Turning on the feature, which silences notifications, would help young motorists stay focused while on the road, said Govorko. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the generation who have grown up in a time when social media and mobile phones are rooted in our daily lives, but we cannot let distracted driving become the norm when lives are at stake.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why we want our young drivers, and indeed all drivers, to try out the \u2018do not disturb\u2019 feature on their smartphone whenever they are behind the wheel.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy removing the temptation of alerts and vibrations, hopefully people are more likely to concentrate on the road ahead and their actions behind the wheel.\u201d<\/p>\n
New Zealand\u2019s young drivers have the highest rates of road deaths in the OECD.<\/p>\n
The rates are also substantially above those of older age groups in New Zealand, said the AA.<\/p>\n
Its road safety spokesman, Dylan Thomsen, said if New Zealand had the same rate of road deaths among young people as Australia does, 20 fewer Kiwis would die each year.<\/p>\n
He believes the use of the do-not-disturb feature \u201ccould be a game changer\u201d.<\/p>\n
Turning it on before driving is a quick, easy, and effective strategy to limit distractions, he said.<\/p>\n
Sadd is encouraging New Zealand youth to \u201cshow up\u201d for their peers and take responsibility for their choices in its newest road safety campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting your mate to buckle up, stopping your friend from driving drunk, or pointing out do-not-disturb to your driver are all simple and potentially life-saving ways our rangatahi can make a difference,\u201d said Govorko.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Turning on the feature, which silences notifications, would help young motorists stay focused while on the road, said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[37878,37879,5811,95,3110,28368,138,15211,4189,2964,305,78,194,37881,130,111,139,69,1118,37882,8822,37880,131,61,6123,4741,80],"class_list":["post-42324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-aa","tag-admit","tag-admitted","tag-and","tag-association","tag-automobile","tag-business","tag-drivers","tag-driving","tag-half","tag-have","tag-in","tag-kiwi","tag-messaging","tag-more","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-responded","tag-survey","tag-texting","tag-than","tag-to","tag-while","tag-young","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}