This past summer, an 18-year-old mother and her 10-month-old son were killed when the woman crossed a median and crashed her car into an oncoming dump truck in Birmingham, Alabama. Text messaging contributed to the wreck, according to authorities, and an unsent text message was found on her cell phone. She had been text messaging for a few minutes before the crash.
The Alabama Department of Public Safety blames cell phone use or texting for six motor vehicle accident fatalities this year.
Texting while driving is a form of distracted driving. While there are many different activities which fall under the category of distracted driving, such as eating, putting on makeup, and talking on a cell phone; texting while driving is one of the worst. The reason for this is that it involves all three main types of distraction-visual, manual and cognitive.
The U.S. Department of Transportation outlines the different types of driver distractions. Visual distraction occurs when the driver takes his or her eyes away from the road. Manual distraction is when the driver takes his or her hands from the steering wheel. Cognitive distraction occurs when the driver takes his or her attention away from the road.
A 2009 study tested the text messaging skills of twenty inexperienced drivers in a simulated driving experiment. Researchers concluded that drivers involved in texting spent 400 percent less time watching the road compared to when they were not texting. It should come as no surprise that the risk of a crash doubles when texting as opposed to simply talking on a cell phone.
In another study, drivers responded more slowly to brake lights when text messaging, and were in more wrecks than those drivers in the study who did not text and drive.
The next time you try to save a few minutes by texting and driving consider the risks involved. Distracted driving puts not only yourself at risk, but also your passengers and everyone else on the road.
