Warn your teens and twenty somethings that texting while driving can be a fatal mistake. A distracted driver is the leading cause of car accidents. Texting while driving is a major driving distraction that teens are found to be doing more than any other age group. Ninety-four percent of surveyed drivers agree that texting while driving is dangerous, yet more than one third of those surveyed do it. I would like to note here that I think that this is a low estimate because it relies on self reporting.
There were six thousand deaths and five hundred thousand injuries last year from car crashes involving a driver who was texting or using a cell phone as reported by Healthy Day. The government website reports a much lowere number of three thousand six hundred. No matter which is accurate, the number is way to high.
Florida (where I live) and twelve other states do not currently have a law banning texting while driving. Happy to say that most of the twelve are working on it. Many states include in their law a ban against teens talking on their cell as well because that can be just as distracting.
Here are the statistics on other distracters drivers report doing: 86% eat or drink, 37% have sent a text, 41% set GPS, 36% read a map, 20% have styled hair, 14% have put on make-up, 13% have surfed the web. How many of these have you as a parent done while driving with your teen in the car? I am not proud of my answer to this question. We as parents need to always be thinking of the role model that we are being for our children. There is no way that a law is going to eliminate all those distracters, so we as parents are going to need to educate our children on this growing problem.
Eleven percent of all drivers under the age of 20 who were involved in a fatal crash were distracted at the time of the crash. This percentage is higher than any other age group. Make sure that your teen or twenty something understands the seriousness of this issue and sets their phone down while driving.
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