Causes of Car Accidents – Texting While Driving
Statistically, a person driving a car at 55 mph can travel the length of an entire football field while writing or reading one text message. You’ve probably heard this before and your state probably has laws against texting and driving. That doesn’t change the fact that millions of drivers across the country check their email, read texts, writing and send texts, and even check their social media accounts while traveling down the road.
Some of the things that people do to make texting and surfing “safer” while driving include –
- Only reading or sending texts while they are at a stop sign or signal
- Increase their following distance between them and the car in front of them
- Hold the phone above the steering wheel to make it easier to see where they are driving
- Only read texts, never write or send one while driving
If these things actually made text and driving safer, 1.6 million distracted driving car crashes wouldn’t occur every year, and thousands of people wouldn’t die, and hundreds of thousands of people would not be dealing with injuries because these types of accidents.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 424,000 thousand people were injured because of distracted drivers in 2013. That same year, 3,154 people died because driver’s thought holding a cell close to the windshield was safe, or because they thought they were far enough behind a vehicle that they would have to time to stop before hitting it if something happened.
These risky behaviors don’t stop there. Did you know that drivers who text and drive are twice as likely to get in a car with driver who has been drinking, or drink and drive themselves, then those who don’t text behind the wheel?
Though a lot of distracted driving ad campaigns and public service announcements are geared towards teen drivers, adult drivers text and drive as much, if not more than their teen counterparts. The sad fact is, drivers who text behind the wheel are 23 times more likely to crash than those that don’t. 23 times as likely.
But if we look at that another way, it means that drivers and passengers who don’t text have pretty chance of being hit by a driver who does. In fact, data shows that texting while driving has about the same effect on safe operation of a vehicle as does drunk driving, and drunk drivers kill thousands of people every year.
If you or a family member has been injured by a distracted driver or lost a loved one in a fatal distracted driving crash, you need a dedicated team of attorneys and legal professionals fighting for your rights. Our attorneys have a long and proven record of helping the victims of car accidents get the compensation they deserve.
Call us today if you or a loved one were injured by a negligent distracted driver, or if you have been in any type of injurious accident, including
- Commercial bus crash
- School bus accident
- Pedestrian motor vehicle accident
- Bicycle accident
- Truck collision
- Motorcycle crash
- Commercial vehicle accident
- Semi-truck collision
We’ll fight insurance companies, negligent operators, and reckless drivers to get you the maximum compensation you deserve.