This summer started badly. May and June have been the worst accident months in many years. 36 people have died in traffic, more than twice as many as in the same period last year. Two teenagers died in a motorcycle accident in Rogaland. Four tourists collided with a tractor in Steigen. A boy was hit at the bus stop. Two girlfriends on their way home from a summer show collided in a tunnel. It is too early to say what caused these accidents, but what is certain is that the list is long and tragic. Norway has long been a world champion in road safety. The graph that shows the number of traffic fatalities in the last fifty years and until today, has been like a steep downhill. Until now. Have two years of pandemic made us sluggish drivers? Or is it something completely different? – What we know is that many drivers are inattentive, says communications manager at Trygg Trafikk, Cecilie Bryner. Every third fatal accident is due to the person behind the wheel not following the driving well enough. – Now we are very worried about the summer traffic, Bryner says. What do we do while driving? Trygg Trafikk and Volvo have asked motorists. Dog behind the wheel, sex on the go It is nothing new that there has been a bit of everything behind Norwegian steering wheel over the years. You may have come across the type, the confident multitasker. In the sharpest right turn, he steers the steering wheel with his knees, while rolling a smoke with one hand and shifting with the other. In the 1970s, this was something to brag about. The emergency police often see far worse things. In 2016, a couple from Hønefoss was stopped because they had sex while driving on the motorway between Oslo and Drammen. Two years earlier, Follo police were hunting for the trumpet man. A driver who played the trumpet while driving at high speed on the E6. You can google almost anything and people have done it. Knitted behind the wheel. Brushed the teeth. Read the newspaper and had the dog on my lap. Or let the children drive the car on the way to the kindergarten, as Avisa Raumnes in Akershus wrote about earlier this year. This happens, but not often. Mobile phone use is a far more common threat to attention. Researchers compare it to driving at 0.8 per mille. Like having two or three pints of beer on board, if you’re a medium-sized man. If you use a mobile phone while driving, you triple the risk of accidents, according to the Department of Transport Economics. There are many who will blame the most popular item we own. But are there so many who type on the go? We are ashamed Yes. 28 percent admit to having used their mobile phone to, among other things, send messages, read e-mails or be on social media while driving. More than one in four drivers. This is shown by Trygg Trafikk and Volvo’s completely new survey, which news has been given access to. But there are probably far more sinners on Norwegian summer roads. – Yes, we think there are more. Many are probably a little ashamed and embellish the truth when we ask, says Cecilie Bryner in Trygg Trafikk. We think better of ourselves than we are. When the actual use of a mobile phone is registered, the picture becomes different. Almost three out of four drivers use their mobile phones, shows driving data Fremtind Forsikring taken from their Smartbil app. It was supposed to make more people drive safely, but revealed that many were unable to leave their mobile phones lying around. – Many do it without thinking about it, says Simen Rudi, communications manager at Fremtind, the insurance company of SpareBank 1 and DNB. We retrieve the mobile phone unconsciously, automatically. If you get to be anonymous, do you dare to be completely honest? Do you use a mobile phone while driving? Yes Sometimes, when there is something important. No Show result We also do a lot of other things while driving: 50 percent of us open bottles and drink soft drinks and coffee. Almost as many, 46 percent, say they arrange radio, heater, navigation and the like. Have you eaten a hamburger or other food while driving? Every third motorist eats and drives at the same time. Fewer, but still a good number of drivers, turn around, pick up things behind, read the newspaper or fix their appearance. QUESTION: Did you put on make-up or shave while driving? Only three percent of the drivers Trygg Trafikk and Volvo asked said they had put on make-up or shaved while driving. So it is the mobile phone that is the worst, which disturbs and tempts many. Especially young drivers. Among those under thirty, 41 percent admit that they break the mobile rules. The mobile has become like a slightly too long right arm. We use it without knowing it, without wanting to admit it. What’s wrong with us? You weak human being – A mobile that flashes and rings is an almost irresistible temptation for us humans, says behavioral psychologist Dagfinn Moe. We are simply weak for everything that seems new, and want to take with us what is happening, he explains. As a senior researcher at SINTEF, it is his job to study how we behave in traffic. It takes a lot of brains to be a good driver. Three questions should constantly tick around the top lid, according to the traffic researcher: What can happen here? Where can something happen? And when? If you still find the lipstick or respond to a message, yes, then you can hardly focus enough on the actual driving. Multitasking is something we humans are bad at, says Dagfinn Moe. If we do two or three things at once, it is impossible to be equally concentrated on everything. We have to switch our attention between the different tasks we perform. The danger arises when you as a driver are not focused on the most important things. The road in front of you. One second goes well. Two usually go well. If you look away from the traffic more, it quickly becomes dangerous. Try it yourself, close your eyes and slowly count down from five. If you drive at 80 kilometers per hour, you will reach 110 meters in five small seconds. – Our brain does not have a clock. What you think only takes a moment can in reality take five seconds or more, says Dagfinn Moe. He has studied many fatal accidents in Norway and sees it clearly: Several have become inattentive in traffic. In particular, two types of accidents are increasing, meeting accidents and accidents where no other vehicle is involved. Several are driving off the road for no apparent reason. As if they forget where they are. When the messages tick in on the mobile, it is tempting to check. A clammy hand on the steering wheel and half an eye on the road, it only takes a few seconds. Enough time for an answer. But also enough time to commit a murder. Chapter of Sorrow One who knows something about how it feels is he we can call Erik. An ordinary guy who loved to drive a car. – I would say I was a good driver, experienced. Because of the job, it could be up to 40,000 kilometers a year, he writes in an e-mail to news. But that was before he fiddled with the car radio and it suddenly slammed. Erik was not physically injured himself, but quickly realized that this was serious. – Immediately afterwards, before the emergency services were in place, I helped to check the pulse and breathing of those involved in the accident. Today he can hardly drive a car, can not even ride with others. Nor to stand up and tell details about the accident. – From having good plans about what I should do in life, I no longer know what will happen tomorrow, Erik writes. He thinks both parties in a serious accident should receive mental health care afterwards. He’s missed it. Erik thinks a lot about what he could have done differently. Guilt is something he will carry with him for the rest of his life. – It is tougher than the punishment itself. Now he is without a driver’s license. Eventually, he will pay compensation and serve the sentence for car murder. This is how it is for many. In every third fatal accident in Norway, a driver is convicted of negligent homicide. Rich and fast or old and dull It is often about men. They are the ones who die in traffic. 50 of a total of 62 deaths so far in 2022 are men. – Men in expensive, fast cars most often break the speed limit, says Simen Rudi in Fremtind. For three years, they recorded how 6,000 drivers drove. A total of 80 million kilometers. – Even though young drivers and women are eager on their mobile phones, it is men who drive the most unsafe overall, says Rudi. The Norwegian Public Roads Administration has analyzed all fatal accidents on Norwegian roads, and there are three main causes of fatal accidents: Speed, intoxication and inattention. A new and disturbing development is that more adult men die, those over 55 years. Traffic experts do not know why experienced drivers more often end up in the accident. But they have made up their minds. – New technology in modern cars can take attention away from traffic, says Cecilie Bryner in Trygg Trafikk. Old cars had a few buttons, for radio, music and heater, while the newest cars are almost like a fun fair on wheels. So many fun things, big screens, technical gadgets and smart solutions. It was not good when people toughened their knees on the steering wheel, but is it conceivable that the new cars also pose a safety risk? Now this is to be investigated. Self-driving future In the autumn, a research project will start at SINTEF in Trondheim, a collaboration between Trygg Trafikk and Fremtind Forsikring. There, drivers will be tested while driving various smart cars. Using an eye-tracker, which measures the eye’s movement down to the smallest detail, the researchers will see what information the motorist receives. And not least, what the driver does NOT get. The car of the future is meant to be helpful to the driver and make it safer to drive. The GPS finds its way. The cruise control ensures the right speed and distance. Rear view camera and sensors prevent bulking. The emergency brake assist stops you before you collide, while the blind spot assistant alerts you to anything you do not see yourself. It beeps and flashes when you forget your seatbelt or drive over the speed limit. If an accident still occurs, the car even calls the alarm center itself. But there is still a long way to go before we have safe, self-driving cars. Now we are in a kind of intermediate phase, where the driver still has all the responsibility. Even in a car with autopilot. – We rely too much on safety technology and that makes us dull behind the wheel, says Simen Rudi in Fremtind. He has looked at the injury statistics and almost 30 percent of the injuries may be due to inattention. – Do not touch the phone. Do not rely too much on technology, use your own eyes and keep the speed limit. These are my best advice before the holiday, says Simen Rudi. Safe Traffic and Volvo want you to look at your mobile BEFORE driving and put it in car mode. – The seconds the driver is on a mobile phone can cost other road users their lives, says Cecilie Bryner. She hopes car mode can help drivers be less distracted. Alerts and messages are turned off automatically so that the driver is not disturbed. Most smartphones have such a feature. Do you use the car mode function on your mobile while driving? Yes, it is wise because it turns on automatically. No. I know about it, but I do not use it. No. I’ve never heard of car mode. Show result The police will lower the speed limits and have more checks on the roads this summer. But the best immediate measure is the motorists themselves who can take care of it, Trygg Trafikk believes. It is you who sit behind the wheel who must fight against the desire to respond to that message, refrain from sending funny snaps and endure the whining from the back seat when the beauty ends up on the floor. Because “I should just …” may be the last thing you think about before it hits. Test yourself before you get behind the wheel!
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Fatalities are increasing. Have we become worse drivers? – Documentary
