Texting While Driving

It should come as no surprise that texting while driving is dangerous. In a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, a Virginia Tech study is discussed by a doctor in the hopes of discouraging people from texting while driving. This is a serious problem and one that needs all of our attention. Click here to view the New England Journal of Medicine article.

The statistics are staggering and they are only expected to get worse:

Text Messages Sent In the U.S.

• 600.5 billion text messages were sent in 2007, according to CTIA , a wireless association
• Number of text messages sent by the average American per month: 357
• Number of phone calls made by the average American per month: 204
• Number of text messages sent by the average teenager per month: 1,742

Driving While Texting (DWT)

• 80% of crashes, and 65% of near crashes, involved some form of driver inattention within 3 seconds of the event
• 57% of American drivers admit to texting behind the wheel
• 89% of American adults think sending text messages while driving is dangerous and should be outlawed
• 790 is the average number of texts sent per month by 18-24 year olds
• #1 Cause of death ages 18-27: automobile crashes
• Number of people killed and injured in a 2008 commuter train crash where rail engineer was texting just before the crash: 163
• Number of seconds prior to crash that the engineer was texting: 22

Teens and Texting

• Percentage of teens admitting to text messaging while driving in 2008: 46
• Percentage of teens admitting to text messaging while driving in 2006: 13
• 32% of young adults admit to sending text messages while driving
• 43 % of young adults read text messages while driving
• Someone dies every 13 minutes on a road in America

As a car accident lawyer in Kansas City, I feel strongly that people should not text while driving. All too often, a car accident case I am handling was caused by someone who was distracted because of texting while driving. In fact, it is so common these days that I have developed an aggressive approach to investigating and discovering proof that the negligent driver was distracted by their phone. Not only do I ask the witnesses or the drivers if they were using their phone, but I also routinely subpoena records from phone companies which show whether someone was using their phone at the time of the accident.

So please, when you're driving, put down your phone and pay attention to the road.  You take a terrible risk by texting while driving.  I've seen the consequences of it far too often.