WASHINGTON–Twenty-eight per cent of all traffic accidents are caused when people talk on cellphones or send text messages while driving, according to a study released Tuesday by the U.S. National Safety Council.
The vast majority of those crashes – 1.4 million of them – are caused by cellphone conversations, while an additional 200,000 are blamed on text messaging, the council report said. There are no similar Canadian studies, but experts have said there is no reason to think the pattern is different in Canada.
Because of the extent of the problem, U.S. officials unveiled a new organization Tuesday, patterned after Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), that will combat driver cellphone use. The group, FocusDriven, grew out of a meeting on distracted driving sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation in Washington last year.
More than 120 studies of cellphone use suggest that requiring hands-free devices doesn’t eliminate the distraction caused by a phone conversation.
“It’s not easy to enforce (a ban), but it’s not impossible,” said Chuck Hurley, MADD’s executive director, who attended the announcement of the new group’s formation. “The main reason people talk on their cellphones is because they can. Eventually, (signal blocking) technology will address that.”
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100% of accidents occur when people drive cars, therefore we should ban the car.
Then you could talk on your cell phone all you want.
What about other forms of distraction ie; eating, drinking, talking to passengers, obsessing about work, watching your GPS screen, playing with the radio or CD or IPod, texting, tired, consumed alcohol but not to the level of legal impairment, smoking, getting jiggy with your partner, and this is just a partial list.
mid island mike