April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month. With ever increasing demands on our personal and professional time in today’s busy society, learning to juggle multiple tasks at once is something we all face daily. As a result, a new traffic safety epidemic has emerged on America’s roadways that demand immediate attention: distracted driving.
We would encourage you to join a national bumper sticker campaign to help save lives by sharing a simple message..."Text Later Live Longer." You can follow their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VCUTLcubed and getting one of their bumper stickers (shown in this message) from us.
In 2012, 3,328 people were killed in crashes involving a distracted driver and an estimated additional 421,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes involving a distracted driver. That same year, eleven percent of fatal crashes were reported as distraction-affected crashes. One of the most alarming and widespread forms of distracted driving is cell phone usage.
According to a Carnegie Mellon study, driving while using a cell phone reduces the amount of brain activity associated with driving by 37 percent. And a report from the National Safety Council found that people talking on cell phones or sending text messages cause more than one out of every four traffic accidents.
Text messaging is of heightened concern because it combines three types of distraction – visual, manual and cognitive. In other words, texting involves taking your eyes off the road, your hands off the wheel, and your mind off the task of driving.
Other resources:
http://www.Distraction.gov
http://www.nhtsa.gov
http://www.zeroinwisconsin.gov/texting.asp
