April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month
Drivers today are more distracted than ever. From texting to eating to settling sibling disputes in the back seat, there are countless distractions that can fatefully take your focus off the road. It’s no wonder that in 2013 as many as 424,000 people were involved in accidents relating to distracted driving.
National Distracted Driving Awareness has been celebrated every April since 2009. As such, many organizations and public personalities have launched road safety campaigns and initiatives to raise awareness of the dangers of distracted driving.
Calls Kill
The National Safety Council (NSC) launched a country-wide campaign, Calls Kill, to illustrate that hands-free cell phones are not risk-free, and no call is worth a life. The NSC urges drivers to take the Focused Driver Challenge to not use a cell phone while driving, even a hands-free device. Participants are then encouraged to share it on their Facebook walls. The NSC writes, “In your post, state why you’ve taken the pledge, tag the National Safety Council and tag three friends you want to stay safe. Please use #CallsKill.” Visit nsc.org/CallsKill for more information.
U Drive. U Text. U Pay.
In recognition of April's National Distracted Driving Awareness Month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) kicked off its second national highly visible enforcement campaign for distracted driving: U Drive. U Text. U Pay., which is supported by English and Spanish language television, radio, digital advertising, and a robust social media strategy.
State-Sponsored Initiatives
The Office of Traffic Safety in California is encouraging drivers to “Silence the Distraction” in new public service announcement and celebrated California Teen Safe Driving Week from April 1st through the 7th. In Hawaii, state officials and sponsors unveiled its first distracted driving simulator on April 1st.
New Jersey’s Acting Attorney General John Hoffman said the state “must be as aggressive with distracted drivers as we have been with drunk drivers and people who refused to wear seat belts,” giving about 40 law enforcement agencies $5,000 each in federal grants for distracted driving enforcement.
In New York, officers are ran a distracted driving sweep April 10-15, using unmarked vehicles. “State troopers will not hesitate to give tickets to drivers” who ignore the law, Police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico said.
Scary Statistics About Distracted Driving
Think about the time it takes you to enter an address into a map app on your phone, or type a message to a friend telling them you’re running a few minutes late. In your mind it only takes a second or two, but in reality, it takes at least five. To put that into perspective, if you were going 55 mph, that’s like driving the length of one football field without looking. In fact, texting while driving makes a crash 23 times more likely. (By the way, texting while stopped at a stop sign or red light counts, too.) And if texting weren’t bad enough, one in five people have admitted to surfing the web while driving. In these scenarios, dangerous would be an understatement. Even though technology has caused us to become more and more distracted, it has also evolved to provide us with solutions to this epidemic.
Being distracted, even while backing out of your own driveway can have fatal consequences. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration cites an average of 210 fatalities and 15,000 injuries due to back up incidents every year, the majority of those being hurt fall under the age of five years old. In an effort to improve backup safety, new NHTSA regulations state that in 2018, all new cars must have back up camera systems for rear view safety, allowing the driver to see a 10-by-20 foot area behind the vehicle from a dashboard display.
Rear View Safety has a wide selection of road safety products designed to keep drivers and those around them safer on the roads.
Sources:
https://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/812132.pdf
https://www.textinganddrivingsafety.com/texting-and-driving-stats/
https://www.cnet.com/news/u-s-requiring-back-up-cameras-in-cars-by-2018/
https://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=2964
https://www.nsc.org/forms/distracteddriving_pledge.aspx?utm_medium(none)&utm_source=(direct)&utm_campaign=pledge
