The dangers of texting and driving are slowly working their way into our national consciousness. There are too many tragic stories of people sending a routine text and having “be home soon” or “k” be their last words. Texting and driving accounted for 6,000 deaths last year according to the U.S. DOT. Texting and driving was the cause of 1.6 million crashes.
The Virginia Tech Transportation institute did a study that showed it takes 5 seconds to send a text. At 55 mph, your car travels the length of a football field. No one would feel safe closing their eyes for 5 seconds while driving, yet thousands of drivers compose text messages, read them, and even search the internet while driving.
The same Virginia study showed that a driver who is texting is 6 times more likely to cause an accident than a drunk driver.
The enormity of the problem cannot be conveyed by statistics alone though. Imagine if you are texting your wife when you know she is on her way home, and she sends a response that leads to an accident. You would carry that guilt forever. Worse still is the situation where you send a text and cause an accident where someone dies. The simple fact that you could not wait until you stopped driving before sending a text is the reason another person is dead.
Set a good example and turn your phone off in the car. There is not a text in the world that is worth killing or dying for.
