Thursday is No Phone Day on Estonia's roads

The Road Administration and the police are running their Mobiilivaba päev campaign for the third time to raise awareness of the dangers of using cell phones in traffic. People are asked not to use their phones at all while driving, and to consider at the end of the day whether or not they have missed anything important.
According to data of a 2017 survey, Estonia has an average of five traffic accidents per day due to people being distracted by their phones. Also, 72 percent of Estonian drivers admitted to having used their cell phones in traffic during the previous 12 months.
According to the Road Administration, phone use in traffic is an increasingly dangerous issue. The aim of today's campaign is to make people understand that in the vast majority of cases in which phones are used by drivers, people are neither dealing with an emergency nor doing something that couldn't wait.
The campaign is calling on all Estonian residents to refrain from using their cell phones while moving around in traffic for one full day. If at the end of the day people understand that they have put neither themselves nor anyone else in danger, then maybe they will understand that great change for the better starts with a small change of habit, the Road Administration's Kerli Tallo told ERR on Wednesday evening.
Tallo added that the Road Administration is running training sessions in companies as well as state institutions as well to demonstrate how distracting e.g. texting is while doing something else.
The Road Administration also published an overview of traffic statistics earlier this week, including an English-language video summary:
Editor: Dario Cavegn