It could be a giant billboard promising free coffee, or a particularly beautiful patch of fall foliage. Maybe you're trying to check your email, or text your significant other to figure out whether you were supposed to get grape juice or white grape juice. You could be riffling under your seat for a leftover piece of Halloween candy you know you dropped last week, or rubbernecking to see the fools that got into a fender bender while doing something foolish. Or maybe you're just deep in thought, meditating on whether you will have fries or onion rings with your lunch.
It doesn't matter what the reason is, distracted driving is dangerous.
Everyone knows that taking your eyes off the road counts as distracted driving, but you might not realize that any time your focus is diverted away from the road constitutes distracted driving. Just because your eyes are fixed (or mostly fixed) on the road doesn’t mean that you aren’t distracted. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that there are three main types of distracted driving.
- · Visual distraction (taking your eyes off the road)
- · Manual distraction (taking your hands off the wheel)
- · Cognitive distraction (taking your mind off driving)
Distracted driving has been shown to increase the likelihood of motor accidents. In 2013, there were 3,154 deaths due to distracted driving, and according to the CDC, there are 1,153 injuries reported each day in the U.S. as a result of distracted driving.
There are approximately 660,000 American drivers using mobile devices at any given time during daylight hours, a statistic that shouldn’t be overly surprising if you’ve ever counted the number of drivers using phones during your commute to work.
People tend to think that they are somehow more skilled at multitasking while driving than most other people, and those statistics about distracted driving don't apply to them. It's not true. It doesn’t matter how talented you are when it comes to not paying attention, if you are distracted behind the wheel, you are at a greater risk of getting into an accident.
It doesn’t matter how hungry you are, how important you think that text is, or how unruly your hair is being, doing anything other than driving while driving is dangerous, potentially life threateningly so, and it isn't worth the risk.
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