The American government is using a modern, non-sanctioning approach to solve this problem: the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has created a website entitled distraction.gov.
If you browse it, you will become aware of the facts and figures which could describe your life if you decide to eat, play, meditate and so on while sitting behind the wheel of a moving car. It also provides the latest updates for distracted driving legislation.
Here’s some of the info that caught our attention:
• Using a cell phone use while driving, whether it’s hand-held or hands-free, delays a driver's reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent. (Source: University of Utah)
• Driving while using a cell phone reduces the amount of brain activity associated with driving by 37 percent. (Source: Carnegie Mellon)
• 80 percent of all crashes and 65 percent of near crashes involve some type of distraction. (Source: Virginia Tech 100-car study for NHTSA)
• Nearly 6,000 people died in 2008 in crashes involving a distracted or inattentive driver, and more than half a million were injured. (NHTSA)
• The worst offenders are the youngest and least-experienced drivers: men and women under 20 years of age. (NHTSA)
• Drivers who use hand-held devices are four times as likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves. (Source: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety)
We can’t help thinking that this website would make the best joke in history for drivers in some other parts of the world, like India, for example.
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