Canadian researchers develop mobile app that allows riders to track distracted drivers
To date, the application has recorded 20,000 instances of distracted driving, the CBC reports.
For riders in any Canadian city, the idea of being ahead of a distracted motorist preoccupied with a smartphone can be unsettling. A driver whose attention is compromised by their phone can be a serious danger to a cyclist.
Fortunately, as the CBC reports, there’s an app for that.
That app, reports say, allows “anyone to stand on the side of the road and log all those who are texting, eating or yapping on their phones while behind the wheel.” The app is the product of research undertaken by two medical professionals: Dr. David Bracco, a Montreal-based anesthetist, and Dr. Robert Green, a physician with the Halifax emergency department, as well as medical director of the Nova Scotia Trauma Program. Given that both have seen the consequences of distracted driving first-hand, their role in developing such a mobile application is a fitting one.
Those consequences have included everything from broken bones to brain trauma to death. Meanwhile, Green told CBC reporters, the problem of distracted driving is becoming a crisis, with statistics skyrocketing. Police, for example, have noted that the problem of distracted driving has reached new heights since it was criminalized.
“We see, clinically, that distracted driving is becoming much more of a problem than it was five years or even one year ago,” Green said. “The research that has been published is incomplete” — a reference to Transport Canada’s conclusion that 2,000 Canadians are killed on the roads annually, while another 9,000 or 10,000 are seriously injured — “and we feel that there is more accurate research required.”
That’s where the app comes in, something that allows that research to be conducted at street level.
By logging location, date, time, the gender of the driver, and whether or not the driver was eating, talking or texting at the time of the observed offense, the app catalogues the behaviour of drivers along a strict and informative set of criteria. “You don’t need to be a trauma surgeon or a trauma anesthetist to participate in the study,” Bracco noted. “Anyone can help.” Thus far, that help has amounted to 20,000 recorded observations of distracted driving — and that number is likely to climb.
For cyclists interested in being a part of the project, the app can be accessed and downloaded online.
