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Driver Electronic Device Use in 2023
The percentage of passenger vehicle drivers talking on handheld phones in 2023 remained unchanged from the previous year’s level of 2.1 percent (Figure 1 and Table 1). The percentage of drivers speaking with visible headsets while driving increased to 0.5 percent from the previous year’s level of 0.4 percent (Figure 1 and Table 2). Drivers’ visible manipulation of handheld devices decreased from 3.1 percent in 2022 to 3.0 percent in 2023 (Figure 1 and Table 3). In 2021 data collected for drivers visibly manipulating handheld devices while traveling included manipulating infotainment systems. This was an errant departure from the usual data collection protocol. For 2022 the data collection procedure reverted to excluding the manipulating infotainment systems. As such, the data point for visible manipulation of handheld devices in 2021 is not connected to the rest of the trend line. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration does not know the extent to which manipulating infotainment systems contributed to the results for drivers visibly manipulating handheld devices. These results are from the National Occupant Protection Use Survey (NOPUS), which provides the only nationwide probability-based observed data on driver electronic device use in the United States. NHTSA’s National Center for Statistics and Analysis (NCSA) conducts the NOPUS. The percentages in this research note are interpreted as the percentages of drivers nationwide during an average daylight moment.
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