Here comes another painful lesson of using mobile phone while driving.
At 11 a.m. on July 1, a car lost control and crashed into the roadside near Zhongshan 1st Road, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, killing three people and injuring three others. According to the information released by the Traffic Police Detachment of the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau in Guangdong, the driver lost control of the vehicle because he was looking down at his phone, causing the traffic accident.
How many people can’t help but check their phones while driving?
Mobile phone addiction is not a new phenomenon, but in recent years there have been more and more posts on social media reflecting experiences of drivers replying to messages or watching short videos while driving.
The Paper sorted out the traffic accident warning cases released by @公安部交局's Weibo account in recent years, and found that the warning cases caused by operating mobile phones have been increasing in the past two years. In the first half of 2025 alone, @公安部交局 announced 34 traffic accidents caused by swiping mobile phones, answering calls, etc., which is close to the number of cases released in the whole year of 2023.
At the same time, among these accidents that have been announced to be caused by operating mobile phones, The Paper found that high-frequency behaviors have gradually shifted from looking down at the navigation a few years ago to watching short videos, live broadcasts and other mobile phone-using behaviors.
In June this year, two heavy trucks rear-ended each other on the Capital Ring Road. The cab of the rear truck was severely deformed due to the collision. After investigation, the traffic police found that the driver of the rear truck lowered his head to watch short videos while driving, so he failed to observe the road conditions ahead in time. The truck driver later said that he put his mobile phone on the car's center console and started "watching and swiping on the phone".
Coincidentally, in April this year, at the Liancheng Toll Station on the Changshen Expressway in Longyan, a traffic police officer found a truck driver watching videos on his phone while driving - holding the steering wheel with his left hand and sliding the screen with his right hand, switching his eyes back and forth. When he was stopped, the driver explained that "the long journey was boring, so I watched videos to relieve boredom."
How big is the impact of glancing at your phone while driving? According to a third-party study cited by the Ministry of Public Security's Road Traffic Safety Research Center, the probability of an accident while looking at your phone while driving is 23 times higher than normal, mainly due to a shorter reaction time. Compared with normal reaction speed, typing and sending messages while driving will slow the driver's reaction speed by 35%, while the reaction speed of drunk driving is only 21% slower than normal.
In addition to the rise of short videos and live broadcasts that have increased the temptation of mobile phones, the advancement of assisted driving technology has also, to some extent, provided "convenient" conditions for drivers to use their phones while driving.
The Paper noted that among the traffic accident cases announced by the Ministry of Public Security Traffic Management Bureau, there are more than one case where the driver was concentrating on using the assisted driving function while browsing the phone. Earlier this year, on the Shanghai-Kunming Expressway in Yichun, Jiangxi, a small passenger car rushed straight into the construction area. Why didn't it avoid it? It turned out that the driver had been looking at his phone after turning on the assisted driving function.
Drivers are not the only ones who need to pay attention to their phones.
However, it should be noted that the road traffic safety threat caused by swiping mobile phones is not only caused by cars. In the warning cases published by @Ministry of Public Security Traffic Management Bureau, those who are addicted to swiping mobile phones on the road are not only car drivers, but also some bicycle and electric bicycle riders and pedestrians.
On May 28 this year, in Anji County, Zhejiang Province, a man riding an electric bicycle collided with a woman crossing the zebra crossing. Both of them were looking down at their mobile phones at the time.
Although the speed of riding bicycles and electric bicycles is not as fast as cars, the harm caused by distraction from looking at mobile phones cannot be underestimated.
A research team analyzed 468 videos of electric bicycle accidents and found that distracted behavior significantly outweighed the impact of risky behaviors such as driving against traffic and running red lights, and nearly half of these distracted behaviors were caused by mobile phones. At the same time, compared with cycling accidents without distracted behavior, the proportion of serious accidents (serious injuries or deaths) caused by mobile phone distraction is higher.
The reason for this situation, the first author of the study Feng Zhanyu mentioned in the article, is that the factors that lead to cycling accidents often appear together, and traffic accidents caused by distraction due to playing with mobile phones are often accompanied by driving in the opposite direction, occupying motor vehicle lanes, etc., and the harm caused is likely to be greater.
Because of this, Japan's revised Road Traffic Law, which will be implemented in November 2024, lists the act of using a mobile phone while riding a bicycle as an offense, punishable by up to six months of detention and a fine of up to 100,000 yen. According to data from the Japanese National Police Agency, traffic accidents caused by cyclists using mobile phones remained stable at around 60 per year from 2014 to 2016, and have remained above 100 since 2022.
An official from the National Police Agency of Japan said that the increase in accidents may not only be due to the popularity of smartphones, but also that the increasing content of videos and games has made people unable to resist playing with their phones while riding.
Some cities in China have also begun to explore and formulate laws and regulations to target the "phone-diving tribe" on the road. Since 2019, many cities in Zhejiang, Henan, and Xiamen, Fujian have formulated clear fines for the behavior of looking at mobile phones on zebra crossings, with fines ranging from 5 yuan to 200 yuan.
In addition to the above, what other measures do you think can be taken to reduce the behavior of using mobile phones while driving, riding a bike or walking?