Is it safe to drive using hands-free telephony?

People working in sales and business development often need to be on the road and make work-related calls on a hands-free device while driving. Is it safe to drive while using hands-free telephony?

Consider this situation. A business has several employees who drive company vehicles during the day. They have hands-free phones in their cars but have been told that it’s the mental distraction that causes accidents. Hands-free phones are not enough to protect their people. Should the business require their employees to turn off their phones while driving as a matter of company policy?

Road accident data

After decades of declining rates, an increase in deaths on US roads has been attributed to the rise in phone use while driving. Research shows that road accidents are more likely in Australia if a person is distracted while driving. Phones are notorious for causing a short lapse in concentration that can have devastating consequences. 

Using a hands-free phone while driving is legal in all Australian states and territories (except for learners and provisional P1 and P2 drivers, who are banned from using phones), but debate continues as to how safe it is.

Receiving a brief call when road conditions are not challenging may be perfectly safe, especially if people keep their eyes on the road and their hands on the wheel. But a problematic or more extended phone conversion in busy or complex traffic situations could interrupt a driver’s focus if the driver is, for example, making a right turn, looking for a gap in traffic, or changing lanes. 

And despite hands-free devices, many drivers automatically look at their phones if they hear a text message come through or someone calls. The New South Wales Centre for Road Safety states that taking your eyes off the road for longer than two seconds doubles the risk of a crash.

Distractions

However, phones are not the only in-car distraction that can impair safe driving. Other passengers, adjusting the sound system, checking screen displays or entering text into a GPS can be equally distracting and dangerous, not to mention illness, injuries, fatigue, large spiders or distress resulting from a recent argument with a family member or colleague.

Distractions can also come from outside the vehicle. For example, an animal runs out onto the road, another driver makes a sudden unexpected move close to the car, or the driver is searching for a particular street name in heavy rain.

Distractions are arrayed on a spectrum. The potential risk varies in line with a wide range of factors. Distractions often occur in combinations, for example, hearing the ‘ping’ of a text received while adjusting the air-conditioning or trying to calm upset children in the back seat.

In other words, a phone call, even one taken on a hands-free system, can be an added distraction on top of several others.

Individual factors

Individual factors are also involved. For example, evidence suggests that young drivers are more likely to be distracted by what their passengers are doing or saying than older drivers with more experience. It has also been claimed that young men are the worst offenders when using their phones while driving.

Employers’ obligations

A large number of work-related injuries arise from driving. Seventy-two percent of work-related fatalities involved a vehicle, according to Safe Work Australia’s Work-related Traumatic Injury Fatalities, Australia 2019, and thousands of people are injured every year while driving on work-related business.

Employers are obliged to eliminate or minimise foreseeable risks to workers, and the distraction of dealing with phone calls while driving is undoubtedly a potential risk factor. However, the actual risk in individual situations may vary from significant to vanishingly small in others. 

If reasonably practicable, the safest option requires employees to turn off their phones while driving.

However, it may not be reasonably practicable to require all employees to turn off their phones while driving. But in occupations where constant availability is not necessary, a risk analysis may suggest that good policy would require workers to refrain from initiating calls while driving. Also, pull over at the earliest opportunity to take calls if the call is not brief.