At the NAPT Summit and NASDPTS Annual Meeting in Kansas City on Monday, the acting chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Christopher A. Hart discussed, among other things, the dangers of distracted driving.

1. The Legal Post
Nov 23, 2014 · 3 min read
The Numbers Don’t Lie
When It Comes to Driving
Distracted
At the NAPT Summit and NASDPTS Annual Meeting in Kansas City on
Monday, the acting chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board
(NTSB) Christopher A. Hart discussed, among other things, the dangers of
distracted driving.
Driving Distracted Defined
Defined to include such things as texting or eating and drinking while
driving, this problem also involves such things as grooming, reading,
watching a video, adjusting a radio or talking to passengers while driving.
Hart said that texting increases traffic accidents by a factor of 23 according
to NHTSA. Due to the combination of cognitive, visual and manual
attention required by the driver to text, this makes it among the most
dangerous of the hazards.
“There is still too high of a percentage of people who do it. We need
standards on vehicles to prohibit texting while driving. It is a huge
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2. “There is still too high of a percentage of people who do it. We need
standards on vehicles to prohibit texting while driving. It is a huge
challenge, similar to what we used to have with drunk driving,” said Hart.
Carnage On The Road
In 2012, an estimated 421,000 people suffered personal injury in motor
vehicle accidents related to the issue. That was a nine percent increase from
the year before. The number of deaths related to this problem dropped by
less than one percent, but that final number still amounted to 3,328 people
that lost their lives in 2012 in this manner.
Drivers Under 30 Are A Danger Zone
Educating both teenagers and those under the age of 30 about such dangers
would likely remove a major part of the problem, since teens make up the
largest proportion of drivers who are distracted. Of that group, 10 percent
of all drivers involved in fatal accidents were considered distracted in
subsequent reports.
Having studied the issue intently, the University of Michigan Transportation
Research Institute (UMTRI) found that every time a teenager drives, 25
percent of them respond to a text message once or more. When it comes to
extended, multi-message text conversations while driving, 20 percent of
teenagers, along with 10 percent of adults, admit that they were guilty of
this distraction.
However, drivers in their 20’s have been just as negligent in this area, since
this age bracket makes up 27 percent of the fatal accidents in which driving
distracted was cited as a cause, according to the NHTSA.
The Overall Perspective
Overall, an estimated 660,000 drivers are either working an electronic
device or using a cell phone at any moment during the day. Those numbers
come from a 2011 survey by the NHTSA’s National Occupant Protection
Use group.
A 2009 study found that when a person is texting while driving, their eyes
are off the road for an average of five seconds. If that person is riding along
at 55 miles per hour, that’s the equivalent of being blindfolded while driving
the length of a football field.
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3. the length of a football field.
Conclusion
The need to focus on getting through to younger drivers about the potential
consequences of their actions is paramount when it comes to tackling this
issue in a major way. Still, remaining vigilant about driving distracted
within all age groups can help save lives and keep people from either
suffering needless injuries from them or throwing their life away for
causing them.
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