Gershon P, et al. - With regards to a teenage drivers’ crash risk, researchers assessed the magnitude to which visual inattention while engaging in distracting secondary tasks plays a part. Participants were 82 newly licensed teenagers (average age 16.48 years, SD=0.33) from Virginia. For these participants, real-world driving data were obtained. Driving kinematics and miles driven documented by data acquisition systems and video recordings of the driver and driving environment were analyzed. Using 6-second video segments from both crash and random samples of normal driving, secondary task engagement was evaluated. Different risks were associated with secondary tasks. Increased crash risk was observed only in relation to manual cellphone use and reaching/handling objects while driving among a wide range of secondary tasks. They noted that 41% of the crash risk related to manual cellphone use and 10% of the risk related to reaching/handling objects while driving was due to the length of time the drivers’ eyes were off the road.