Teens Taught that Texting While Driving Can Cause North Carolina Car Accidents
The North Carolina State Highway Patrol is conducting Operation Drive to Live. Part of this campaign includes the Texting While Driving Initiative, which is designed to teach students about the consequences of distracted driving—especially texting while driving. As part of the program, students are allowed to ride a golf cart through a course set up with traffic cones while they text message.
It takes 10 to 15 second to compose and send a text message. When you consider that a car moving at a speed of 60 mph travels over 80 feet each second, a texting teen driver may have traveled a 10th of a mile with his or her eyes off the road. Couple driver distraction with driver inexperience typical of most drivers who are just starting to drive and the chances of being involved in a North Carolina car accident increases dramatically.
While texting while driving is dangerous when done by anyone including adults, teens are especially at risk because they text so much even when they aren’t driving. According to the Nielsen Co,, US teens sent and received nearly 80 texts a day—that’s about 2,272 texts a month—during the 4th quarter of 2008. This bad habit is not only a distraction, but it may be causing sleep deprivation, exhaustion, and repetitive stress injuries. One doctor, pediatrician Martin Joffe, says that when he surveyed students at two high schools he discovered that a lot of them sent hundreds of texts daily. This breaks down to a text every few minutes.
When you consider how hard it is for adults to resist the impulse to read a text or check an email or compose a message while driving, imagine how much harder it is for teenagers to stop this bad habit.
Yet the evidence is now indisputable. Texting while driving is dangerous and causes catastrophic car crashes. Whether you are a 16-year-old driver or a 75-year-old driver, texting while driving is negligent driving.
Highway Patrol teaches the dangers of texting and driving, Apex Herald, October 8, 2009
Texting May Be Taking a Toll, New York Times, May 25, 2009
Related Web Resources:
North Carolina Department of Crime Control & Public Safety
Teenage Driving Tips, NCCrimecontrol.org
National Safety Commission
