A new study in the American state of Georgia has found more than half of the crashes in the state in 2022 were down to the driver being distracted.

As new schemes in the UK, such as Devon and Cornwall’s use of Acusensus AI cameras to spot people using a mobile phone whilst driving, get underway, the report from the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety (GOHS) and the Georgia Department of Public Health’s (DPH) Crash Outcomes Data Evaluation System found 53 percent of all motor vehicle traffic crashes in Georgia involved at least one confirmed or suspected distracted driver.

The website Coosa Valley News says researchers in this study classed distracted driving as anything visually, manually, or cognitively that takes the driver’s focus from operating a motor vehicle, and that phone use may involve multiple types of distraction.

The 2023 Georgia Distracted Driving Observational Survey conducted by the Injury Prevention Research Center at Emory University found at least one out of five drivers in Georgia were observed to have some form of distraction.

It says the data in the GTSF report shows distracted driving is a threat to public safety. More than three-quarters of all distraction-related crashes in Georgia in 2022 involved at least one other vehicle or non-motorist besides the distracted driver and 13% of those killed or seriously injured in a confirmed distraction related crash were pedestrians or bicyclists.

(File picture – NSW Government/Acusensus)