Cell Phones, Texting and Crash Risk
I recently came across this excellent editorial comment in the Charlotte News & Observer. The letter discusses a terrible crash involving a UNC student who was hit while she was walking to a bus stop by a cell-phone using driver.
The letter discusses recent research by the UNC Highway Safety Research Center which indicates that using a cell phone carries roughly the same risk as driving while legally drunk. Not surprisingly, texting while driving is even worse that driving legally drunk. Here is the graph:
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What is particularly amazing is the number of people who still text while driving. I personally see this all the time while driving and try to get ahead of these drivers when possible. Legislation on this issue does not seem to be working. This may be an issue for car manufacturers and whether a device can be implemented to disable the texting option while the car is operational. I personally don’t know if that is technologically feasible.