Organisation
Kier Foundation
Amount awarded
£29,839
Completed
2024
Uploaded to Knowledge Centre
1 August 2024
The aim of this project was to identify current ‘myths’ that people who drive for work rely on to justify hands-free use while driving, and to then create a road safety video that debunks them.
The resultant video was then evaluated in a study that compared mobile phone use, and attitudes towards mobile phone use (both hand-held and hands-free), for a group of drivers who watched the myth-busting video and a control group who watched a road safety video unrelated to phone use.
Study 1 was a survey designed to capture the myths that people who drive for work use to support hands-free phone use while driving. Questions concerning mobile phone attitudes and frequency of use were mixed in with questions on other aspects of road safety (speeding, overtaking etc.) to mask the aim of the study.
A focus group of experts in the road safety field were brought together to review the findings. Together they selected five myths from Study 1 that appeared key to supporting drivers’ use of hands-free phones while driving:
- Hands-free is legal, so it must be safe
- Driving is ‘dead time’
- Hands-free is safe because your eyes are on the road and hands are on the wheel
- Hands-free is no different to talking to a passenger
- I need to use hands-free communication for work
An intervention study (Study 2) was designed to assess the impact of the video on driver attitudes to mobile phone use (both hand-held and hands-free). To mask the focus of the study, drivers were presented with 5 road safety videos across 5 weeks. In Week 3, participants were randomly assigned to watch the hands-free intervention or a control video. None of the other videos included any reference to mobile phones. Attitudes towards mobile phone use and self-reported frequency of phone use were assessed at different points throughout the weeks of the study.
The project team hypothesised that drivers who saw the intervention video would have safer attitudes towards mobile phone use at the end of the study compared to a control group. They further hypothesised that self-reported mobile phone use might dip in the week immediately after viewing the video, and we hoped that the dip would still be evident at the end of the study.
The target sample was 200 drivers from a national construction company who provided access to potential participants. Unfortunately, despite offering lottery inducements for those who completed the study, recruitment fell far below the target, and the project team had to recruit from other sources (including a further 15 companies). Despite this they only reached a sample size of 68.
The results failed to show a change in attitudes towards hands-free mobile phones or their frequency of self-reported use. It is possible that the low sample size, and the relatively safe attitudes and low frequency of phone use noted in the sample at baseline may have contributed to the failure to reject the null hypothesis.
Given the potential sample problems noted in Study 2, the project team took an opportunity to piggy-back on an unrelated study to collect further data (Study 3). This study targeted average car drivers rather than people who specifically drive for work. To potentially improve the impact of the video, it was split into four smaller videos, each tackling a particular myth (with the myth ‘I need to use hands-free communication for work’ removed, as it wasn’t relevant for these drivers). The design of Study 3 did not allow the project team to collect self-reported usage of mobile phones, but it did collect attitudes to mobile phones at the start and end of the study using 12 items taken from the survey in Study 1.
Attitude data was collected from 323 drivers who were paid for their time. Analyses demonstrated clear improvements in safety-related attitudes regarding mobile phone use while driving in the intervention group compared to the control group. When asked directly whether the four mini-myth-busting videos had changed their understanding of the dangers of mobile phones, 95% said that their knowledge of the dangers of mobile phone use had increased, while 80% said that they would limit or completely avoid hands-free mobile phone use while driving in the future.
To conclude, the process of selecting the myths and creating the videos has provided a powerful protocol for future video-based interventions to follow. The results of Study 3 suggest this approach can be impactful.
Click the link below to access the full report:
https://www.roadsafetytrust.org.uk/small-grants-awarded/kier-foundation-handsfree