Mobile phones are responsible for one in every four cases of distraction behind the wheel among professional drivers, even though many are banned from having them nearby, a study shows.
Canberra company Seeing Machines has released the finding in its annual report, which also identified Sunday as the riskiest day for distracted driving in Australia and Saturday as the worst day for driving tired.
The firm said Australian regulations around driver-monitoring technology were falling behind other parts of the world, and the nation may miss a chance to address rising on-road risks.
The warning comes days after federal Transport Minister Catherine King announced a review of Australian Design Rules, which will set standards for vehicles in fields such as safety, emissions and anti-theft technology.
Seeing Machines prepared its Guardian Insights Report by analysing data collected from more than 32,000 professional vehicles in Australia among 1961 fleets.
Each vehicle used one of the company's Guardian systems that monitored drivers eyes, faces and head positions to identify instances of fatigue and distraction.
Over the year, the company identified more than 69,000 instances of drivers being distracted by mobile phones, representing 24 per cent of all distractions.
Phone distractions spiked in the afternoons in Australia, the report found, with drivers answering the call of their device most often between 3pm and 4pm, and most commonly on Sundays.
The trend was particularly alarming given it occurred among professional drivers, Seeing Machines Paul McGlone said.
He said it could indicate a much wider problem in the general driving community.
"I'm surprised by the quantum because if you look at the advertising, the police fines, it's really quite well known that you shouldn't drive while using your mobile phone," Mr McGlone said.
"We're also talking about professional drivers who arguably have been trained on the risk of phone use while driving."
Fatigue behind the wheel was less common, but potentially more dangerous, and had been detected more than 84,000 times, leading to more than 63,000 intervention calls to drivers, Mr McGlone told AAP.
The report found Saturdays were the most common days for tired driving or micro-sleeps behind the wheel in Australia, and the hours between 3am and 5am represented the highest risk.
Monitoring technology that detected issues and alerted drivers when they had started to fall asleep could save lives and were being mandated in some nations, Mr McGlone said.
"The market is moving very quickly into requiring this type of technology in all commercial vehicles," he said.
"The real question is where are the Australian regulators? Australia was the first country to adopt regulation around seatbelts but in this space, we're miles behind Europe."
The European Commission mandated driver distracting warning technology in new vehicles from mid-2024, and both China and the US have issued laws to define their use.
Australian regulators could consider guidelines for the technology during the review of vehicle design rules, led by former Airservices Australia deputy chair Dr Warren Mundy and announced on Monday.
Public submissions into the review will close on January 24.
