Talking Michigan Transportation

New data finds Michigan drivers putting down their phones

• Michigan Department of Transportation • Season 6 • Episode 184

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On this week’s edition of the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, a conversation with Ryan McMahon of Cambridge Mobile Telematics, a Massachusetts-based firm that tracks data from drivers, participating voluntarily, to analyze statistics and driver behavior.

McMahon last spoke on the podcast in November, a few months after Michigan Gov. Whitmer signed the law making it illegal to use a hand-held electronic device while driving.

The news was less sanguine then, but now his firm is reporting updated numbers that show meaningful strides in the right direction. 

Some key figures cited:

  • In the first month after the Michigan law was signed, distracted driving went down nearly 12 percent.
  • The next month, it was 13.5 percent lower.
  • The gains then diminished but are headed in a positive direction again.

Podcast image by bobtheskater from Pixabay.

Jeff Cranson:

Hello, welcome to the Talking Michigan Transportation Podcast. I'm Jeff Cranson. Today I'm going to speak again with Ryan McMahon at Cambridge Mobile Telematics. That's a Massachusetts-based firm that tracks data from drivers participating voluntarily to analyze statistics and driver behavior. The firm's clients include some of the nation's largest insurance carriers State Farm, G geico, progressive Nationwide and others as well as many other businesses operating in the mobility arena. Ryan has some new statistics that should be interesting about how things are going in Michigan, since Michigan adopted a hands-free law for drivers, meaning no use of electronic devices while driving, back in June of 2023. So he talked about those findings and what they mean, how we compare to other states and what kind of trends he's seeing. So I hope you enjoy the conversation. So, R ryan, great to have you back. For anyone not familiar with your work, explain what CMT does and why.

Ryan McMahon:

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for the addition again today, J jeff. It's been a pleasure. This is the third time, I think, that I've been on the Talking Transportation Podcast. The first time I recorded from B budapest, Hungary, uh, so, uh, I will not forget that. Uh, that first work.

Jeff Cranson:

But yeah, I'm sorry I don't have a jacket for you. Like the SNL hosts, you know that the five-time uh hosting club, but uh, there's only three. So yeah, there's plenty of time there's plenty of time.

Ryan McMahon:

Well, thank you for the time. Well, thank you for the invitation back again. CMT is a technology company that measures driving behavior for mostly the insurance and mobility industry, so we're the report card for millions of drivers that opt in a completely opt-in basis. Every driver that's using our technology is aware that their driving is being assessed and rated, and really what we're doing is assessing the likelihood of an individual driver's likelihood to get into a crash, and we do that based on measuring information that helps us determine events and those events when they occur over time in large quantities Events like at-risk speeding events, aggressive driving, emergency braking, activity that could be a near crash, and really one of the most important things is distracted driving.

Ryan McMahon:

So we're measuring all of these events. We're providing feedback to drivers, which is a really important thing. So after every trip, feedback is available to drivers in the method that it's collected, so those drivers can understand how their risk is evolving. For the most part, the technology is cell phone based, so drivers are downloading an app and opting in to the technology, and this app isn't just any old app. It's exactly the app that a driver is using for an insurance program, for an example, where those drivers are fully aware. So if anyone is listening to me and doesn't know what I'm talking about, they're not enrolled. And if anyone is listening to me and wants to know, more certainly reach out to whoever you're going to for insurance matters and advice and talk to them, because most of these programs are designed to provide consumers discounts over what they normally pay and probably the most important thing is they truly do prevent crashes.

Jeff Cranson:

Yeah, and you see more advertising about that. I wonder if that's taking off, if the trends show that more people are opting in to that kind of a program, that again I don't know what better incentive there is than, you know, lowering your rates.

Ryan McMahon:

So I mean, there's the other incentive is staying safe on the roads and you know, one of the things that I always talk about all the time is it? It is interesting, you know we get asked this question often, J jeff is like. Is the information that you have representative of the overall driving risk that exists on the road? Because I'm going to talk about some statistics and data in a little bit, because we've been measuring what's been happening in Michigan for a while, but certainly the last year has been a really important period of time and one of the things that is important to understand is the information that we're gathering. The really critical thing is how representative of it is of normal drivers. Are these drivers better than average?

Ryan McMahon:

And it's very challenging for drivers to provide, I would say, an objective view of their own safety.

Ryan McMahon:

So we oftentimes see drivers engage in very risky activities that you would be surprised on because, again, all these drivers have opted in and we've been fortunate because the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, who is famed for doing all those amazing crash tests and filming that and setting the star ratings for safety for all the vehicles that they test they did an analysis of something called NOPIS, and NOPIS is the National Occupant Protection Survey. That survey is funded by NHTSA and really what that survey has done it's a roadside observation survey where individuals are observing roadside traffic. They're looking for drivers adherence to seatbelts and they're also measuring how many drivers are using their phone while driving. And what IAHS did is compared our analysis, so similar to the data that we published in the past. They compared our analysis to the NOPIS analysis and found it highly correlated. So, despite the fact that the drivers are 100% opt-in that we are reporting on, those drivers are representative of the overall road that we all use.

Jeff Cranson:

Yeah, that is interesting and good validation for the work that you do there. So, yeah, let's jump into the recent findings in Michigan and why you're encouraged.

Ryan McMahon:

Yeah, I am encouraged, and I have a question for those in the Michigan transportation world, because what has happened in Michigan is I walked through it from the beginning, so we looked at the level of smartphone distraction before the hands-free law went into effect. The law went into effect June 30th and what was interesting about Michigan that we have observed that really has not happened in many states is Michigan's law went right to and t There was no grace period at all, so there was no period of time between the point that the law was enacted to the time that the activity could be ticketed. In other states, like Ohio to the south Ohio had a grace period where you could be pulled over for it and warned, but not cited no dollar violations to it. Michigan was not that case and that particular stipulation is interesting because we looked at distraction the month before the law went into effect. So we would then be looking at it in May 2023. And in May we set that number and we said, okay, this is the level of prevalence of distracted driving in Michigan. This is in May, uh, 2023. So then we look at uh, we look at what happened, you know, in the go forward basis. So the the period of time that we're assessing against is a month before the law goes into a full effect and and if we make that period forward, we look at a couple of interesting time periods here.

Ryan McMahon:

So the first month that the law was in effect, what we saw was that the amount of distraction in Michigan went down 11%, and that is a significant number. It's actually almost 12% 11.7% the next month, so month two, that number increased so that the amount of decrease increased. So the total amount went to 13.5% below what it was before the law went into effect. To give you a sense of how important that is, every 10% drop in distracted driving has a significant result on crash rates, and I'm going to talk about some numbers, about the total basis, in just a moment. Yeah, so 12%, 13% is a really important result. It's not as high as we want, it's not as high as anybody wants, but it's an important result and it's actually better than a lot of states see in the initial days.

Ryan McMahon:

What happened after that point and reference this in the last time that we were on the podcast together was that the amount of distracted driving behavior started to climb back up. So the law's effectiveness as measured by the amount of time that a driver is distracted and when I'm talking about distraction, I mean the phone is unlocked, the driver's moving more than 10 miles an hour and the driver's manipulating their phone. And if we look at that time period, we are seeing the behavior start to come back a little bit higher every month. So the reduction in month three was 10.8%. So that started to slide back from the low of 13 and a half and then it went to 10.4. And then it went to 9.2 and 8.6. And in month seven it was at 5.2%. So the gains that we achieved, that the state achieved back towards the level that was observed prior to the law going into effect, which is not surprising. In fact, we see this. We see this on a regular basis.

Jeff Cranson:

Yeah, I think you and I have talked about it before. In the States, when the bills are signed, there's usually a media push and a lot of media interest, and then that wanes after a while, right?

Ryan McMahon:

There is absolutely, and I believe that our conversations and these conversations found their way into the larger, broader media. I believe MLive started to talk about what had changed at that point. So we're seven months into the law with the declining effectiveness, seven months into the law with the declining effectiveness, but in month seven that was the turning point, because the very next month, month eight, was an 11% reduction from the initial start. So we're now at that number is the third lowest month, the third lowest month since the law had gone into effect, and we continue that trend into month nine and 10 and 11. And where we sit today, a year later, is a 19% reduction from the month prior to the law going into effect. So something changed in Michigan and I can't tell you what it is, but something changed. So, from the point from our last conversation where we were trending back towards, frankly, what we see in other states, there was a reversion. Now the whole country I will tell you, in 2023, showed it was the first year that we have ever seen distraction start to slow down and in fact, it went backwards a little bit 4.5% reduction and it was in part due to efforts like yours in Michigan. You would be amazed, and we measure this.

Ryan McMahon:

The role of communications on this topic plays an outsized impact for the amount of time that it takes a media outlet to start to talk about this issue. The more that this is talked about, the more we see reductions. It's easy to measure. We're seeing this on a regular basis and in fact last year the amount of media publications on the role of distracted driving increased by thousands. Impressions on this topic increased by tens of millions. We've been measuring these results and the results are directly correlated to less activity, less behavior of this type of risk.

Ryan McMahon:

And just as a reminder for everyone, this is not a simple issue A. You shouldn't do this. It's not advisable. You should exercise 30 minutes a day, put on sunscreen, make sure you lock your car doors when you walk away. This is directly this activity.

Ryan McMahon:

If you get in your car today and you pick up your phone, you're increasing your crash risk at that time by 300%. This is a behavior that has a very swift consequence and it's not surprising to see that the speeds of these crashes when a driver is using their phone are higher and distracted driving has increased overall across the country from the start of the pandemic to right around the time period that we started reporting in this particular case, by about 30%. So the increase of drivers that are distracted, not paying attention, has really eroded the immune system of the overall roads. People are not able to respond to simple things that happen around them, simple issues of a driver needing to avoid another driver that may not be driving as efficiently or safely as possible. Now you have two people that are being unsafe and this has compounded on itself, which has led to the significant increase in fatalities that we started to rebound from nationwide last year, and where Michigan is right now is quite remarkable. So I'll pause there to just get your perspective. I'm curious on your thoughts here.

Jeff Cranson:

Well, one thing you know you've talked before about people that drive distracted or that you know are tracked as being distracted drive at higher speeds, and I wonder if that's a cause versus correlation thing. In other words, the people who are likely to use their devices while driving and take those kinds of risks are also more likely to speed in the first place. So you want to give me your thought on that?

Ryan McMahon:

It's quite possible. We did look at a couple of different scenarios where we would see drivers that were doing compound events, and I will tell you what we do see. While, overall, distraction is down, we do see distracted driving at speed at high speed is up, whether it's the same drivers or not. In this particular report we don't go down to that level. It's highly aggregated, but it is certainly possible. One of the things when we talk about distraction at speed, though, is when we're talking about those components, the crashes. When a distracted driving crash occurs and we detect crashes, we send out notifications that find their way to EMS in real time and are sending emergency help to drivers after a crash occurs, and we take that information and reconstruct it. What I can tell you is those crashes are happening at higher speeds. So, whether it's causation or correlation, if a driver is driving distracted and they happen to get into a crash, there's less evasive maneuvers. So those maneuvers that normally would slow the driver down, that would lead them to get into a lower speed crash, are simply not happening, and that is a recipe for disaster. That's a recipe for disaster If you're a pedestrian, if you're a bicyclist, if you're stopped at a stoplight of videos of their striping trains, their trucks that are painting lines in and around the state.

Ryan McMahon:

They have these great videos because the last vehicle in the train has cameras on it facing backwards, and what they're recording is they're recording crashes that are happening on these bright yellow vehicles that are being hit by drivers at speed, and Director McKenna from Missouri showed a number of these videos recently at a highway safety conference and it is shocking to see, like how do you hit a giant, large, medium-moving vehicle at full speed? And the only answer is that a driver is either distracted from something in the cabin or has fallen asleep. But these drivers are proceeding straight and they're not. It's not drivers that have moved in some way, shape or form consistent with the driver that has fallen asleep. These are destructive driving crashes. Whether it's from a smartphone or otherwise, I can't say, but the real issue as it pertains to road safety is that it's the prevalence of the activity that can lead to crashes, but those crashes happen at a higher level of severity and that severity is unfortunately leading to serious injuries.

Jeff Cranson:

Yeah, absolutely. Patrick McKenna, who's the director of the Missouri DOT, has been in front of this for some time on distracted driving and safety in general, so I did not know about that particular presentation, but that's interesting. Stick around, there's more to come right after this short message.

Safety Message:

In Michigan. Safety comes first on the roads. To combat distracted driving, Michigan passed the hands-free law. The law makes holding or manually using a cell phone or other mobile electronic device while operating a vehicle a primary offense.

Safety Message:

This means an officer can stop and ticket you for violating the law. This can include, but not limited to, sending or receiving a call.

Safety Message:

Sending, receiving or reading a text or email accessing, reading or posting to social media sites or entering locations into the phone GPS.

Safety Message:

With this law in place, drivers are encouraged to stay focused, keeping their hands on the wheel and their attention on the road. Drive smart, drive safe, drive hands-free.

Safety Message:

Michigan's hands-free law making the road safer for everyone.

Jeff Cranson:

So back to your question, I would say it took some time. I mean, there was a decent amount of media surrounding the governor signing the bills and then later there's been some targeted enforcement in different places across the state. But I think you referenced them live and I think you know some outlets, for whatever reason, responding late. Something in their tickler files, perhaps something that we've put out at MDOT or that the Office of Highway Safety Planning, which is housed in the Michigan State Police, has put out there, got their attention, generated some stories. But I think you're absolutely right. I think that the more media you can generate, the more awareness that you see. I'm a little surprised at these numbers because, anecdotally, I feel like I see as many people with a phone in their hand as I ever did, but I'm probably, you know, more plugged into it than most people too. So again, it's anecdotal.

Ryan McMahon:

I am as well. And look, you know, this is these are month by month numbers and in some ways it's it's analogous to the story of boiling a frog, where you don't see the changes as they happen in small increments, but it's the large picture and I can tell you that even small increments do make a difference. And here's the numbers that I want to share with you that over the last year, the average change is 12% reduction, which again doesn't sound like a ton. But here's what a 12% reduction means for the roads and again we know this. We know what these mean because the insurance industry tracks these type of behaviors relative to crash rates and the types of crashes that occur, ultimately find their ways into the insurance industry's actuarial databases. So this is the way that the same methods that they use to evaluate what they need to set aside for rates and how drivers are ultimately charged. So a 12% reduction in distracted driving prevents 3,815 crashes, and these are not normal crashes, these are, of those 3,815, it's 2,137 injury crashes and if we look at these type of crashes, it's likely 17 fatal crashes of those groups of drivers that are distracted and the economic impact, if we use NHTSA's formula now, of the cost of crash. It looks like about $151 million of economic damages just from a 12% reduction. So nobody's declaring victory by any means.

Ryan McMahon:

It's important to talk about what works and what doesn't work.

Ryan McMahon:

It's really important to tell the story, because the more that we tell the story and talk about it, the more that others MLive and other outlets begin to tell it. Data is a big part of it, because data helps show that something is working, and the more that we can highlight the actual actions maybe there's departments out there that are doing amazing work on this topic. There's departments out there that are doing amazing work on this topic. Maybe there are sections of the state that are just simply putting more time, energy and effort in this that are working really well. The more we can highlight that, the more we tell that story, the more others understand that, the more we find ourselves in a pathway that leads to safer roads, and I will tell you that we cannot just wait for automatic emergency braking and other tools to solve this problem. It's just going to take too long. This is problems that are serious, that are here in front of us today, and even small changes like the 12% reduction in Michigan are meaningful and we need to focus on those and expand it.

Jeff Cranson:

No, absolutely, I mean I think the more people you can get the message to that 12% reduction means 17 lives saved. That's significant. I mean, that's 17 people. So yeah, absolutely. So. One thing you and I have discussed before, but I can't recall the specifics and I think people probably wonder when they hear about these things how do you extrapolate to all drivers, based on the data from those who participate in the program through their insurance companies?

Ryan McMahon:

Yeah, great question. So we basically have the understanding of what these behaviors mean relative to crash rate. So when we look at the crashes that occur, these are the behaviors that are consistent with those activities. So if you take the total population of drivers and in this case I believe the number is Michigan's 7,982,000 drivers in the state. So we take the same math that we know applies to the increase or decrease of a particular behavior.

Ryan McMahon:

So let's say, like distraction went the other way, we would extrapolate the same increase of that behavior across the population of drivers and we've come to the same element. So, in reality, in some cases we may very well be undercounting this because the changes that happen at larger scale we're probably not grabbing the most extreme offenders on either side of things. Really, what we're giving a sense of is the average driver on the roads in Michigan and we can take that type of information and bring that out to the broad driver population. And again, just to reference the work that we talked about in the beginning, the same method that we're talking about today, that we're using to assess this particular behavior, is the same method that the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety analyzed us against in really the state-of-the-art which is the NOPA survey today.

Jeff Cranson:

Well, that makes sense. So what's your takeaway, I guess, to sum it up, about how Michigan's doing versus the other states with hands-free laws?

Ryan McMahon:

I think that I was worried. To be honest with you, J jeff, I was a little bit concerned the last time that we talked. I thought that Michigan would find itself in the same group of a number of states that passed a law, had a lot of emphasis on it and then had a reduction in the success. And I was a little bit. I got to tell you I was personally affected by it because Steve Keeper, someone I know very well he's the chairman of our Road Safety Advisory Board. Steve did a tremendous amount of work after the death of his son to make this law really a part of his life's mission and I think he played a very important role in that. And it hurts me to see the people that spend their time on this find all the work it does to get it through the legislature than have challenges after the fact. But I am more encouraged now. I would be more satisfied with what I'm seeing recently if I knew why.

Ryan McMahon:

So I would say the biggest next step is for us to look at broadly what has changed. Has there been changes on enforcement protocol? Has there been special campaigns that have been effective? What I can tell you is we looked at different areas of the state and I can tell you that we have seen some areas of the state have better results than others. So, for example, in the UP, we are not seeing the same reductions. Along the border with Ohio, we're actually not seeing the same reductions. So there's more to be done. I am encouraged by the recent results, but this is not a challenge that ever really gets one of those you did it congratulations type of banners. This is an everyday activity, but the more that we talk about it, the more that we make it aware to more people that there is data out there and we can understand what's working and what's not. I know that that work eventually will lead to good things.

Jeff Cranson:

No, that's interesting too. I don't think Indiana has a hands-free law, does it?

Ryan McMahon:

That is a great question. I think Indiana is one of the states,

Jeff Cranson:

I think there's 19 states remaining that do not have a hands-free law. I believe Indiana is one of them. Yeah, so what made me think of that is, if you're not seeing that decline at the border between Michigan and Ohio, then I'd wonder if it's even worse at the border between Michigan and Indiana. But that's something we can talk about and research later at the border between Michigan and Indiana. But that's something we can talk about and research later. So, Ryan, thanks as always. I look forward to talking to you more about this and I appreciate the shout out for Steve Kiefer, who really was an incredible advocate and was tireless on this and he was there when the governor signed the bill and he's really taken incredible personal tragedy and tried to make a positive mark in the world, so that's great.

Ryan McMahon:

And it didn't happen quickly, and I think that, J jeff, I have to commend you for keeping this in the public eye. This is a great communication channel. I would tell you, more DOTs need this, more time of talking about critical issues to as many people as it can listen is. Communications plays an outsized role in every part of society, but in transportation we've seen it, we've seen the results, so thanks for having me on to talk about it.

Jeff Cranson:

Yeah, I really appreciate you saying so, Ryan. We'll look forward to talking again. I'd like to thank you once more for tuning in to Talking Michigan Transportation. You can find show notes and more on Apple Podcasts or Buzzsprout. I also want to acknowledge the talented people who help make this a reality each week, starting with Randy Debler, who skillfully edits the audio, Jesse Ball, who proofs the content, Courtney Bates, who posts the podcast to various platforms, and Jacke Salinas, who transcribes the audio to make it accessible to all.