Intexticated drivers remain a serious public safety issue, and US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood wrote on his blog that he was “particularly pleased” that there were several sessions on distracted driving during the Lifesavers Conference in Orlando last month. The event was held by the National Conference on Highway Safety Priorities and was the group’s 30th annual meeting.
Throughout those distracted driving sessions, members of the group FocusDriven told personal stories of loved ones lost because of cell phone distractions. The video above is from the advocacy group’s YouTube page. As Consumer Reports noted in an article published on June 19, 2012, David Strayer from the University of Utah spoke about “inattention blindness” and Charlie Klauer from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute said safety officials need to work on the 10-20 percent of the population that is responsible for 70-80 percent of crashes. Strayer and Klauer also spoke about studies and the effects of manual, visual and cognitive distraction.
Consumer Reports also mentioned Anne McCartt, senior vice president of research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), who discussed her 2005 Australian study which found “drivers using phones are four times more likely to get into a crash whether it’s on a hands-free or handheld phone.”
That last point is especially interesting, and a separate Consumer Reports article examined hands-free technologies among other alternatives, which we will cover in Friday’s blog post. If you or a loved one has sustained injuries in a car accident caused by a distracted driver, contact our firm today to see how our Orlando personal injury attorneys can help.
Wooten Kimbrough, P.A. – Orlando personal injury lawyers