We always hear about the dangers of texting while driving, however one drawback about the witch hunt against texting and driving is that fact that other common distractions have ‘take a back seat.’
Prior to cell phone use, drivers were still getting into accidents because of distracted driving due to a variety of things such as:
- Eating breakfast, lunch and dinner
- drinking coffee, soda, or water
- reading the newspaper
- shaving
- makeup application
All of these habits that should be taken care of either at home or the office, are being conducted in the car, whether commuting to and from the office, the school or football field. Only now, the cell phone is being incorporated with these other distractions, so now when you’re heading down Interstate 84 or 91 next Monday morning, you’ll probably see someone eating their breakfast, drinking a cup of coffee, AND talking on their phones.
So the next time you’re running late and decide to have your lunch in the car and conduct a conference call at the same time, think about these statistics:
- In 2009, 5474 people were killed in crashes involving driver distraction
- 16% of fatal crashes in 2009 involved reports of distracted driving
- Drivers who use hand-held devices are four times more likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves and others as well
- Driving while distracted reduces the amount of brain activity associated with driving by 37%
Those are some serious statistics, so please be careful while driving, ALWAYS. And if you need more persuasion, if you’re the cause of an accident because of distracted driving, you’re CT auto insurance will always increase as well!