A University of Newcastle study aims to investigate what is influencing young people to use their smartphones while driving.
Social psychologist Dr Cassandra Gauld is running a research project titled, "The influence of norms on young males' and young females' smartphone use".
"It's about the relative influence of the different type of norms that encourage young drivers to use their smartphone," Dr Gauld said.
The study will involve interviews and a survey of 17 to 25-year-olds.
It aims to investigate which types of norm are the most influential on young drivers' smartphone use.
"Despite much of my research to date showing that young drivers are aware of the risks and the legal ramifications from smartphone use while driving, they continue to engage in this very risky behaviour," Dr Gauld said.
"It appears, therefore, that there must be other factors influencing young drivers' smartphone use. So, I'm looking at the relative influence of the different types of norms to see which ones are the strongest influence on this behaviour."
She said the "influence of norms" referred to "the concept of normative influence".
This relates to people looking to others such as friends, family, peers and society, consciously or unconsciously, to act as guides for how to think and act.
"Normative influence can be broken down into several distinct norms, including moral, group, descriptive, injunctive and subjective norms.
"For example, injunctive norm refers to the behaviours that we think society approves of and subjective norm refers to the perception that our friends and family approve of a certain behaviour. So, in this study, I am looking at the relative influence of these different types of norms."
In Australia, road crashes account for almost half of young people's injury deaths.
"In 2020, 19 per cent of the people killed on Australian roads were aged between 17 and 25, despite this age group making up approximately 12 per cent of the driving population. The highest crash risk period for a young driver is immediately after obtaining a provisional driver's licence and increases until around age 26. A significant number of these crashes result from smartphone use."
In addition to the traditional functions of texting and calling, young drivers are the most likely age group to use smartphone functions such as Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and email while driving.
"Adding to their already elevated crash risk, many young drivers choose to conceal their phone usage from outside view to avoid police detection," she said.
"This concealment increases their crash risk further as their eyes are diverted further from the road and the primary task of driving safely."
Many studies had investigated young people's dependency on smartphones.
"Young adults are the most likely age group to be dependent on their phones. If they are dependent on their phone, they will be more likely to use it in a dangerous situation, such as driving."
