Abstract:
Road crashes due to driver's distraction has become a major concern these days. Cellphone use while driving is considered one of the most pivotal distraction in this regard. To prevent drivers from using cellphone while driving and to reduce injuries in the road crashes, better understanding is needed about the factors that motivates a driver to use cellphone while driving.
This study seeks to identify the contributing factors affecting cellphone use while driving with broad considerations of driver's demographic characteristics, crash history and environmental characteristics using ordered probit model. It also explores how the interaction of these factors will push a driver in using cellphone while driving. Several intra-city bus drivers were questioned about their cellphone use while driving. Factors such as age, type of cellphone,, marital status, number of trips per day and few others were found to be significantly associated with cellphone use while driving.
To gather data questionnaire survey was chosen. 125 intra-city bus drivers were interviewed to gather data at different location of Dhaka city. From four major categories of information 25 factors were selected for modeling and 59 independent variables were used in ordered probit model analysis. 10 significant variables were obtained from the model which have been used to formulate a forecasting equation to predict the tendency of a bus driver's cellphone use while driving.
