Texting While Driving Causes Costly Collisions
December 8, 2009 5:48 AM | Interesting | Comments (2)
| A new peril is taking center stage in the quest to keep our roads safe. Sending text messages while driving has become surprisingly common. And researchers say it represents a much greater risk to drivers than other distractions. A study from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) found that drivers who send text messages while behind the wheel are 23.2 times more likely to risk a crash or near crash event than non-distracted drivers. Many drivers know the risks of texting while driving — and do it anyway. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety published polling data that show that 87 percent of people consider drivers texting or e-mailing to pose a "very serious" safety threat (roughly equal to the 90 percent who consider drunken drivers a threat). Of the 2,501 drivers surveyed, 95 percent said that texting was unacceptable behavior. Yet 21 percent of drivers said they had recently texted or e-mailed while driving. About half of drivers 16 to 24 said they had texted while driving, compared with 22 percent of drivers 35 to 44. |  |
"Texting is becoming more and more popular and it seems like most people 25-years old and younger text more than talk on a phone. The age of the texter compounds the danger since these younger people have less experience driving," said David Lapps, president of Maaco Collision Repair & Auto Painting.
"My advice is to never text while driving. I don't want any customers to be injured by someone driving and texting. There's nothing that important that you cannot pull over to the side of the road or into a parking lot to send a text if you need to."
Besides texting, talking on a cell phone also poses dangers. Several studies show that these drivers are four times more likely to cause a crash. And a previous Virginia institute study found that these drivers were three times more likely to crash or come close to a crash when dialing a phone and 1.3 times more likely when talking on it.
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Comments
Posted by: John Rob | December 17, 2009 9:50 AM
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Posted by: textingwhiledriving | December 9, 2009 5:08 AM
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