Texting while driving is the cause of many recent car accidents…
Aug 18th, 2009 | By Michael L. Saile, Jr., Esq. | Category: BlogsMost of us have to admit that we have text messaged people while driving. Some people do it all the time. Texting is not like changing the station on your radio or briefly looking at your navigation system. Texting takes an extra few seconds and these extra few seconds is what is causing the car accidents, especially rear-end car accidents.
A recent study has revealed that people who text while driving are 23 more times likely to cause a car accident than drivers who are not distracted? That’s a significant probability that we need to think about.
You’re probably wondering who came upon this statistic. The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute conducted a study whereby researchers positioned cameras inside drivers’ vehicles. Researchers closely observed and documented where drivers’ eyes were fixed as they did a number of things, including texting, dialing a cellular phone, talking on a phone, and/or reaching for something.
The researchers found that those who were driving while texting and became involved in a car accident or near-accident, had taken their eyes off the road for an average of 4.6 seconds. That may not sound like a lot of time, but for the sake of illustration, that is the amount of time it takes to drive the full length of a football field at 55 mph.
As for those just talking on a cell phone, the study found that a driver’s risk of getting into a car accident is only 1.3 times greater than that of a person who is not engaging in another task while driving.
The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study also showed, surprisingly, that drivers using a wireless headset while talking on a cell phone are not considerably safer than those using a regular handset. The safety issue regards the moving of the eyes from the road, which is done to the same degree whether using a headset or a handset. With this in mind, the institute recommends that all cell phone activity by newly licensed teenagers be banned, for they are the group most prone to using cell phones.
Is there a text message that is worth risking your life for? Most texts are nonsense anyway…
[...] One big reason there are more accidents today is people who text while they drive. This is an enormous issue in the country today, to the point where some states are making texting while driving against the [...]