Data on the most prevalent risky behaviors for distribution drivers found that tendencies related to distracted driving were still prominent, among other bad behaviors, according to a report from Lytx.

The most risky behavior reported in 2019 were cellphone/device distractions, the consumption of food or beverages while driving, drivers not using seat belts, smoking, and moments of late response, which Lytx defines as when a driver was not distracted, yet responded late and abruptly to a readily visible risky situation ahead.

However, some of these behaviors were improved from when the data was previously reported; distractions from cellphone/devices was up 19% from 2018 and moments of late response improved 22% during the same period. Meanwhile, posted speed violations improved 30% in 2019 from 2018.

This demonstrates that even with significant improvement, fleets and drivers should stay vigilant and maintain awareness to keep those behaviors trending downwards, according to Lytx.

Lytx compared the prevalence of behaviors seen in distribution fleets against behavior averages of fleets across all of its other protected industries. Comparatively, distribution fleets stood out in the following areas:

• Food/drink, which was observed 50% more often

• Driver unbelted, which occurred 26% more often

• Failure to stop or incomplete stop, which occurred 15% less often

These insights were derived from Lytx’s proprietary database of distribution driving data from 2019, including 2.56 million risky distribution driving events captured last year.