Distracted driving...

 Distracted driving has become a major issue over the past 15 years. Since the introduction of cell phones and interactive touchscreens our roads have never been more occupied with distracted drivers.   Taking your focus off of the road for that long is dangerous. Any type of commotion that deters the driver or gets their temper soaring may result in an accident.



People rely heavily on their phone or navigation system to tell them how to get from one location to another. This often requires the drivers’ eyes to focus on the navigation screen to ‘follow” the line shown on the screen. Obviously, if their eyes are looking at their phone or navigation screen, they are not looking at the road. Not only for the use of directions, phones can distract drivers by way of alerting them to a text or a posting while they are driving. The human mind is programmed to want to immediately read and respond to texts. When doing so, the driver is not focused on driving or their surroundings. The average amount of time it takes to read and respond to a text is 5 seconds. A common analogy made is that it is like closing your eyes and driving the entire length of a football field. 


Not only is a call or reply to a text a problem while driving, the conversation or text itself may be a severe distraction to the driver. Interaction taking place on cell phones can sometimes make people angry. This anger is then transferred to the drivers of surrounding vehicles. People are not always rational when they become angry. Their irrational thoughts may result in them taking a simple lane change of another car in front of them personally. When people take the actions of other drivers personally, the result may be road rage. Phone conversations or texts can truly result in a domino effect of events depending on the mental stability of the driver.  

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