Drive in the Moment – Comparative Analysis

A comparative analysis of younger and older Australian drivers

In 2018, the Australian Automobile Association (AAA) partnered with the New Zealand Automobile Association (NZAA) and successfully applied for a Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) Road Safety Transformation Grant to enable it to commission research to build an evidence-based tool kit of intervention resources aimed at reducing young drivers’ in-vehicle mobile phone use.

The AAA then commissioned the Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety – Queensland (CARRS-Q) at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, to investigate smartphone use while driving.

While the original research design was focused on collecting data from young Australian drivers (aged 17-25 years), during the study its scope expanded to include the collection of data from:

• drivers in Australia aged 26 years and over

• drivers in New Zealand aged 17-25 years

• drivers in New Zealand aged 26 years and over.

In mid-2020, CARRS-Q provided the AAA with three comprehensive technical academic reports covering three streams of distracted driving research. These reports are available from the AAA website.

The final report was prepared for the FIA as part of the AAA’s reporting obligations under the Transformation Grant scheme (Australian Automobile Association, 2020). Its focus was young Australian drivers and how the research and the broader body of literature informed the development of the toolkit of intervention resources.

This comparative analysis draws on the CARRS-Q reports and focuses on comparing aspects of mobile phone use while driving for the two Australian samples: drivers aged 17-25 years, and drivers aged 26 years or more. It is written as an addendum to the final report for the FIA.