Richard Hogan: I thought I was behind drunk driver — she was scrolling her phone behind the wheel

 The driver in front of me was bouncing all over the road, in and out of the white line, it looked like the driver was either drunk or having a medical emergency. When I drove passed, it was a girl in her early twenties scrolling through videos.

Richard Hogan. Photograph Moya Nolan

We are living in the age of distracted humans. Look around you; everywhere heads down scrolling, meals out phones out, commuting heads consuming videos, teenagers sitting on walls with the light of their screen illuminating their faces.

Phones pinging in cinemas and students in school asking to go to the toilet with their phones in their pockets. Without wanting to sound hyperbolic, It can seem like a zombie apocalypse.

We are all distracted, missing out on the world around us. But this distraction has now moved into driving. Ireland has recently had the biggest jump in road deaths across Europe. We have to ask the difficult question, is there a correlation between technology use and road deaths in this country?

I drive around the country most evenings, and over the last two or three years I have witnessed, first hand, the horror that has swept across this nation with technology and driving habits. Truck drivers with phone in hand, ploughing down the motorway.

People scrolling through their social media while driving, cars weaving in and out of traffic, only to realise the driver is watching a video. The lights have turned green but the car in front hasn’t moved, they are distracted watching a video on their phone.

One evening, recently in Mayo, I helped a young guy out of a ditch he had driven into, when I asked him what happened, he told me ‘the fucking phone’. 

I have been writing about the impact technology is having on the world of the adolescent for many years, but we have to also tackle the impact technology is having on the world of Irish drivers.

Because it is scary out there. I’m sure most of you have experiences on the road like I have had.

Only last week I was driving back from a talk in Kerry and the driver in front of me was bouncing all over the road, in and out of the white line, it looked like the driver was either drunk or having a medical emergency.

They were slowing down and speeding up, drifting into the next lane. When I drove passed to see what was going on, it was a girl in her early twenties scrolling through videos.

She was flying down a motorway, over 120kilmoters per hour, inside a Fiesta, no concept of the danger she was in or the danger she was putting other road users in.

I could go on and on with my experiences on the Irish roads over the last number of years. Every evening I come back from a talk, I’m telling my wife about the madness I have witnessed on the roads. I very rarely see a Garda on patrol.

A WORRYING TREND

When I was younger, driving from Cork to Dublin in the early 2000s there seemed to always be a number of check points on the road. I haven’t seen that in many years. Cars whizzing by, now seem safe in the knowledge they won’t be caught. It would appear driving habits have changed post pandemic.

In 2018, Ireland was celebrated within the EU for road safety following a reduction in road fatalities of over 40%. The question we have to ask is; what has happened since the pandemic to impact on Irish road users and their habits on the roads? Of course this is a complicated question.

But my own experience on the road would point towards increased technology use by drivers has caused huge distraction on Irish roads. When you put this phenomenon with less Garda on the roads, you have bad habit formation. Not being penalised for dangerous driving, increases the chances of further dangerous driving.

We should have had a zero tolerance to phone use in cars before it gripped our drivers.

We all know the dangers of driving while distracted, it’s not like drivers don’t know this information. But psychologically speaking, people always have a positivity bias.

Put simply, ‘it won’t happen to me’ mentality. Of course it doesn’t happen to you until it does, and then it is too late. 

Also there has been a slight shift in attitude towards drink driving. Before the pandemic 85% of drivers acknowledged that drink driving was not acceptable, that currently stands at 72%.

So we are witnessing a regression in attitudes towards driving habits, and it needs to be addressed. We need more police on the road. We need more police in every aspect of society but our roads are currently experiencing carnage.

Figures from the Department of Justice, released this year, show that personnel attached to the Roads Policing Unit (RPU) have fallen by more than 100 in less than two years.

Minister Jack Chambers explained that he has spoken to Garda Commissioner Drew Harris about this worrying trend and they intend to fix it.

Technology, particularly smartphones, have enveloped all aspects of our lives. The recent surge in car crashes and fatalities needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

The phone has no place in the car. But when it pings it is difficult to ignore, that is why we need a policy of ‘drive away, phones away’

Then we might be able to celebrate once again our low fatality rate on Irish roads.