Topic : Data Collection Project

Fatalities due to Distracted Driving in United States

Introduction

For my topic for conducting a research, I have chosen the rising number of fatalities in road accidents due to the usage of cell phones while driving. This has sparked legislative action from governments, calling for bans to be imposed on the usage of cell phones and text messaging services while driving. I plan on investigating this issue by coordinating with the local police and conducting interviews with drivers of vehicles in urban areas. The issue is of vital importance and relevance because recently, the number of accidents, caused by distracted driving has increased dramatically. One such incident in my own neighborhood has motivated me to conduct this research.

Primary data was collected by personal meetings with the local police officials, who were kind enough to refer me to some representatives of the local hospitals where I collected more data from. In addition, online data proved to be very helpful as well. I interviewed several drivers as well and they provided me with some data that was consistent with some of the information that I had extracted. The sources were selected due to their direct involvement with the subject issue. The police hold records of all accidents that cause fatalities. The hospitals have records as well as statistics that help in studying the subject. The drivers of vehicles proved to be a source of information from where I concluded that the figures of accidents could be much higher as nearly all of them told me that they had, at least once, avoided an accident due to distracted driving due to cell phone usage. Another source that I used was a publication of the trends of fatalities from distracted driving. I found the source to be of great help. Online researching on the topic gave me an array of diverse information that was missed out initially. The system called FARS ( Fatal Accident Reporting System ) is a government system in which the statistics of deaths resulting from accidents are recorded. For FARS to record data, the accident must cause 1 fatality. The figures were consistent with the information that I received from the police and hospital information staff (Wilson, 45).

The information that I collected shows that most accidents, in the distracted driving context, take place due to text messaging during driving. This is the major part of the total ...