A new project will examine the mental demands of driving in complex conditions, with the aim of helping thousands of emergency response workers who drive under blue lights.
The 18-month study is run by Devon and Cornwall Police and the Open University. It focuses on how "cognitive workload", the amount of mental effort needed to perform a task, affects drivers in emergencies.
Conversations and equipment such as radios and computers all compete for drivers' attention, according to researchers.
"There's an awful lot that a police driver needs to think about whilst they're responding to an emergency," said Matt Butler, police driver support team manager.
"We need to understand more about how cognitive workload is affecting them and then we need to create a support tool so they can better deal with it."
Devon and Cornwall Police figures for 2025 show 426 recorded crashes involving its vehicles. These ranged from scratching a bumper at low speed in a car park to tactical contact during a pursuit.
Of those, 41 crashes happened during an emergency response and 58 during an emergency pursuit. Eighteen incidents resulted in injury to police or the public.
Devon and Cornwall Police said it covers the largest road network of any police force in England and Wales, and its operational fleet has more than 550 marked cars plus hundreds of unmarked vehicles.
The project is funded by the Road Safety Trust and aims to create a training manual for about 80,000 blue light response drivers across the UK.
Butler, who leads the driver support unit for both Dorset Police and Devon and Cornwall Police, said the focus is on how the brain processes information while driving. He said research shows that using a phone of any kind, handheld or hands-free, quadruples the risk of a crash.
"We can only process so much information before there's too much and if there's too much information then we can start to miss things," he said.
Butler added: "I'm now in my 37th year [on the team] and the majority of that time I've been spent either dealing with or trying to reduce road traffic collisions.
"Anything that can improve safety on the road is definitely a winner in my book."
Gemma Briggs, an applied psychology professor at the Open University, said police officers are highly trained but "not immune to cognitive distraction".
"Officers responding to emergencies are required to drive at high speed and conduct manoeuvres with an elevated level of risk, often whilst holding hands-free conversations and managing other police equipment such as radios, automatic number plate recognition technology and body worn cameras.
"Increased demands on attention, accompanied by faster speeds and additional stressors can lead to more serious crash outcomes."
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Devon and Cornwall Blue Light Drivers in Mental Workload Study