Government bodies and enforcement authorities worldwide are homing in on distracted driving as a major risk to road safety: and if fleet operators and the drivers who work for them are not prepared to take action to mitigate this risk, then the police and courts are showing that they are more than willing to do the job for them. That means fines, action taken against employees’ driving licences, potential damage to the public image of the company concerned and the way in which it is perceived by its customers, and expensive civil litigation if somebody is injured as a consequence of irresponsible action by one of the company's drivers.

Distracted driving means for example texting, emailing, or having a hand-held cell phone pressed to your ear while at the wheel, but can encompass other activities as well. They can include eating, drinking, trying to read a map and even turning your head to speak to a fellow employee sitting in a rear seat.

Leading the charge against distracted driving is the USA’s Department of Transportation headed by Transportation Secretary, Ray LaHood. He and his department have been running a major campaign for the past three years highlighting the danger and have even set up a website – www.distraction.gov – to help battle it.

‘It’s an epidemic, and while we have made progress in raising awareness about this risky behaviour, the simple fact is that people are continuing to be killed and injured and we can put an end to it,’ he says. ‘Personal responsibility for putting down that cell phone is a good first step but we need everyone to do their part, whether it is helping to pass strong laws, educating our youngest and most vulnerable drivers or starting their own campaign to end distracted driving.’

The campaign has long received the backing of President Barack Obama. Back in September 2009 he signed an executive order directing federal employees not to text while driving government fleet vehicles or while driving privately owned grey fleet vehicles on government business.

The order also encouraged – but did not compel – federal contractors and others doing business with the government to adopt and enforce their own policies banning texting while driving on the job. In September 2010 the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration banned all truck and bus drivers from texting while driving and followed this up with a ban on the use of hand-held cell phones too in November 2011.

The size of the problem in the USA alone is indeed considerable. More than 3,300 people were killed and 387,000 were injured in crashes involving a distracted driver in 2011 according to figures compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

In a recent court case, one of the USA's biggest corporations was hit with a $21m (€16.3m) bill for damages after one of its drivers who was using a cell phone collided with another motorist causing severe injuries.

LaHood's campaign is facing an uphill struggle.

A recent survey carried out on behalf of the NHTSA revealed that in any given daylight moment around 660,000 drivers in the USA are manipulating electronic devices or using cell phones. That is despite the fact that texting while at the wheel is completely banned in 39 States and using a hand-held cell phone at the wheel is banned in ten.

In a renewed attack, last year saw the NHTSA announce a grant programme worth around $17.5m to reward States that have enacted and are enforcing anti-distracted driving laws, including anti-texting statutes. The cash could be used to, for example, train police officers to spot drivers who are surreptitiously tapping out text messages while travelling down the freeway.

LaHood is also tackling the problem from another angle as part of his ‘Blueprint for Ending Distracted Driving’ plan and is urging manufacturers to limit the distraction risk presented by systems installed in their vehicles, including communication, navigation and entertainment devices.

Issued by the NHTSA earlier this year, the voluntary guidelines include recommendations to limit the time drivers must take their eyes off the road to perform any task to just two seconds. They also suggest that manufacturers should disable certain functions unless vehicles are parked including manual text entry for the purposes of text messaging and Internet browsing, video phoning and video conferencing and the display of certain types of text, including text messages, web pages and social media content.

The USA is not the only country where distracted driving is an issue. In Australia, a survey carried out by the Department of Infrastructure and Transport in 2011 revealed that while 59% of drivers with a mobile phone said they used it while driving, only 28% said they had a hands-free kit: evidence that a large number juggle with a hand-held phone instead.

The research also showed that 31% of drivers with a mobile read text messages and 14% send them while at the wheel.

In Canada, distracted driving was a contributing factor to 104 collision fatalities in British Columbia in 2010 while distracted drivers are three times more likely to be involved in a crash than attentive drivers according to the Ministry of Transportation in Alberta. All ten Canadian provinces have some form of distracted driving legislation in place.

Allstate Insurance Company of Canada says that 80% of collisions on the country’s roads are caused by distracted driving with nearly three out of four drivers admitting to driving while being distracted.

The Automobile Association of South Africa is concerned about the problem too, with 7.2% of drivers in morning rush-hour traffic observed using hand-held phones in a recent survey.

‘The greatest issue with mobile phone use while driving is the lack of capacity of the human brain to react to external stimuli, assimilate information and decide on appropriate action while concentrating on something else: a conversation in this case,’ it observes. ‘Drivers using cell phones look at but fail to see up to 50% of the information in their driving environment.

‘What this means in effect that while we are talking/texting on the phone, vital road information is not being processed by the brain, resulting in decisions being made with incomplete information: quite often with disastrous consequence,’ it continues. ‘Studies have shown that drivers talking on cell phones are four times more likely to be involved in a crash compared with those who are not.’

South Africa’s roads are dangerous enough anyway without adding to the risk the association points out, with an average of 40 people killed and 25 permanently disabled daily. Around 1m crashes occur a year, it adds, involving almost 1.8m vehicles.

Fleets can of course instruct their drivers not to text, email, tweet or eat while at the wheel and provide hands-free kits – although even their use is questionable given that you may end up talking while driving, albeit without a phone actually in your hand: and a complicated and extended discussion is not something to be engaged in if you are trying to negotiate a busy stretch of highway at the same time.

Operators can also alter their working practices so that employees are not required to respond to calls or messages while driving from point A to point B.

Policies laid down by a distant head office have to be enforced on the ground however and it is at the sharp end where prudent risk management practices are sometimes ignored. The urgent need to communicate with a driver to ensure that a consignment of goods is picked up can sometimes take precedence over carefully crafted statements of sound risk management practice.

Technology can be used to ensure good practices are followed, however, according to The Canary Project.

Based in Columbia, South Carolina, USA, it has come up with Corporate Canary, a version of its distracted driving prevention app that it has developed specifically for fleet operators. It notifies fleet managers when employees use their employer-provided iPhones or Android phones (but not those that are their personal property) while driving company vehicles.

Corporate Canary reports when drivers make and receive phone calls, text, check emails or use social media while at the wheel as well as revealing their whereabouts and whether they are speeding. Managers can choose to receive these reports either daily or weekly.

They can be used as a carrot as well as a stick says The Canary Project’s chief executive officer, Jani Spede. ‘They can help businesses reward their safest drivers for honouring company policies,’ she says.

In the UK, Romex World has developed a DDP – Driver Distraction Prevention – app that can be installed in drivers’ phones. Once again, it does not affect personal phones owned by employees.

Within a minute of the start of a journey it cuts off and blocks all voice calls and locks the keypad to prevent texting and emailing. Employees receive an announcement via their phone if a message has been missed so that they can stop somewhere safe in order to deal with it.

Romex has also developed a set of reports that can, for example, analyse speeding by comparing actual speed with the speed limit on the road concerned. They can also monitor the possible onset of fatigue based on employees driving for too long without a break or driving having been engaged in other activities: meetings that have gone on all day for example.

Drivers who are distracted can be saved from themselves by a growing army of onboard safety devices now being installed in vehicles either as options or as standard features. While their presence should not be used as an excuse for texting or tweeting while behind the wheel, specifying them is certainly likely to reduce the risk of a collision and subsequent litigation.

Among the safety options available on Mercedes-Benz’s new Sprinter van, which recently received its press launch in Dusseldorf, Germany, is Blind Spot Assist. Designed to reduce the risk of drivers blundering into cyclists, motorcyclists and other vulnerable road users because they had failed to notice their presence, the alert takes the form of an illuminated red triangle in – as appropriate – the nearside or offside exterior rear view mirror.

If you do not notice the triangle, and indicate to pull out anyway, then it will start to flash and a warning buzzer will sound.

Also on the options list is Collision Prevention Assist.When a Sprinter equipped with it was driven at speed under test conditions towards a Citan light van travelling ahead hauling a full-scale inflatable model of a Citan on a trailer, the system’s radar spotted when the Sprinter was getting too close. That triggered an alert, which prompted the Sprinter’s supposedly daydreaming driver to react and slam on the brakes, averting an accident.

Adaptive Brake Assist immediately intervened to make certain they were applied to maximum effect.

Says Mercedes-Benz’s head of product management and marketing for large and medium vans, Norbert Kuntz: ‘Such assistance systems can prevent up to 43% of rear-end collisions involving vans.’