Kids in cars worse than phone calls

Phoning and texting while driving is a recipe for disaster, but so is having young children in the car, research has found.

A study conducted by the Monash University Accident Research Centre in Melbourne revealed children are 12 times more distracting than using the phone. Researchers found 76 per cent of parents spent almost 20 per cent of their driving time turning round or looking in the mirror to check on the back seat if they were carrying children.

Other distractions included talking to a child, reaching through to the back seat to help them or even physically playing with them. In one average 16-minute drive, 2.5 minutes were spent paying attention to children rather than the road.  However having another adult in the front seat did not significantly reduce the level of distraction

MUARC's Professor Judith Charlton says drivers generally don't consider their children a distraction. "This highlights the need for education about the risks of focusing on their children rather than the road," she says.

While previous research has revealed dialling a phone number while driving almost triples the risk of a crash, and conversation increases the risk by 30 per cent, "one major and previously unrecognised distraction is kids in the backseat," she says.

Experts calculate a driver on the phone travelling at 100km/h needs an extra two metres to stop, but research in the US has also showed braking reaction slows by around 16 per cent if a driver is talking to a passenger.