I plan to blog more on the subject of distracted driving, because I see it becoming an ever larger issue. Most of my auto accident cases now involve people who are getting slammed into while stopped in places they should obviously be stopped (red lights, stop signs, traffic jams). The only possible explanation would appear to be distracted driving. If people were simply watching the road in front of them, these collisions would not be happening. I was particularly struck by the AAA study of teen driving crashes which can be found here. The AAA found in its study of teenage drivers involved in motor vehicle accidents that:
“In nearly 1,700 videos taken from in-vehicle event recorders of teen drivers, Foundation researchers analyzed the first six seconds leading up to the crash and discovered that distractions were a factor in more than half — 58% — of the crashes they studied. Of this number, 89% the teen drivers were in road-departure crashes while 76% were rear-end crashes. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration previously estimated driving distraction was a factor in only 14% of all teen driver crashes.”
Source: SouthernNewEngland
It turns out that the problem of distracted driving is even worse than we thought. From what I am observing in the collision cases coming into my office, the problem is getting worse with time. All of us, especially parents of teen age children learning to drive (a category that includes me), need to be vigilant in trying to prevent more road tragedies from occurring which are all so unnecessary and so easily prevented.