2022 is about to be a gloomy year for road traffic in Norway. After the first half of the year, twice as many people have lost their lives in traffic compared with last year – 63 to 31. In the last six years, we have been able to state that Norway is the safest country in the world. But after this year, the question is whether we can still boast the same. The development so far this year is first and foremost terribly sad. Behind every death there is a story of grief and despair for all those who have lost someone they loved. All of the 63 victims were either someone’s mother, father, son, daughter, wife, husband, friend or colleague. The emptiness the bereaved experience is difficult to comprehend. For those of us who work with traffic safety, this year’s accident figures are also surprising. Norway has for years conducted long-term and systematic work to reduce accident rates. We have developed and implemented measures based on the vision that no one should be seriously injured or die in traffic, and we have seen that the measures work. Roads with a lot of traffic have been rebuilt to be meeting-free. Campaigns and information measures have been focused on. Important traffic training has been included in the school. In many urban areas, cars are removed, so that cycling and walking are a priority. The speed is reduced on roads where the risk of accidents is high and the police, led by the Emergency Patrol, make a fantastic preventive effort around the country. As well as many more measures. At the same time, the car manufacturers are working purposefully to ensure that the car itself helps to avoid accidents. Driver assistance systems provide useful information about the traffic situation and help the driver make good decisions. The car tells you, among other things, if someone is in the blind spot, if the car skids out of the lane or if someone in front of you brakes hard. The car industry works, among other things, with a technology where the car through artificial intelligence to a greater extent to understand the driver, through interpreting eye and head movements, as well as sitting position. This can give the car useful information about how the driver is doing and how attentive he is. So, in spite of all this, why are the accident rates going up this year? There are, of course, several reasons for this, but we know that inattention is a factor in one in three fatal accidents and we know that the mobile phone is one of the biggest sources of distraction in cars. Ever since the year 2000, it has been forbidden to use a handheld mobile phone while driving. Nevertheless, the authorities have felt compelled to dramatically increase the fines for this offense in recent years. Last year, the police fined 13,624 people for illegal use of mobile phones. And behind these numbers there is also a small wake-up call: 7 out of 10 were men. In June this year, we conducted a survey on the use of mobile phones in cars. The answers here also showed a similar trend. Because while 25% of women said they had used their mobile phone while driving in the past year, the figure was 31% for men. And of the men who had used the phone, 2 out of 5 answered that they did it because they were used to doing it, or that they have such good control of driving that they do not perceive it as a risk. It is a dangerous, deliberate act and misjudgment, when we know how distracting the phone can be. When we take into account the fact that such self-reporting can involve dark numbers, this paints a gloomy picture. A picture of many drivers who overestimate their own abilities, break the law and put both themselves and other road users in great danger. Of the 80 killed in traffic last year, 64 were men. And 18 of the 22 who were killed in May this year were men. Admittedly, we know that there is a majority of male drivers, so the starting point on the roads is not a gender distribution of 50/50. But the trend is clear: On Norwegian roads, by far the most men lose their lives. This summer, we therefore go out with a clear appeal to Norwegian drivers and perhaps especially to men: Put your mobile phone in “car mode” when you drive a car. The car mode function works very much like flight mode, as we are used to when we fly. By activating car mode on your phone, you will not receive distracting alerts and messages, and you can concentrate on the road. And if you have activated car mode once, the phone will automatically activate the next time you drive. We think this is a simple step you can take to calm one of the cabin’s biggest distractions while driving, and stay focused on the road. 2022 has not been a good year for road safety. Let’s turn this around now and together make summer roads safer by turning off the distractions.
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Keep your eyes on the road – Expression
