Texting and Driving: Don’t Do It
May 20th, 2015 by Eli P
We’ve all seen the pictures—the mangled cars, the bruised bodies, the look on the face of someone who just lost a loved one to a preventable car accident. Texting while driving makes a driver, no matter the age, 23 times more likely to get into a car crash. It’s estimated that texting requires a driver to stop looking at the road for a minimum of 5 seconds. If the car is traveling at 55 miles per hour, 5 seconds equates to driving about the length of a football field without looking at the road once.
Despite the fact that many people know full well that texting and driving is dangerous, many of us still do it. Why? It might be because we are confident in our texting while driving abilities, and we’re sure that we would see a crash coming from a mile away and be able to avoid it. It might be because we have an immortal complex where we think, “Nothing like that could ever happen to me!” Or it might be because we’re just not being smart. We know it’s not absolutely vital that we read or respond to that text that just made our phone ding, but in our “we need immediate results” mindset, it almost goes against every fiber of our being to ignore that ding and keep our eyes on the road. But there’s no doubt about it—texting and driving is dangerous.
Unfortunately, many people don’t see the harm in texting and driving. More than three quarters of young adults say that they are confident that they can text and drive safely. More than half of young adult drivers say that it’s easy to text while driving. However, cell phone use while driving results in more than one and a half million car crashes every year. It’s estimated that 1 out of every 4 car accidents in the US is caused by texting and driving. Statistics also show that texting while driving makes a driver 6 times more likely to crash than if he or she were driving drunk.
Next time you get in the car, put your phone on silent and put it where you can’t reach it. Get rid of the temptation to answer that ding and keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road. After all, is one silly text really worth your life?
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