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In your circle of friends, name five people who don’t have a cell phone. Name one. Can’t do it? Not surprising since, for most Americans (224 million in 2006), cell phones are an indispensable tool for communicating anytime, anywhere.
One place Americans use cell phones is in the car. While driving, you can catch up with an old friend, conduct business, order a pizza to arrive at home at the same time you do, among countless other things. Cell phones allow you to multi-task. But if you are concentrating on something other than safely operating your vehicle, you are putting yourself and others at risk. According to a recent study, driver inattention was a factor in 80% of crashes and 65% of near-crashes. What distracted most drivers? Their cell phones.
A serious personal conversation or a business call shifts concentration away from your driving. Additionally, the act of dialing a number on your cell phone requires you to look at the cell phone, taking your eyes off the road. Even more distracting is text messaging. Thirty-seven percent of teens cite text messaging as their biggest distraction while driving.
Removing your focus from driving to make a call or read a text message could have disastrous consequences. A University of Utah study illustrates the extent of the danger: it found that driving while using a cell phone (even one that is hands-free) is as dangerous as drunk driving.
You’re driving on a busy, four lane roadway, caught up in the flow of traffic, when you suddenly realize that you are traveling 75 miles per hour – or 15 miles per hour over the posted speed limit. Now, how did that happen?
We’ve all found ourselves driving faster than our intentions and good sense might dictate, and there can be many reasons for it: We might be influenced by drivers around us, we ignore our better judgment, or we simply neglect the dangers of speeding. Remember, even if you have wisely chosen a safer and smarter vehicle, your most important choice is made every time you get behind the wheel: to drive responsibly.
A quick review of the perils that accompany excessive vehicular speed point to one fact: No excuse for speeding is a good one. For starters, check out these statistics from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the National Highway Transportation Association (NHTSA):
It’s not only on four-lane roadways that we find ourselves speeding. As it happens, the interstates actually have the best safety record of all our roads – and the lowest fatality rate per mile traveled. Almost 50 percent of speeding-related fatalities occur on lower-speed “collectors” (low or medium capacity thoroughfares) and local roads where speed limits are typically between 35 and 55 miles per hour.