59 percent of our readers do not use a telephone in traffic

You only have to look down at your phone for a microsecond, not to see in time that your predecessor is pushing hard on the brake pedal. Or by bike: just read a WhatsApp while you’re home in five minutes and you accidentally cycle yourself into the bushes. Using a phone in traffic is usually not a good idea and readers clearly agree: 59 percent of readers say they never use their phone in traffic.

Navigate or manage playlists?

In addition, we must specify what telephone use is in traffic. For example, if you have a phone holder on your bicycle that you use to navigate to a location via Google Maps, then that is allowed. If you then continue to WhatsApp or build a complete playlist in Spotify, you have your eyes so long off the road that you are dangerously busy. The government therefore wants to impose heavier penalties for smartphone use.

That is why we asked in our poll this week whether you ever use your smartphone when you drive or cycle. The funny thing is that the answers don’t differ as much as two years ago, when we also asked this question: in May 2020, 58 percent said they do not use their phone in traffic, compared to 59 percent now. However, the ‘occasional’ use has decreased: first 24 percent indicated that they use the telephone now and then, now it is 20 percent. In 2020, 5 percent said they use their phone, but are trying to reduce it, versus 6 percent in 2022. Finally, 6 percent still use their phone in traffic: nothing has changed.

Nice mono

In short, it seems that the focus on the use of telephones in traffic (thanks to the mono campaign, among other things) may have had some influence on the people who already had some doubts, but there is still a small hard core who still use their telephones. -apparently at all costs- continues to use in traffic. That could also be due to something Markun85 notes: “Yes, purely as navigation. I miss that in the answer options, I think a lot of people use it that way, just like Flitsmeister.” 10 percent indicate ‘different’.

Michele_Possamai has a clear opinion about people who already use WhatsApp while driving on the track: “For navigation, but I set it when I’m standing still. I see enough of those crazy people riding in the car through the city center on WhatsApp. Phone in hand, eyes to somewhere under the steering wheel .. life threatening. I don’t think they understand that they are in a deadly projectile.”

Append cyclists

And then of course there are cyclists. -DS- indicates something that many cyclists (at least the writer of this piece) can identify with: “A few times to click on ‘next song’ (Spotify) from the lockscreen on the bike, and then only if there is no traffic nearby. Never in the car.” David1972 is also a bicycle song skipper, but Ijskast is less happy about that: “Nicely anti-social. I almost hit someone like that recently. I came from the right, he was playing with his phone and gave no direction… he still says coolly “yes, but I did see you”. Then why don’t you stop! You get sick of it. annoy me to death”

In short, maybe we can improve a little more, for example by building playlists at home in advance in which no song has to be skipped, so that you always keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.

You know what not to skip? The next AW Poll, coming out next week. Until then!