Yet.

That’s the key word in the equation — “yet.” But not having had a cell phone accident — yet –  doesn’t mean distracted driving won’t cause one. In fact, distractions can be fatal. Just ask families of the 6,000 Americans killed in distracted driving car crash accidents per year, or the half a million persons injured.

Or ask the New York air traffic controller who was found to be making a personal call while juggling flight routes, and the distraction proved fatal. The controller was talking with a friend on a headset when crucial errors occurred, and as a result, a plane collided with a tour helicopter over the Hudson River and nine people died.

The same thing happens on our roads every day. But it didn’t use to — not like now. For decades, millions of Americans made phone calls when it was prudent and time to do so. They didn’t interrupt a delightful dinner to field a needless call about what their kid was watching on TV. They didn’t drive with one hand on the wheel while they dialed a neighbor to ask if it was trash night. And they didn’t do their jobs while keeping one ear on a cell phone and half their thoughts on their duty.

But now, Americans are addicted to cell phones just as surely as junkies are hooked on drugs. They call and talk endlessly, which means the things they’re supposed to be doing otherwise — such as driving a car or supervising air traffic, both of which are vital tasks where inattention can mean death — get neglected.

How many deaths, and how many tragedies, will it take for a nation to wake up and recognize the enormously serious problem in its midst? Needless multi-tasking isn’t worth the risk to you, your loved ones or other people on the roads, or in the air. Some things need our full attention. But too many such things aren’t getting it.

We get it at USA Legal Help Center, and we’ll help if you or a family member suffers harm due to a driver’s negligence and driving distractions.

Meanwhile, ask yourself: How many phone calls have you ever made which were life-or-death matters? Chances are it’s been zero. So don’t turn a routine call into a life-or-death car accident. Hang up and drive.

Large trucks have caused many of those lately, including four deaths in a horrific Phoenix, AZ crash when a dump truck driver — who admits he was doing paperwork while driving — slammed into nine motorcycles which had stopped at a red light. Just days earlier, an 18 wheeler in Kentucky careened into a van, killing 11 members of a church.

Also recently, a trucker crashed into a woman’s car when its driver was watching streaming pornography on a laptop computer; a big rig sparked a 50-car pileup in Wyoming; a tractor trailer ran into the rear of a Greyhound Bus in Bowling Green, KY; and a truck smashed into the back of a van in Indiana.

As with car wrecks, the cause of many of these large truck accidents may have been driver distractions, from paperwork and laptops to cell phones and texts. An 80,000 pound truck traveling at 70 miles per hour can go the length of a football field in the time it takes its driver to read a text, and even then such huge vehicles need more time and space to stop than smaller, lighter cars. It’s called physics.

In short, drivers of diesel trucks, tractor trailers, big rigs, semi trucks and 18 wheelers bear a larger responsibility on our roads, due to their larger vehicles which cause such greater damage. Indeed, while only 3 per cent of vehicles on America’s roads are big rigs, they are involved in far more traffic accident fatalities: 12 per cent of those nationally, 10 per cent of those in Illinois, and 15 per cent of those in Missouri.

Long-haul truck drivers also may not get enough sleep, and when they do sleep, they may suffer from a condition called sleep apnea. Such sleep disruption makes them more tired when they’re behind the wheel.

Anything which reduces a trucker’s awareness and alertness for even a second can cause a truck crash that kills and injures horribly. No mere diversion is worth that. Truckers must hold themselves accountable for driving with greater caution, because too many lives are at stake.

If you or a loved one has been harmed by a diesel truck driver or other big rig drivers, alert a semi truck accident lawyer or tractor trailer accident lawyer with USALegalHelpCenter.com. We can provide you with an 18 wheeler accident lawyer or diesel truck accident lawyer in any of America’s 50 states.

According to the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), affiliated with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), no reduction in crashes occurred in New York, Connecticut, California and Washington, D.C. after bans on drivers using handheld cell phones took effect. This was based on assessing insurance claims for car crash damages.

Why? That’s a good question, since the link between cell phones and traffic deaths has been clearly established. One conclusion could be that fewer drivers in those states chose to heed the law and continued texting and talking, anyway.

Another possibility is that drivers who’d used handheld phones changed to bluetooth devices or other hands-free phones. Research shows that those phones also involve dangerous driver distractions. So, states changing the law and then drivers changing phones didn’t help.

Answers may be elusive, but they will come — and they must come, because Americans are being slaughtered by those who think driving a heavy vehicle in heavy traffic isn’t important enough when they want to divert themselves by phoning or texting inconsequential messages to friends.

All laws which seek to restrict if not outlaw such driving distractions and cell phone accidents are basically common sense laws. And they aren’t meant to punish, but to protect. After all, every person who drives also has hours each day when they aren’t driving, and those hours are the times to make phone calls, send text messages or surf the Web. Looking away even for a moment while traffic whizzes by is not the right time. It’s the potentially fatal time.

Such laws and their results will bear watching in the years ahead, as American comes to terms with cell phone fixations — even  addictions — of so many citizens. But flatline results in three states do not mean we should back off and cede the progress already made. They only mean we should re-examine our efforts and work harder. The payoff — in spared lives and in whole families — is certainly worth it.

USA Legal Help Center.com supports victims of distracted driving car crash accidents. A cell phone accident lawyer can seek financial compensation in a cell phone accident lawsuit or distracted driver lawsuit.