Transcript 0:00 Talk to me. Information, news, and entertainment on demand. WSradio.com [on-hold music] 0:14 Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, the voice of IoT in our connected world, with your host, Peggy Smedley. [on-hold music] Hello, listeners, and welcome back to The Peggy Sledley Show. 0:26 As you know, Distracted Driving Awareness Month is just around the corner, and thus for my final segment today, I'm pleased to have a highly accomplished, knowledgeable, and self-motivated risk management executive on my show. 0:39 With more than twenty years of experience, he specializes in claims, loss control, safety, health and environmental, and compliance. 0:47 Please join me in welcoming to the show Phil Reynaud, executive director of The Risk Institute at Ohio State University. Phil, welcome to the show. 0:57 Thank you, Peggy, and, uh, thanks for inviting us, uh, to be on your show. 1:02 So Phil, we know and, and you know, we can't do enough to keep our roads safe, and I know you guys have done a whole lot at The Risk Insti-institute. 1:11 So before I even get started, let's talk about what is The Risk Institute and what you guys are doing to try to keep our roads safe by, uh, focusing on distracted driving. Let's start with that focus right now. Yeah. 1:24 Well, you know, The Risk Institute, uh, focuses on really at the wider engagement of enterprise risk management. 1:31 Um, and distracted driving is but one of our, uh, kind of one of the conversations that we're having and looking at how we can, uh, one, improve road safety and improve, uh, you know, the overall safety and health of, uh, of our population. 1:46 Just look around- Well, you-... and you see, you know, just the number of, uh, just daily events of people with head down as they're driving on the highway, focusing on things other than, uh, driving. 1:59 I, I'm, I'm-- I have to say I'm kind of a terrible person because it's, it's an epidemic. [laughs] It is. And I can't help but look at the people, and I wanna stare them down. I mean, that's why I'm terrible. 2:09 I'm always the passenger. I'm not the driver. [laughs] And I wanna stare people down and go, "Put your phone down." But I, you know what- Exactly... and people look at me like I'm crazy, but- [laughs]... 2:18 they do it all the time. It's so preval-- pr-prevalent that people- It is. Yeah... have their phones. Even though it's against the law, it just doesn't resonate with people. It, it doesn't. And I, I think people... 2:29 One, there's a couple different things. We've, we've looked at distracted driving now for the better part of a year. In fact, we just came on our anniversary, uh, um, meeting, uh, a couple of weeks ago. 2:38 And we, we focused on distracted driving from four pillars, one, legislative, two, behavior, three, use of technology and working towards, uh, towards, um, you know, solving it, and the fourth area is urban planning and development, so how roads are going to be built in the future using more roundabouts and, uh, different, uh, plantings so that we're creating illusions of narrowing roads, et cetera. 3:07 But, um, we think that this is a behavioral challenge for us for the most part. You know, our research is showing that people believe that, you know, they're good drivers. Everyone's a great driver. 3:22 And therefore, um, you know, for me to look out of the phone, it's okay because I'm a good driver. Nothing's gonna happen to me. And that mindset's a fascinat-fascination because I... it, it is. 3:35 People think that, that, the, that four seconds that they're looking down, they don't understand is the length of a football field, is enough to kill everybody around them. You know? Yeah. I don't understand that. 3:44 But go, go through that, that whole urban planning and behavior part 'cause really it's intriguing to me right now because, you know, when we talk about autonomous driving, I want... 3:52 I'm really kind of curious what you found with that. Yeah. Well, let's, let's first of all start with what kind of focused us on, uh, on this topic. 4:02 Um, there was some research that I came about, research that we did not do, um, but research that was intriguing to me that started this whole conversation. And it, they asked three basic questions. One, have... 4:14 Do you speed regularly ten miles over the speed limit? Have you run a red light? And three, have you texted while using your phone? So three very basic questions. 4:25 And they looked at a strata of drivers from sixteen to eighty. Okay? Um, a hundred percent being really bad and, you know, one percent being really good. 4:38 Um, as we looked at the, the different stratas of age, what we found out is that the best were at seventy to seventy-five percent, meaning seventy-five being yes to all three of those questions. 4:53 The worst group was a group between nineteen and twenty-four, where over ninety percent of that group answered yes to those three particular questions. 5:06 So that kind of focused our attention on that's, that's our college-age students. Those are the students that we work with every day of the week. 5:15 Uh, interestingly enough, the sixteen- to eighteen-year category had one of the best scores, best being seventy to seventy-one percent. 5:26 Not very good, but still, you know, better than the nineteen to twenty-four category. So shockingly high. Is it just because maybe they were more honest than the older people had been? [laughs] No, I don't think so. 5:41 I don't think so. I think what we're seeing, um, and, and other studies are showing, our studies included, is that drivers are, are getting their licenses older. So- Yeah. That's true... 5:52 I know when I was learning to drive, I couldn't wait at fifteen and a half to get a permit, so I'd be driving at sixteen. 5:59 Now we're finding that young drivers, it's not unusual to see, you know, first-time drivers at nineteen or twenty years oldYeah, that's true. I think that, that conditioning- I agree. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, that's true. 6:10 That's conditioning it to be. But I also think... Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. So, so you got behaviors. 6:15 They're not eager to get their license, and, you know, mo-most of them don't parallel park anymore, you know, those kind of things. Right. They're not even taught that, right? No. 6:23 So we see that, but what, what is that telling us, though? Are they telling us- Well-... because they're getting their license later, they're just worse drivers, or they still have really bad behaviors? 6:33 No, I think they got bad behaviors because if you think of that, that age, that age group, uh, they're brought up with a cell phone. I mean, the cell phone, it's been around longer than... 6:43 but the iPhone or that smartphone technology really started around 2007, didn't it? But I thought we've- So it's ten, 11 years old. But I thought we've seen from their parents. They're telling their parents not to do it. 6:57 That idea is still not resonating where, you know, put your phone down, don't drive, you know, like a seatbelt, it's still not working, because they were brought up with it. They just don't see put it down, put it away. 7:07 They gotta have it. They're so brought up with it, it's, it's a, an extension of their body. 7:11 It's an extension of their body, and I think, you know, when we look at the research that is just being completed now, we look at really five basic kind of conditions here. 7:21 One, the first is underestimating the risk of distracted driving. Okay? 7:27 They're saying because they're so used to, you know, using their phones, it's very familiar to them, that they're underrating, underestimating that particular risk. Okay? 7:38 The second is they're not understanding the cause and consequence of distracted driving. Death isn't enough for them to get that? A major accident? Yeah. You're killing it right now, Phil. [laughs] Yeah. 7:50 I mean, they, they tend to judge its risk as low, and the benefit- Ugh... of using the phone is high. Okay? Um, a-and then I think what we call motivated denial of the risk of distracted driving. 8:03 So they're kind of motivated to d- to, to deny that what they do is risky because the emotional desire and that justification of the behavior is saying, "It's okay. I'm a good driver. It isn't gonna happen to me. 8:20 It's someone else's problem, not my problem." Okay? The overconfidence in their driving abilities, we said earlier. 8:28 And the, the final point, which I think is probably the, the most, uh, harmful, is this failure to avoid temptation to use the device. It's addictive, isn't it? 8:40 We see that, you know, that, that, uh, that, um, that ping that, uh, you know, that, that event, uh, coming across the phone that I have to touch it. I have to see who's sending me a text, a, a text. 8:56 Uh, who's calling me. It's very hard to put that down. Now, there's technology out there that will assist us, but it's, it's interrupting in many respects our freedom or what we perceive as our freedom. 9:11 Hey, Phil, um, we're out of time, but I want you to come back because we gotta talk about this. All month long, I talk about distracted driving in April. I gotta bring you back. Okay. 9:19 So, Phil Reynaрд, you are the executive director of the Risk Institute at Ohio State University. What's your URL quickly so our listeners will know that? Our URL? Yes. Is, um, [laughs] you asked me too quickly. 9:34 [laughs] I'm not, I'm not... But I can get that, I can get that back to you. All right. I can get it to you. Well, we're gonna have you come back. All right. But we're out of time. But thanks for being with us. 9:41 I appreciate it. All right, listeners. Thanks. Bye-bye. All right. We're broadcast every Tuesday, 12:00 PM Central. Please come back. Hope you have a great week. 9:48 This is The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and relevant technology. And remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. [upbeat music] With great technology comes great responsibility. 10:05 Follow Internet of Things tech expert and futurist Peggy Smedley, repeatedly ranked as a top IoT and M2M influencer. 10:13 Go to peggy_smedley on Twitter for her take on the latest tech news and lively interviews with other industry insiders on her weekly radio show. Visit twitter.com and search for peggy_smedley to follow her today. 10:27 [upbeat music] Video consumption is on the rise, so to reach this audience, Constructek Magazine created Constructek TV. 10:39 Constructek TV helps construction professionals leverage emerging solutions to better their business. 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