“My first thought was to go in there and get him out…. From the time he’s been in this world, I’ve always taken care of him. If he’d fall down and scrape his knee or skin an elbow, I’d grab him up and tell him he’s gonna be okay. But this time I couldn’t do that.”

Teens, please take note & don’t take the risks. Parents, talk to your teens about how important it is they make it home to you safely every day.

I know that most if not all of you know I’m a big road safety advocate and I understand that some may not always get it or understand why I care so much. This father’s 15-minute story of their family’s loss just 70 days ago is exactly why I’m so passionate about the issue of distracted driving. I strongly urge all of you to watch this and share it with your families, friends & co-workers. With all the research I do on this topic, it’s been a while since I’ve been so deeply affected by one person’s story.

“So, what are you going to do next, make it illegal to speak with passengers in your car then?!”

This perspective is not unique and is often an argument against the laws banning the use of hand-held (and especially hands-free) electronic devices when driving.

David Teater is a Senior Director of Transportation Initiatives at the National Safety Council (and a personal contact I hold in high esteem) — in less than 2 minutes he helps answer this common question. “When you understand the explanation it’s pretty obvious why that cell phone is so much more dangerous than having a passenger with you,” says David.

Decoding the dangers of distracted driving may be obvious to some. It’s habitual to hop in a vehicle and put the seatbelt on; common knowledge that staying put if the vehicle should stop quickly is more desirable than face-planting the windshield. As my Mom used to say to me, “I’m not worried about your driving, it’s the other people on the road that you need to be worried about.” Exactly. It’s not the phones, coffee and navigation systems that are the enemy. It’s a driver’s inability to correctly prioritize glancing to see if lunch plans are still on over looking ahead to see if the light is red. How can we safely draw a line when it comes to staying connected to our social lives with our real life?

As a recent survey by Bridgestone discovered, novice drivers have a clouded assessment of their driving capabilities. Crash statistics are disproportionately higher than of drivers in higher age groups. Should the driving environment change quickly, teens go into panic mode. Throw is some passengers, a sandwich and a bus pulling out and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. It’s comparable to someone who says they can cook, but can only make a great batch of pancakes. Ask them to cook a steak and the result is significantly altered. Where skill and foresight are essential, new drivers lack the experience to assess which factor requires their immediate attention.

Teenagers contend with an entirely different world compared to their parents. They face social exile without a mobile device and there is some misguidance being passed down by generation. Amateur motorists wrongfully assume that because their parents can drive with their knees and finish off an email that they too can multi-task behind the wheel. There remains to be a level of acceptance and even hypocrisy because Mom and Dad do it. Enforcement and distracted driving legislation helps, but it boils down to a choice: stay focused on the road or allow one momentary lapse of judgement to decide the course of your life.

Ever heard the one-liner, “A car is a weapon”? Truthfully, that statement doesn’t mean much. To put it into perspective, at sixteen years old you have the privilege of operating a car. You have the choice to drive safely or allow distractions. What teens want to know is how does it benefit them to drive safe? Driving distracted is selfish but aren’t all teens focused on themselves? Yes, and that’s the glory of being young. You’re only supposed to think about yourself. No teen has the desire to introduce themselves to a set of grieving parents and explain how they killed their daughter. So let that be the instigator for good behavior-the ability to focus on what doesn’t cause unnecessary pain, grief and punishment. Is it worthwhile to just drive and leave the phone alone? Absolutely. Because allowing any level of distraction while utilizing the roadway is a gamble, a bet that’s not worth losing your future over.

You’re driving along the road when suddenly, your phone rings, indicating that you just got a text message from the friend you are on your way to see. Several thoughts run through your head: “Is she letting me know the plans have changed?” “Does she want me to get something on the way?” “What if she’s changing the time of our meeting… If I don’t look at this text will I have to turn around and come back when I get there?” While it seems like a mindless and simple task, looking at the text while driving could cost you your life.

“One second—not a very long amount of time. Yet, when you’re behind a steering wheel and your eyes leave the road—that one single second can change your life and the lives of countless others. One second is all it takes to be distracted,” the End Distracted Driving website states. One statistic that the website reminds users is that each year around 6,000 Americans die in car crashes caused by distracted driving.

When it comes to preventing distracted driving, the goal is to “get them while they’re young.” Education that emphasizes the dangers of distractions is the key to establishing good driving habits that young drivers will carry with them in the future. According to a national study conducted in 2009, “the under-20 age group had the highest proportion of distracted drivers involved in fatal crashes.” It is up to the instructors and driving schools to teach good driving habits to a new generation of drivers.

“As an educator, it is my job to teach the young student drivers the importance of driving free of distractions and concentrating on the task at hand,” said Mike Oleszek, a driving instructor at Wheaton North High School in Wheaton, Ill.

Distractions come in many forms, most often with cell phones and other mobile gadgets that make noise unexpectedly and are heavily relied upon by today’s youth.  Oleszek said that the next generation needs to be well-educated in the dilemma that is distracted driving primarily because of the increasing use of mobile technology. “Our world as we know it is constantly one of change.  From cell phones, to texting, ‘blue tooth,’ and whatever forms of communication there are out there, it seems like there is always something new that is introduced to the public… The next generation is always going to know about, and want to have any of the latest technology that is introduced,” Oleszek said.

Sehrish Saleem, a 17-year-old Wheaton North junior and driver education student, said that it has almost become second-nature for this generation to reach for their phones without thinking. “Cell phone use has become so popular these days that many times we don’t realize when, where, and how often we are utilizing our cell phones.”

“I feel like teens never want to miss out on the latest thing that happened with their friends or where everyone is hanging out that night so they might be especially tempted to check their phones,” said Mary Raczek, a 15-year-old sophomore and driver education student at Wheaton North.

Karen Bowman, the founder of Drop It And Drive, a “fully interactive reality-based education program that is making presentations directly to teens, young adults and established drivers,” said that teens are their primary target because they want to make the next generation of drivers “a group who choose not to drive distracted.”

“Road crashes are the number one killer of teens… they are most at risk because of their overall inexperience as drivers. They haven’t yet learned to anticipate the choices of other drivers on the road and may not be the best judge of their own driving abilities,” Bowman said. “Teen drivers have the best chance of becoming the next generation of drivers who feel the same way about distracted driving as we all know to feel about drinking and driving.”

Oleszek said that distracted driving is a crucial part of the driver education curriculum at Wheaton North. They have a guest speaker come to classes and reinforce the lessons by having students write a paper about the dangers of distracted driving.

Troy Greene, a 15-year-old sophomore driver education student at Wheaton North, said that he was impacted by the curriculum at Wheaton North in such a way that he has carried it over into his other classes. He was assigned a persuasive speech in his speech class and chose to do his about texting and driving. “My speech strongly informed the class about the dangers and showed that texting and driving or any type of distraction is not a joke,” Greene said.

Saleem said that the facts that were stated in class were most impactful. “Studies have shown that driving performance is lowered and the level of distraction is higher for drivers who are heavily engaged in cell phone conversations,” Saleem said quoting an information sheet from class.

“We emphasize [distracted driving] throughout the time we have the students in our class,” Oleszek said. One way they do this is having the students do a simulation lesson, during which they use their cell phones to text and/or talk to simulate real distractions while driving. “We use a ‘crash avoidance’ video that is difficult even without driving distracted,” he explained.

“The thing that we will be doing that I think will be effective is that we will be bringing our phones during simulation. We will then use our phones to see how it impacts our ability to drive,” said Quin Slott, a 15-year-old sophomore in driver education at Wheaton North.

Many driver education programs use simulation exercises as a tool to establish good driving habits in young drivers. “The more the student has experience and access to practice, the better their foundation and the steeper their learning curve will be,” said Bowman. “Essentially, the more a driver can repeat any skill or maneuver the more it becomes habit; the safer that drivers’ habits are from the beginning then they will be a better driver going forward.”

Cathy O’Conners, a 16-year-old driver education student at Top Driver driving school, said that she has been taught against distracted driving in her courses as well. “My instructor really pushes focusing on the road when we’re driving.”

Though simulations are useful in driver education classes, firsthand experiences are often the most impactful. “I’ve seen other drivers do really dangerous things and almost hit people when on the phone, so I know how dangerous it can be,” O’Conners said.

Joel Feldman founded End Distracted Driving (EndDD.org) after his daughter, Casey, was killed by a distracted driver in 2009. He goes to schools to do presentations about the dangers of distracted driving from a personal perspective. Feldman explains to the students that people who have killed others because they were driving distracted are normal people, “these people are not criminals, they’re just like you and me,” he said.

One of the things the End Distracted Driving presentation includes is a cognitive distraction exercise. He has two students go up to a blackboard and write all of the numbers backwards from 100; one student is talking on a cell phone and the other is not distracted. “The results from this exercise are amazing. It has a great impact on the students,” Feldman said.

But he is not the only one doing the teaching during his presentations. “You know what the students have taught me? Distracted driving is selfish driving. You think you are more important than the others around you,” Feldman said, explaining that he has used this in his presentation since students enlightened him with this perspective.

Feldman said that he has also learned that parents are the main examples for young drivers to emulate. “More than anywhere else, when I go into the schools the teens and young adults raise their hands when I ask if their parents drive distracted,” he said.

“I try to tell parents that they are the number one role models that their children imitate,” Oleszek said.

Many educators believe that it is easier to teach students and young drivers about the dangers of distracted driving, because they are open-minded and haven’t established their own driving habits yet. What is really difficult is reaching out to those experienced drivers who drive distracted already.

“People who drive distracted think it doesn’t matter and that they don’t have to change because they haven’t been in an accident because of it. They think they can get away with it because so far, they have,” Feldman said. “They confuse being lucky drivers with being safe drivers.”

The Drop It And Drive program has a similar message for adult drivers. “You may have been driving for many years without ever causing a crash… at least that you know of, but what are you willing to risk when continuing to make dangerous choices to drive distracted?” Bowman said. “I doubt that the woman who hit the car my eight-year-old daughter was travelling in thought she was going to be responsible for a crash that day, causing injury to a young child. It’s easy to think it won’t happen until it does.”

Feldman’s past is an example of the denial that some adult drivers face; he said that he used to drive distracted. “It took my daughter being killed for me to change my ways,” he said.

April is National Distracted Driving Month, and Feldman, with EndDD and other organizations are planning events and speech tours across the country. “We have 800 people doing presentations at high schools and colleges. We will reach more than 30,000 students,” he said.

Today’s students will be the proof of whether or not the current driver education system works. Will current students carry on what they have learned in their classes about distracted driving when they are older?

“The class definitely has made me think a lot about the importance of staying focused. But I think I, like most teenagers, will make the choice to answer a phone call or read a text while behind the wheel,” Slott admitted.

“It’s an individual choice. As I get older and more comfortable driving, I might forget and start driving distracted,” O’Conners said. “Hopefully I’ll always remember what I’ve learned and think twice before answering my phone while driving.”

Raczek admitted that though she has received a thorough anti-distracted driving education, she will probably be guilty of distracted driving at some point. “I’d like to say that I’ll never answer or look at my phone once I get my license, but I don’t think that’s entirely true,” she said. Raczek also said that she believes specifically that she will never text while driving because she once saw a woman swerve into another lane while texting. “[It] was really scary and made me realize that just texting a one-word answer can make a big difference in your driving. However, to be honest, I could see myself answering my phone if my mom called or something even though I know I shouldn’t.”

For Greene, the lessons have stuck a little more solidly. “I have a cell phone and I do get texts and calls while driving. I am always temped to look, but I never do because I know the dangers of it,” Greene said. “When I get my license I won’t text while driving. The consequences are too much for just answering your phone.”

Oleszek, Feldman, Bowman, and other educators seem confident that the next generation of drivers is being taught to avoid distractions while driving. “It’s bad now, but it’s going to get better. The kids in high schools are the ones that are going to make the right changes for the future,” Feldman said.

“Educate, Educate, Educate….that is what I can do,” Oleszek said.

Bowman’s advice to new drivers is to understand that they are not immortal. “Bad things do happen and often to good drivers. It’s not always about your choices behind the wheel, your safety is in the hands of everyone else on the road,” Bowman said.

“My advice to young and old drivers: do not be a number,” Oleszek said. “In other words, do not be someone who is going to add to the statistics regarding accidents and collisions involving a driver who is talking on a cell phone or texting and driving.”

Author Bio: Zoe Barker is a journalism graduate student at DePaul University in Chicago. She will receive her Master’s degree in journalism in June of 2013. Zoe currently works for DePaul’s award-winning student newspaper, the DePaulia, as a senior writer, copy editor, and online editor. This particular piece was the final assignment for her Lifestyle Reporting class during the Winter Quarter of 2012. 

Talking or texting while driving is equivalent to being drunk behind the wheel

When working for a personal injury law firm, you often get to witness a ton of legal claims against distracted drivers who caused auto collisions—many of which were talking or texting on their cell phones. In fact, studies from the University of Utah show that those drivers who talk on cell phones, both hands-on and hands-free, are as distracted as drunken drivers. A second study actually showed that using a cell phone while driving actually alters the driver’s behavior in the following ways:

• They tend to exceed the average driving speed
• Their break and reaction time decreases
• They have slower responses to sudden changes—like animals on the road or traffic light changes
• They pay less attention to driving mirrors
• They tend to stray out of their driving lane
• They have difficulty keeping distance between their car and traffic in front of them

Obviously may states and countries agree that driving and cell phones don’t mix—with at least 30 countries banning driving while using a mobile phone all together. And the research backs it up across the board, showing that individual drivers have greater difficulty maintaining a set speed, tending to speed up then slow down, which frustrates and confuses other drivers. In fact, the practice of performing a task, like driving, is greatly impaired when having a conversation or texting on a mobile phone. Even when it comes to hands-free calls, the specific acts of speaking and listening to a phone conversation simply distracts drivers too much from the task at hand.

Statistics for operating a cell phone while driving

The statistics captured by leading motor vehicle and health organizations around the world concur—driving while operating a cell phone is a dangerous combination that can end in an auto accident or even death of one or more passengers in a motor vehicle. For instance:

• When talking on a mobile phone, drivers are shown to be 18 percent slower to react to brake lights.
• Drivers are more cautious while conversing; however, they take 17 percent longer to return to regular speeds after breaking, which, understandably, frustrates following traffic.
• Drivers talking on mobile phones are responsible for 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries in the United States annually.
• In Canada, 6 people die every day in road crashes with more than 218,000 injuries and  2,900 deaths just since January 1, 2011
• One out of 4 car crashes is caused by distracted drivers using a cell phone.
• Texting while driving is equivalent to drinking 4 beers and then getting behind the wheel.
• 1 in 5 adult drivers admit to using a cell phone while driving.
• While 1 in 2 teens admit to texting or calling while behind the wheel of a car.

About The Author

Colleen Harding is a staff writer for a Denver personal injury lawyer and a guest blogger who specializes on writing about law. Today, Colleen hopes that sharing her knowledge will make us all happy, law-abiding citizens. She is also a member of Amnesty International as well as an active volunteer in her community.

Ian Duncan, with The Vancouver Sun, covers how these guidelines will impact Canadian drivers because of the close link between the American and Canadian auto industry – U.S. asks automakers to tackle driver distraction using technology.

So, will more technology guidelines help the issue of distracted driving? I’m not sure when it can take less than a second for a close call to become a collision. Will only allowing a maximum of seven button pushes and no more than a two-second glance at the screen be enough to keep drivers focused on the road? Clearly, you can’t legislate or apply guidelines to address common sense. It is impossible to keep your eyes on the road EVERY second and no one is a perfect driver; so, perhaps the best we can hope for is to limit ease of access to the multitude of in-car distractions.

Source: Law Offices of Daniel R. Rosen.

According to MADD Canada, “Road crashes still remain the leading cause of death among teenagers and more 19 year olds die or are seriously injured than any other age group.”

So, regardless of whether you’re American or Canadian, preventable road crashes are killing our teens at an alarming rate. Sit down with your teen — or if you ARE a teen, sit down with your friends — and watch this video. No one should have to learn how dangerous distracted driving is through the loss of a friend or loved one.

If the embedded video doesn’t appear below, just go directly to the video on our YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/xBIgHe.

A new study by the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Maryland Medical Center looked at 116 injury cases involving pedestrians wearing headphones. Almost 75% of those incidents resulted in fatal injuries to the pedestrian. Lead author, Dr. Richard Lichenstein, points out that over 50% of the crashes involved trains. “Nearly a third of the drivers in the [crashes] reported sounding a warning horn before the crash happened.”

“Unfortunately as we make more and more enticing devices, the risk of injury from distraction and blocking out other sounds increases,” says Dr. Lichenstein.

Today’s tragic stories out of Alberta and Ontario illustrate the deadly consequences of not being aware of our surroundings when on or near roadways and train tracks.

This powerful New Zealand PSA graphically depicts the tragic consequences of not being aware of your surroundings. It’s a great tool to help educate teens about the dangers they face when plugged into their electronics instead of their environment: http://www.youtube.com/user/DropItAndDrive?feature=guide#p/a/f/6/pLspVYXY5zY

Take 41 seconds to sit down with your teens, or your friends and watch this video; it could literally save a life.