PETALING JAYA: Two seconds may not seem long, but it is enough for a driver’s attention to slip and on the road, a brief lapse could be a matter of life and death.
Road Safety Council of Malaysia executive council member Datuk Suret Singh said distracted driving was a major cause of road accidents in Malaysia.
“A two-second loss of full focus on the road is all it takes for a deadly road crash,” he said, adding that a Transport Ministry study found that 45% of drivers involved in road accidents were using mobile phones while driving.
He agreed that specific regulations and guidelines should be introduced to govern the use of built-in screens on vehicles.
“Entertainment content should be meant solely for passengers, not drivers” he said.
Universiti Putra Malaysia Road Safety Research Centre head Assoc Prof Dr Law Teik Hua said watching entertainment content while driving required sustained visual and mental engagement.
He said drivers might look back at the road periodically while watching a film, but part of their visual attention would inevitably remain on the screen.
“Film-viewing driver distraction can therefore pose comparable levels of road safety hazards as mobile phone use, or even greater hazards under certain circumstances,” he said.
Law said driver attentiveness, rather than whether a device was hands-free, should be the basis for addressing such distraction.
He said even brief glances at a screen could be dangerous in rapidly changing situations such as at intersections, in heavy traffic or at high speeds.
“Mental distraction is also a concern as drivers could remain visually focused on the road but have their minds occupied by the film.
“Drivers could also overestimate their ability to multitask,” he said.
Law said regulations should specifically prohibit drivers from watching entertainment content, rather than restricting the use of onboard displays for navigation, safety information, reversing cameras and other legitimate driving functions.
Malaysian Road and Transport Safety Association president Md Hairolzaman Muhamed Nor said watching videos could cause severe visual and cognitive distraction, including “inattentional blindness”, in which a driver might look towards the road but fail to process what was happening.
He said unlike navigation, which generally required only a brief glance, videos required drivers to follow moving images continuously.
“This could delay braking by 1.5 to two seconds. At 90kph, a two-second delay means the vehicle has travelled about 50m before the brakes are applied,” he said.
Hairolzaman said video viewing could also affect a driver’s ability to keep the vehicle within its lane.
He said it combined visual, cognitive and auditory distractions, with sound from videos potentially reducing awareness of surrounding noises such as horns, ambulance sirens and other emergency warnings.
He called for existing road traffic laws to be expanded to cover “digital distraction”.
He also suggested higher mandatory fines, demerit points under the Kejara system or suspension of driving licences for those found guilty of installing bypass software that allows videos to be watched while driving.
Hairolzaman called for safer user interfaces as well, including navigation applications that prevent drivers from typing while driving and instead rely on voice commands.
