in Economics 0017, Abteilung für Volkswirtschaftslehre, Technische Universität Clausthal (Department of Economics, Technical University Clausthal).
    5. Jose Apesteguia & Miguel Ballester, 2009. "A theory of reference-dependent behavior," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 40(3), pages 427-455, September.
    6. Kareen Rozen, 2010. "Foundations of Intrinsic Habit Formation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(4), pages 1341-1373, July.
    7. Luigi Guiso, 2015. "A Test of Narrow Framing and its Origin," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 1(1), pages 61-100, March.
    8. Pingle, Mark & Mitchell, Mike, 2002. "What motivates positional concerns for income?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 127-148, February.
    9. Shunda, Nicholas, 2009. "Auctions with a buy price: The case of reference-dependent preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 645-664, November.
    10. Christian Grund & Dirk Sliwka, 2007. "Reference-Dependent Preferences and the Impact of Wage Increases on Job Satisfaction: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 163(2), pages 313-335, June.
    11. Hu, Li & Ma, Hoi-Lam & Wang, Li & Liu, Yang, 2023. "Hiding or disclosing? Information discrimination in member-only discounts," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    12. Botond Kőszegi & Matthew Rabin, 2006. "A Model of Reference-Dependent Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(4), pages 1133-1165.
    13. Daniel W. Elfenbein & Anne Marie Knott & Rachel Croson, 2017. "Equity stakes and exit: An experimental approach to decomposing exit delay," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(2), pages 278-299, February.
    14. Shuli Liu & Xinwang Liu, 2016. "A Sample Survey Based Linguistic MADM Method with Prospect Theory for Online Shopping Problems," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 25(4), pages 749-774, July.
    15. repec:cup:judgdm:v:8:y:2013:i:2:p:136-149 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Marianne Bertrand & Dean S. Karlan & Sendhil Mullainathan & Eldar Shafir & Jonathan Zinman, 2005. "What's Psychology Worth? A Field Experiment in the Consumer Credit Market," Working Papers 918, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    17. repec:esx:essedp:762 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Ghosal, Sayantan & Dalton, Patricio, 2013. "Characterizing Behavioral Decisions with Choice Data," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 107, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    19. Omar A. Alismaiel & Javier Cifuentes-Faura & Waleed Mugahed Al-Rahmi, 2022. "Online Learning, Mobile Learning, and Social Media Technologies: An Empirical Study on Constructivism Theory during the COVID-19 Pandemic," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(18), pages 1-15, September.
    20. Erik Nesson & Vinish Shrestha, 2021. "The effects of false identification laws on underage alcohol‐related traffic fatalities," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(9), pages 2264-2283, September.
    21. Grund, Christian & Sliwka, Dirk, 2001. "The Impact of Wage Increases on Job Satisfaction - Empirical Evidence and Theoretical Implications," IZA Discussion Papers 387, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    22. Duncan Luce, R., 1997. "Associative joint receipts," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 51-74, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v:4:y:2016:i:3:p:79-89. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.