Distracted driving is not more dangerous than drunk driving. But it’s a close race, and it’s kind of like asking whether you’d rather be stabbed with a sword or knife. Either way, you’re going to have major problems with serious consequences.
The distracted driver is responsible for about one in four accidents on the road, according to United States government statistics compiled by the Department of Transportation. It reports that in 2013, 3,154 people died in motor vehicle accidents where distracted driving was an issue. That comes to about nine people per day.
In contrast, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that 30 people die in alcohol-related traffic accidents each day. In 2013, 10,076 people were killed by impaired drivers. That’s one death roughly every 51 minutes, or one-third of traffic fatalities in the United States each year.
Clearly, both are major problems. But while most people realize that drunken or drug-impaired driving is not showing good judgment, far more people engage in distracted driving. A quick glance, or brief look away from the road, is something that is easy to do and has far less social stigma.
What is distracted driving?
Distracted driving can include such major distractions as texting with a smartphone, grooming, reading or looking at maps, adjusting the radio, or talking on a cell phone. But it also can include mundane tasks as eating and drinking, talking to passengers, and using a navigation system. All require your vision and attention, and in some cases, manual input.
All of that takes focus away from what’s going on as you hurtle through space in your tin can at high speed, oblivious to the driver who has stopped short or hesitated, children running into the streets, someone making a quick turn in front of you, or huge potholes or construction.
As smartphones become a bigger part of most lives and the demands of connection make it easier than ever to focus on business, social plans or daily schedules, the incidents of distracted driving are increasing.
The United States Department of Transportation reports that 3,328 people were killed in crashes caused by a distracted driver in 2012, up from 3,360 in 2011. It adds that 421,000 people were injured in crashes involving distracted driving in 2012, a 9 percent increase from the 387,000 injured during 2011, when almost one in five crashes involved someone engaged in distracted driving.
The problem isn’t confined to the United States, although it is worse here. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study in 2011 compared United States distracted drivers to those in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom. That study determined that the United States had a higher percentage of drivers who were talking, sending email or texts, or reading while driving than the other European countries.
Of all the things you can do to distract yourself from the road, texting is considered the worst offense. That’s because it involves so many physical resources, including mental, physical and cognitive attention. You have to juggle the phone, mentally write your response, input it into the phone and then send it, then usually look at the phone to make sure the message was sent. That’s a lot of time taken away from watching where you’re going.
Unfortunately, texting while driving is only going to increase unless United States drivers start to take it seriously as a clear and present danger. CTIA, a non-profit association of wireless companies, reports that as of December 2013, 153.3 billion – that’s billion, with a B – text messages were sent in the United States and its territories each month.
Of course, younger drivers are the biggest texters while driving. It’s one of their main means of communication, and most younger drivers don’t have the road experience to realize when dangers may be present or the appropriate reactions when things go wrong. Drivers younger than 20 accounted for 10 percent of all fatal crashes attributed to distracted driving, making them the largest group of offenders.
The National Occupant Protection Use Survey (NOPUS) is a national probability-based observational survey of seat belt use in the U.S. It determined that, at any given daytime moment, that 660,000 drivers are using cell phones or otherwise fiddling with electronic devices while driving. That’s a lot of potential trouble. Worse, the same survey reports that about 25 percent of teens will respond to text messages more than once while driving, with 20 percent of teens and adults admitting that they have extended conversations while driving.
The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute reports that visual-manual subtasks, including dialing and texting, will increase the potential of a crash threefold. The Institute determined that the average driver will take his or her eyes off the road for five seconds. If you’re traveling at 55 miles per hour, that means you’re not watching as you travel the equivalent of the length of a football field. Worse, headsets don’t help the problem — they have been found not to be substantially safer than hand-helds, and voice-to-text is also a major distraction. All require cognitive abilities to be transferred from safe operation of a vehicle to composing a text and communicating, which increases the likelihood of driving errors.
What can be done?
Much education and resources have been devoted to curtailing drunken driving, so there has been a push to put the brakes on distracted driving issues. Many laws have been issued for even talking on the phone while driving, and fines can be heavy.
In 2009, President Obama issued an executive order that prohibited federal employees from texting while driving if they were engaged in government business or using federal equipment. Similarly, in 2010, the Federal Railroad Administration banned electronic devices while employees were on the job. That same year, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration enacted a ban that prohibits commercial vehicle drivers from driving while texting.
Private employers, concerned about employee safety and rising insurance risks, also have put in place prohibitions on cell phone use while traveling on company business. There are even new technologies available that can block sending and receiving messages while driving. But much work needs to be done, and distracted driving will likely be an issue for some time to come.
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