JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Distracted driving is a global epidemic, injuring and killing thousands of people each year. Trauma from road traffic collisions ranks in the top 10 causes of disability, and motor vehicle crashes involving distracted driving, have become the number one killer of teenagers. Knowing that many people turn to the internet as their primary source of initial research on topics of interest, we conducted an assessment of popular distracted driving videos found on YouTube™.

Objective:

The purpose of this study was to assess YouTube™ videos on distracted driving to understand the content, context, popularity, and quality of the messages portrayed by these videos.

Methods:

YouTube™ videos on distracted driving with more than 3000 views were identified, collected, and screened for inclusion. Videos that mentioned or portrayed any aspect of distracted driving were included for analysis. Two independent reviewers screened all the videos for a variety of qualitative and quantitative variables. Discrepancies in data collection were resolved by consensus via the coding authors. Data collection included the number of videos uploaded each year, the type of distractions portrayed, consequences, orthopaedic injuries, and whether statistics were included and referenced in the video.

Results:

The study included a total of 788 videos for review, uploaded to YouTube™ from 2006 to 2018. The top three distractions depicted included: texting, talking on the phone, and eating/drinking. Motor vehicle crashes and death were present in 94.2% of the videos, while injury ranked third, depicted in 21.1%. Orthopaedic injuries were mentioned or portrayed in 11.4% of the videos. Popularity, as gauged by the number of videos uploaded each year with greater than 3000 views, has been relatively stable since 2011. All videos accumulated 223 million views, 46.5% of them being amongst the ten most viewed videos. Videos that contained statistics equalled 27.9%, but only 3.7% of videos referenced a peer-reviewed study.

Conclusions:

This study demonstrates that there is high interest in viewing videos focused on distracted driving, and the popularity of these videos appears to be relatively stable over time on a forum that fluxes based on the current opinions of its users. However, the overall quality of information presented in these videos can be regarded as poor, with a significant paucity of peer-reviewed data being presented. The videos mostly focused on phone related distractions, overlooking many other common forms of distracted driving. Additionally, death was portrayed greater than 1.7 times as much as an injury in terms of potential consequences of distracted driving. Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration suggests that for every distracted driving fatality, there were approximately 113 injuries. Surprisingly, orthopaedic injuries, which lead to a massive source of long term disability, are vastly under-represented.