As we head into the last day of Promote Safe Teen Driving Week, Disney/Pixar teams up with the U.S. Department of Transportation to give us this entertaining public service announcement about distracted driving.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_Yna_VYECg
The clip is obviously a cross-promotional tie-in to the launch of the sequel to the popular Pixar movie Cars. Hopefully the hype will help raise awareness of this important issue.
A few statistics to ponder:
- 20 percent of injury crashes in 2009 involved reports of distracted driving.
- In 2009, 5,474 people were killed in U.S. roadways and an estimated additional 448,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes that were reported to have involved distracted driving. (FARS and GES)
- The age group with the greatest proportion of distracted drivers was the under-20 age group – 16 percent of all drivers younger than 20 involved in fatal crashes were reported to have been distracted while driving. (NHTSA)
- Drivers who use hand-held devices are four times as likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves. (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety)
- Using a cell phone use while driving, whether it’s hand-held or hands-free, delays a driver’s reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent. (Source: University of Utah)
5 Comments
KrashTestDumby
Why did you leave out the statistic that:
* Using a cell phone use while driving, whether it’s hand-held or hands-free, delays a driver's reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent. (Source: University of Utah)
It's right here on distraction.gov:
http://www.distraction.gov/stats-and-facts/index.html
Oh, right. That statistic would mean someone might wake-up and equate DUI and cell phones, and we might ban all cell phone use while driving. That'd cramp your style, eh?
Pierce Egerton
Hello KrashTestDumby. You make a good point and I edited the piece to include the statistic to which you referred. Check out some of my earlier posts for additional information about the hazards of driving while on the phone.
http://greensboro.injuryboard.com/automobile-accidents/nc-lawmakers-discuss-laws-against-distracted-driving.aspx?googleid=288240
http://greensboro.injuryboard.com/automobile-accidents/cell-control-a-device-that-might-save-your-life.aspx?googleid=284202
http://greensboro.injuryboard.com/automobile-accidents/whats-worse-than-drunk-driving-driving-while-texting.aspx?googleid=266078
http://greensboro.injuryboard.com/automobile-accidents/distracted-driving-accident-leaves-grandfather-mother-dead-1yearold-critical-.aspx?googleid=288530
http://greensboro.injuryboard.com/automobile-accidents/traffic-crashes-the-leading-cause-of-teen-deaths.aspx?googleid=291258
And there's the tragic story I wrote about yesterday:
http://greensboro.injuryboard.com/automobile-accidents/remembering-john-on-fathers-day-a-daughters-story.aspx?googleid=291310
KrashTestDumby
Great posts! I read every one of them.
I'd love to see a law that says every driver must view a video on "Inattentional Blindness" and pass a test afterwards before they can either get, or renew a drivers license.
Better still - disable all cell phones when moving faster than 10 MPH. That includes computers and corporate communications devices in commercial vehicles. Studies show that while the majority of people *think* they can safely multitask while driving, less than 3% actually can:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20702865
Keep up the campaign!
Pierce Egerton
Thanks. Will do!
Tom Taylor
Wow - now THAT was a good dialogue. Great post, Pierce. It is at least once a week that I meet an oncoming car that touches or crosses the center line and I can see the driver is on a cell or looking somewhere other than the road.
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