Cell phones have been known to distract the driver from concentrating on the road causing numerous accidents. Okay so let’s say your boss wants the latest numbers from today's sales meeting, or a friend wants to set up a place to meet for drinks. Traffic is backed up and you know it would take less than a minute to type a response with your thumbs, so you do.
There is little risk here, you think. And then it happens ... the person in front of you stops more quickly than you expected and you crash into them.
During the claims process your insurance company starts checking your cell-phone communications in the run-up to the accident. Now you've just lost a claim and a heck of a lot of money, all because that text was “oh-so” important.
If you avoid text messaging in your car, you stand a considerably reduced chance of a loss of a claim or a loss of life. Texting while driving, or fiddling with devices including your cell phone, BlackBerry or GPS system, is a leading factor in accidents across the country.
Dangers of Texting While Driving.
Many people today are trying to ban driving while texting (DWT). So we all should just forget DWI because the big new traffic-safety issue is DWT: Driving While Texting. When it comes to teen driving, you might as well put the danger of text-messaging while driving right up there with drunken driving as Public Enemies number one. Text messaging while driving leads the list as the biggest distraction while driving. However, we still continue to text and drive even though in fourteen states it has been banned, but none of this should surprise you! Everyone still reads articles everyday about texting and driving, how it’s way more dangerous than drinking and driving.
“Only two states specifically prohibit texting while driving. Washington banned the practice last May, and New Jersey followed suit in November. Similar bills are now in the works in Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia" (Schulte para 4).
“An estimated 20 percent of drivers are sending or receiving text messages while behind the wheel, according to a Nationwide Insurance study. And, according to another poll, that number skyrockets to 66 percent when drivers 18 to 24 are isolated" (Schulte para 1).
This is what happens,...with texting while driving! This is also very graphic stuff so if you don't like veiwing such things, I wouldn't look...
"There is also a magazine testing on how long it takes to hit the brake when sober, when legally drunk at .08, when reading and e-mail, and when sending a text. The results are scary. Driving 70 miles per hour on a deserted air strip Car and Driver editor Eddie Alderman was slower and slower reacting and braking when e-mailing and texting" (LeBeau).
The results:
• Unimpaired: .54 seconds to brake
• Legally drunk: add 4 feet
• Reading e-mail: add 36 feet
• Sending a text: add 70 feet
Works Cited
LeBeau, Phil. “Texting and Driving Worse Then Drinking and Driving.” 25 Jun. 2009. (WEB).
Schulte, Bret. “Outlawing Text Messaging While Driving.” 11 Feb. 2008. (WEB).
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